Mera Babineaux
Merrily Wolf: Wouldn’t the MD non profit be a quote for their services for the listed items. A no vote would mean we have to hire a lawyer instead of their services. At least that is how I’m reading the motion.
Mera Babineaux: Actually, Maryland Nonprofit offers a lot of services to their members for the $100 membership fee including consulting on policies and things like this. It’s a lot better use of funds to just go through them than to pay our retainers and billable hours to a Maryland attorney, IMHO. It would be good to have the motion withdrawn or voted down so that a policy committee could be put together and put the policies together to have Maryland Nonprofits review and offer changes to.
Dragan Rose: Could we get some clarification on Motion 11-06-2019 1A1? Does a "No" vote require us to hire a lawyer? Not what it could mean, what is DOES mean. I want to understand exactly what the outcome of each of the votes are.
Mera Rose: No on this puts the language back to 1A. Honestly, if you don’t want any of it, voting no as each amendment and the original come up would do that. If you want to change the language to investigate hiring attorneys and not make any decisions on that until the annual meeting, then vote yes on 1A1. If you want to hire an attorney to draft the language then vote yes on 1A and no on 1A1. If you want to do something else, you can actually move to amend after this amendment is voted on too.
Judy Mitchell: A No vote, if the amendment is defeated, means we return to the original motion where the language does require us to hire a lawyer.
Mera Rose: See my response to Sarah
Betsy R. Marks: If by some chance we defeat this amendment, it's possible we will obligate the ICG to HIRE a lawyer.
This is an amendment to the original motion. If we don't change the language of the original motion, and that motion passes, we're required to hire.
Are you sure you want to risk what could easily become an expense of tens of thousands of dollars?
Good lawyers in Maryland are $400/hour or more. That seems like playing roulette with the ICG's finances. It took us years to build the balance we have now. Seems like a shame to see it all spent in one place, for lawyers' fees.
But if we'd rather spend our money on the legal profession instead of supporting our art and artists, I guess that's what we'll have to do.
I intend to vote yes on the amendment, on the off chance there aren't enough votes to defeat the motion as a whole.
Regards,
Betsy R. Marks
Silicon Web
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Betsy R. Marks
www.hawkeswood.com
Mera Rose: If this language fails, then it defaults to 1A, if that language fails, then it defaults to 1.
Mera Rose: And honestly, I don’t see why there is an insistence that we hire an attorney to do it. I mean, there’s tons of draft templates out there that are cheap or free that we could create a committee to finalize, and then send them to Paddy Morton with Maryland Nonprofits to make sure that we’re 100% compliant. A lot cheaper, a lot faster, and gets the whole thing done.
I mean, let’s just be realistic here. Pushing out the dates into infinity to “investigate” it just looks like avoidance behavior, and saying that spending $100 on Maryland Nonprofits and either using their templates or resources and attorney or $100 for legal zoom or some other template service (assuming that any of the legal professionals here don’t have templates already that we could use) is going to bankrupt the ICG is obviously not the case. Hiring a Maryland attorney at an hourly rate would be a horrible misuse of funds with these two options available, IMHO.
And - while I understand that several of you may not think that this is important, our members don’t agree. Preliminary graphs from the survey below (these may change as the survey isn’t closed yet, but it gives an idea of the trend right now. And the last one is just to remind everyone on all sides of this issue that tone is important.)
(Graphs from survey available in Slack #boardofdirectors channel, can not be uploaded to Yahoo.)
Jacalyn Boggs: Well the hiring a lawyer was so we could Get It Done instead of moving at the glacial speed we are known for around here. It has been too long without these necessary documents and after the problems in the last three months, it is clear that we need these documents before we end up in some serious hot water.
Also, an outside professional entity would hopefully mean that we can not only be in compliance, but people would not be able to argue that they didn’t write the thing or whatever. Ego has gotten in the way too much lately.
Jacalyn Boggs: Fear tactics when 1. This is something so simple and fast I literally had a lawyer do it for me already at no cost so no, it won’t bankrupt us and 2. We have the simple option of Maryland Nonprofits for a whopping $100?
This is a bit ridiculous. I’m literally just waiting for us to be signed on with them at this point so I can contact them about several things. Including this specific motion.
Have y’all a nice day.
Judy Mitchell: Exactly, Mera, we don't need to hire a lawyer. Kevin pointed that out a while ago. But the original motion is worded to obligate the icg to do just that. That's why i was trying to amend it to say investigate TO hire instead of AND hire, but you two wouldn't listen. This c whike thing should have been scrapped when you found the nonprofit group, but you didn't. Now we have to vote, and if we end up with the original then we HAVE to hire someone.
Mera Rose: Um, I wasn’t involved in Jacalyn’s motion. I’ve been trying to put out there that there is a better way to do this without having to go through all of this. I was a paralegal and I know what the hourly rates are. It’s a gross misuse of funds. I agree that the policies need to be made, but I don’t agree with “either side” on the approach at the moment. And I don’t control withdrawing a motion - I can’t. The motion to withdraw has to come from the original mover. I’ve been trying to show this through multiple emails. Please, everyone, stop assigning motives to each other. It doesn’t help anything get done.