Gowanus CAG Administration Committee meeting, February 4, 2020.
Held in the Carroll Park Park House.
Present:
Jerry Armer
Ben Jones
Katia Kelly
Maryann Young
Rita Miller (on the phone)
Pending Applications:
Jennifer Jones: Rita will reach out to ask her to consider becoming an at-large member, since her organization/school does not seem to be active yet.
Mike Song: Katia will make sure he will be put on the CAG agenda for March or April.
Change in application interview:
The Admin committee will propose to the full CAG to do away with the interview section of the CAG application process. It was felt that the interviews are awkward and repetitive, since the applicant already answered pertinent questions on the application. We suggest that the Admin Committee will continue to review the paper applications as they come in, make sure that they have been completed, and forward to the CAG for review at the next full CAG.
Currently the CAG by-laws ready:
New member process:
1) application form completed by applicant
2) Admin Committee issues opinion regarding impact of applicant on overall CAG balance
3) applicant meets with full CAG at General meeting
4) blind vote with simple majority (greater than 50%) required for approval. (2013 addendum to the CAG’s by-laws Page 11)
Since the by-laws only mention “meet” and not “interview,” perhaps we can suggested the elimination of the “interview” without introducing a charter change. Admin will ask the full CAG if improvements can be made to the paper application to satisfy anything not sufficiently covered on the current application.
Yearly membership:
At the January General CAG meeting, the Admin Committee was given the task of making recommendations for how to best handle the members who did not attend the required amount of meetings in 2019, according to our bylaws.
After a lengthy discussion, the committee decided to propose the following:
-remind the full CAG of the just-revised language in our bylaws, which reads:
“CAG members are required to attend at least half of all general meetings during a survey year. Non-compliance with attendance requirements during a survey year may result in a review by the Administrative Committee followed by possible removal upon vote by the General CAG membership.”
-send letter to the members/organizations who have not attended any meetings in 2019 and did not respond to the two 2020 survey emails, telling them that they have been removed, but can rejoin the CAG at any time.
-send letter to members/organizations who did not attend the required number of meetings in 2019, reminding them of our bylaw requirements and of possible removal for non-attendance.
-it was suggested that when discussing this issue in the future, the individual names of at large members and/or organizations should be omitted so as not to influence the other CAG members.