[Evergreen-governance-l] Draft rules of governance for a more focused Foundation

[Dan Scott]

Hi Sylvia:

On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 11:01:45AM -0400, Watson, Sylvia wrote:
> Dan,
> 
> I'm actually not interested in governing the Evergreen Foundation.  You'll notice I did not place my name on the list of Interim Board members.  Nevertheless, I was invited to participate in assisting in the development of the Foundation's governance structure and thus, have been attempting to make meaningful contributions.  I am newly involved in Evergreen, and while I have not spent an inordinate amount of time on the Evergreen-ils website, I have nevertheless spent significant hours working on this project, and do feel invested.

I recognize that, and would be the first to acknowledge that your
contributions have been a huge boost to this effort.

>  I'd like to think of myself as one of the voices representing the libraries and consortia who are using Evergreen.  This is a voice I think needs to be heard. I'm sorry I haven't spent enough time on the ils website or on Google to meet your satisfaction or to meet the threshold you feel is necessary to participate.

I was reacting to your assertion that "the Indiana members are not [on
the Evergreen General mailing list] and did not even know about the
e-mail list until recently" - so not so much you, who I see as providing
valuable guidance on legal matters concerning legal entities, but the
other Indiana members that you referenced. If it's the case, as you
suggest in a subsequent email, that those other Indiana members
actually did know about the Evergreen General mailing list, then my
concern vanishes.
 
> You said:
> "If I remember my draft correctly, the only unanimous votes that were required were for adopting the rules of governance in the first place
> (by the Interim Board members) and then for modifying the rules of governance."  Apparently my comments were not clear, but that is what I was referencing.  If the board wanted to amend the bylaws to open up the purpose of the Foundation to more areas...

Okay, I did want to be clear about that. Thanks for clarifying your
concern. With a proposed board of 7 members, the requirement for a
majority position is 4 votes, and a super-majority (2/3 per the initial
draft document) would be 5 votes. I do think it's worthwhile to have the
actual numbers in front of us. I'm not stuck on the idea of requiring a
a majority!