4/27/2022 GENERAL MEETING MINUTES

 

President: John Bartell

Vice President of Membership: Rosemary Clement

Vice President of Events and Programs: Charlie Hilliard

Treasurer: Leslie Lutz

Secretary: Paola Lastick

Vice President of Community Outreach: BJ Sloan

Vice President of Digital Media: Brian Tracey

Infrastructure:  Dylan Larkin

Conference Chair: Steve Manning

 

Officer(s) absent:       Dylan Larkin

                                    John Bartell

 

Meeting opening: 7:00 PM

 

 

Active members: 164

 

Attendees: 43

 

Visitors: 1

                        Mallory Peek

                       

                       

 

New Members: 2

                        William Brymer                      

                        Becca

 

Book Reviews: 5

                        Leann Robinson

                        BJ Sloan

                        Michelle O’Neal

                        Colin Holmes 

                        Shawn Rogers

                       

 

Rejections: 0

                       

                       

Submissions: 2

                        Shawn Rogers

                        Charlie Hilliard

                       

           

 

Acceptances: 0

           

 

Announcements:

 

BJ Sloan – LTAB Festival is happening tomorrow at Ranchview High school in Irving. This is the Young DFW Writers final contest which we have a judge in tomorrow 12-3pm.

 

Charlie – Poetry read is May 11^th. Please sign up to read your poetry.

 

Kathy – Requesting illustrator for her book

 

Leslie Lutz – Event at 2pm on Saturday at

 

Rosemary Clement – Co-writing group, accountability thing, email [email protected] to get an invite to the zoom.

 

Brian Norgaard – Needs an editorial assistant

 

Time adjourned: 7:22

 

 

 

4/20/2022 GENERAL MEETING MINUTES

 

President: John Bartell

Vice President of Membership: Rosemary Clement

Vice President of Events and Programs: Charlie Hilliard

Treasurer: Leslie Lutz

Secretary: Paola Lastick

Vice President of Community Outreach: BJ Sloan

Vice President of Digital Media: Brian Tracey

Infrastructure:  Dylan Larkin

Conference Chair: Steve Manning

 

Officer(s) absent: Rosemary Clement

 

Meeting opening: 7:00 PM

 

 

Active members: 167

 

Attendees: 28 Online/Undetermined In-Person

 

Visitors: 2

                        William Brimer

                        Rebecca Seifert

 

New Members: 0                              

                       

 

Book Reviews: 2

 

                        Leslie Lutz

                        John Bartell

                        Sean Rogers

                       

 

Rejections: 0

                       

                       

Submissions: 2

 

                        Dylan Larkin

                        John Bartell

           

 

Acceptances: 1

 

                        Carolyn Rae – Got request for novel by agent

 

Announcements:

 

John Bartell – We need more people to help set up for the meetings. Please email John to sign up to help.

 

Rajiv - has a few stories from friends back home in India for the person who asked about those at last week’s meeting.

 

Russell Connor – Looking for people to review his book. Please reach out to Russell and he will email you the ebook.

 

Charlie – Poetry read is May 11^th. Please sign up to read your poetry.

 

Time adjourned: 7:09 PM

 

 

 

4/13/22 GENERAL MEETING MINUTES

 

President: John Bartell

Vice President of Membership: Rosemary Clement

Vice President of Events and Programs: Charlie Hilliard

Treasurer: Leslie Lutz

Secretary: Paola Lastick

Vice President of Community Outreach: BJ Sloan

Vice President of Digital Media: Brian Tracey

Infrastructure:  Dylan Larkin

Conference Chair: Colin Holmes

 

Officer(s) absent: BJ Sloan

 

Meeting opening: 7:00 PM

 

 

Active members: 168

 

Attendees: 28 Online/Undetermined In-Person

 

Visitors: 2

                        Matt Barron

                        Bonnie Daily

 

New Members: 1

                                   

                        Rachel Yoritomi

 

Book Reviews: 1

           

                        Steve Manning reviewed “The Burial Place” by Larry Enmon

 

Rejections: 1

                       

                        JB Sanders received a rejection

 

Submissions: 0

 

                       

Acceptances: 0

 

                       

Announcements:

 

                        Carolyn announced the Granbury Writers Short Story Contest – Deadline 4/30/2022

 

                        Charlie donated her book to the library

                       

                        Kendall mentioned a member of the DFWWW got a memoir published.

           

                        Member is looking for illustrator for her story book.

 

 

 

Attendance: 23 total

Time adjourned: 7:10 PM

 

 

 

4/6/22 DFW Writer’s Workshop

Business Meeting Minutes

 

President: John Bartell

Vice President of Membership: Rosemary Clement

Vice President of Events and Programs:  Charlie Hilliard

Treasurer: Leslie Lutz

Secretary: Paola Lastick

Vice President of Community Outreach: BJ Sloan

Vice President of Digital Media: Vacant

Infrastructure:  Dylan Larkin

Conference Chair: Steve Manning

 

 

Officer(s) absent:  Leslie Lutz, Treasurer

 

Members attending: 24 via Zoom/29 In Person

 

Time Meeting called to Order:  7:00 P.M.

 

John opens meeting announcing this is the first hybrid business meeting. John discusses slide show Leslie Lutz put together and announces that Leslie has stepped down from the bylaws committee due to contentious emails against her that felt harassing to her. John has also received angry and harassing emails. Emails have been included in the minutes of the April officer’s meeting.

 

Dylan shares slide show on Zoom on how to make a motion. The goal is to have everyone feel empowered.

 

John talks about the officer’s meeting and the vote of confidence put forth by Colin Holmes, which passed unanimously in favor of Leslie Lutz. John asks members to please words and their impact. John said if an issue comes up discuss with that person in a civil way. John also mentioned we have an ethics committee should anyone feel they need to use them.

 

John said that due to Leslie stepping down this leaves bylaws committee without a chair. John goes on to say that recapping, the two amendments voted on last business meeting in March passed and it needs to be recognized.

 

John said that seeing how we do not have a bylaws committee chair his hope is that there will be a motion to postpone motions and voting on remaining bylaw amendments until we have a chair.

 

John said he would like to see the Advisory Council seated.

 

 

Rosemary calls meeting to order.

JB calls on the secretary to read the votes from last business meeting.

 

Sarah makes a motion to speak. Sarah makes a motion to recount the second vote from the last meeting.

 

Russell Connors seconds.

 

Harry asks for clarification as to why are we recounting the vote.

 

John states we are not voting again on the second amendment. We are voting to recognize the vote from the previous business meeting since it was counted improperly. We are voting to recognize the vote from the last business meeting.

 

Vote to recognize the vote results from the March business meeting: Passed by majority.

 

Secretary reads the outcome of the second vote: 52 in attendance, 33 yes/10 against, 10 abstentions.

 

Vote to accept results from second vote from March business meeting: passes by majority.

 

Rosemary makes motion to postpone any action on the remainder of the amendments until the next business meeting after a bylaws committee chair has been placed. Motion passed by majority.

 

Twila seconds the motion.

 

Sarah asks for clarification on postponing any action on the remainder of the amendments until next business meeting or until next business meeting after we sit bylaws committee chair.

 

Rosemary clarifies the motion is to postpone until business meeting after we have placed bylaw committee chair.

 

Motion voted on and passed by majority vote.

 

Rosemary makes motion moves to rescind the motion made on 1/12/2022 to delay the investiture of the Advisory Council until the proposed bylaw amendments regarding that body has been voted on.

 

Alex seconds motion.

 

Rosemary asked to be recognized. Recognized. Rosemary said that the delay was due to the ambiguity of the language in regard to the Board, now Advisory Council. Rosemary went on to say that we have clarified that language and have had presentations by attorney Samantha Jorden who specializes in non-profit organizations and helped clarify ambiguity and language. Rosemary said that neither the old or new bylaws leave officers, members, vulnerable from a legal point of view.

John said we got rid of the trust language and feels there is no danger of misuse of funds. Workshop has $140k and believes we need guidance on how to best use that money. We need a long-term goal and feels an Advisory board is very beneficial and wants to get this going.

 

Jodi Thompson feels like if the remainder of items to vote concern the Advisory Council she feels that seating the Advisory Council is putting the cart before the horse.

 

Carolyn said that she would like to state that when it comes time to seat the Advisory Board to consider 3 years of membership instead of 5 years.

 

Steve Manning Thanks everyone for the support for the 1^st and 2^nd items. Steve said he strongly hopes that all amendments will be placed in front of members as they should have a voice. Steve would like help to fix it and amendments were put forth in good faith to create good smart and prudent checks and balances. Recognizes some are more contentious than others. Steve said there are people who don’t want to give members the right to vote on the amendments and asks members to hold those accountable. Steve went on to say he was caught off guard. Steve said he has a text from John, the president, stating there would be no vote on these matters tonight. Believes this is fundamentally unfair. Steve wants to make the workshop fairer. Steve said things he has seen behind the scenes are disappointing, disgusting. Steve pleads with members to make sure they see these amendments in their current form. 

 

John reads the text message which in summary states that Leslie has stepped down, is not ready to move on these amendments, and would like to put a pin on them until we have a bylaws committee chair appointed, asks to not contact Leslie on these matters as respect for her, and will follow up in an email to all.

 

Alex said he is the longest member of the workshop. Alex said a lawyer came out and stated these changes mean “shit” either way. Thinks there are strong conflicts and wishes he can solve this but doesn’t know how. Alex said this is all a waste of time, a bunch of politics. Alex said there is a conflict now between two groups and the majority of members who don’t care are caught in the middle. Alex is sick and tired of all the fighting on things that do not matter. Alex said we are fighting about a thing that does not fucking matter.

 

Sarah asks to be recognized. Recognized. Sarah wants to clarify and read the other text messages beginning with Steve asking to clarify that what he is interpreting is that the presentations they were going to make on the amendments would not be happening as well as any motions by anyone on these matters. Sarah reads that John stated agreeance to the statement Steve made in his text.

 

John stated he looked at the motions Steve mentioned as motions to vote on the remainder of the amendments and read the follow up to the text Sarah read. Joh

 

Brian said that we have 5 people in limbo who were asked to be on the Advisory Council. Problematic language has been removed and sees no reason to seat them.

 

Charlie asks to be recognized. Charlie moves to vote.

Rosemary clarifies that the motion to vote is to rescind the rescinding motion of the 1/12/2022 vote to delay the seating of the Advisory Council as they are now named.

 

Melissa (a guest) just paid to be a member.

 

Vote passes with a 39 out of 52 voted yes – vote passed by majority.

 

John stated the bylaws portion of this meeting is over.

 

Rosemary wanted to state her opinion regarding Leslie Lutz, who she believes, is a very fair person and sited a particular confrontation Leslie had with a person who identified himself as an antisemite, and that same person (meaning Leslie) did not want to come to the meeting tonight. Rosemary went on to say that if people believe having 3-year terms as opposed to 5-year terms is more important than our members who we have gone to weddings and funerals with it’s good to get that out. Rosemary reiterated that both sets of bylaws have no risk or liability to advisors or officers or members of the workshop, somethings are important, but some things are more important.   

 

Carolyn clarified that she was not referring to 3-year terms instead of 5-year terms. Carolyn meant the amount of time a person needed to be a member in order to be on the advisor council.

 

Melissa (new member) stood up to say she is excited to come back. Melissa stated she was a long-time member of the workshop and due to personal reasons left for a while. She said she did not recognize the workshop. Melissa said that the main goal is to read and get critique and this workshop is why she has 7 books published. Melissa said she loves this workshop and wants it to get back to the goal of getting writers published. Melissa said we have to get back to read & critique as this is the main goal of our workshop and not about power trips. Melissa hopes the animosity does not tear the workshop apart.

 

Charlie motions to close the business meeting.

 

Sarah said she agrees that we have to have community and she has been a huge part of the discord. Sarah said that it is hard to not have animosity when John, the president, says one thing via text and does something else. Sarah said this is disrespectful and says it is hard to not have animosity when things like that happen.  

 

Rosemary leaves the workshop.

 

Russell Connors said he has been here for 15 years. Russell stated he was president for 2 years and a member for 15 years. Wants to say he knows everyone on both sides of the issue and there is no one here tonight on either side that does not want the best for this workshop. Evil does not exist in this workshop and trusts all these people. There is no subverting by anyone. Everyone wants the best for the workshop.

 

John closes business meeting.

 

Meeting adjourned: 7:55 PM.

 

 

4/6/22 General Meeting

 

 

Visitors: 1

 

Dale Stigh who writes non-fiction. Has known about the workshop for about five years.  

 

New Members: 1

 

Melissa Lenhardt

Kathy

 

Book Reviews: 1

 

Steve Manning posted 2 reviews. Reviewed Harry Hall’s book This use to be Dallas and Colin Holmes book Thunder Road.

 

Rejections: 0

 

Submissions: 1

 

Carolyn Rae submitted book

 

Acceptances: 3

 

Ellen Pie had acceptance of short story to anthology.

Rosemary for book No Good Deed

Alex option for book, possible sitcom

 

Announcements:

 

JB held copy of short story anthology in his hand for all to see.

Melissa Lenhardt won audi award for her book Heresy.

Colin presented a book that will be going into the DFW Writer’s Workshop library.

 

 

Time adjourned: 8:10 PM

 

 

DFWWW OFFICER’S MEETING MINUTES

 

Date:  4/04/2022

Time:  6:30 p.m.

 Attendance:

John Bartell, President

Rosemary Clement, VP of Membership

Charlie Hilliard, VP of Events and Programs

Leslie Lutz, Treasurer

Paola Lastick, Secretary

Steve Manning, Conference Chair

BJ Sloan, VP of Outreach

Brian Tracey, VP of Digital Media

Absent Members: Dylan Larkin

John opens meeting. We have a pretty full agenda tonight. John laid out what we would be speaking about tonight: general housekeeping, the treasurer’s report, the bylaws, Brook will be speaking tonight to give us a back history of how and why for the bylaw changes of 2018. Leslie will then provide the plan for the debate and the vote for Wednesday night. We will also talk about the ethic committee and, if there is time, we will go through the other officer’s reports.

General Housekeeping:

John asks Rosemary if she has found the other set of keys. Rosemary has not found keys yet, but she still has a few places she still needs to look into.

John stated we need more people to help with the Zoom setup. John is not necessarily asking for officers to come, but last time it was John and Katie. Rosemary and Charlie said they would be there to help and will get there at 6:30 PM. John also stated we need to talk about how to handle Zoom in the future. John is not terribly thrilled with the hybrid system and asked everyone to please start thinking about how to make Zoom better and we can hopefully discuss in next officer’s meeting some ideas on how to make the hybrid meetings better.

John asked if anyone had any comments on anything he has said so far. No comments.

John stated he couldn’t believe how anyone could treat someone that is a teacher like this.

John moved on to discuss COVID. We will be keeping an eye on the numbers. There is a variant out in New York. We need to start thinking about how to react to COVID numbers if they spread. John acknowledged that the new variant appears to not be doing much harm, but we should all think about how we want to figure out a response. John does not want to be caught flatfooted.

John thanked Lauren Danhof for agreeing to chair the Ethics Committee along with Helen Dent, Maureen Davis, Dave Wampach who have all agreed to be on the Ethics Committee.

John stated he specifically asked members of the Ethics Committee to be present at this officer’s meeting because there are some issues we are working through. However, there is no need for Ethics Committee to be at every officer’s meeting. John also stated that as members anyone who wants to attend an officer’s meeting is more than welcome to attend.

John mentioned in case anyone didn’t know that Brian Tracey is the new VP of Social Media and said Brian is doing a great job getting the DFW Writer’s Workshop name out there.

Brian asked if there is anything he wants us to share, please let him know. Brian mentioned he is focused on helping member authors sell more books but is also interested in sharing crafting things to help writing community any way he can.

Discussion regarding proposed amendments:

John moves to talk about the proposed bylaw amendments and how they will be going forward. John said Brook was instrumental in helping to draft the bylaws that created the original board and has institutional knowledge that is missing as to why they were made and what they were created to do. John mentioned that unfortunately there was not a lot of collaboration from the outside with the people that worked hard to put proposed amendment language together. John wants to have Brook give a short talk to share the institutional knowledge behind the bylaws and gave the floor to Brook Fossey to speak for a few minutes.

Brook stated she has more than a few minutes to speak. She has a presentation and requested to share her screen. Brook said she hopes the information she is sharing regarding the bylaws is helpful. Brook said she does not want to relitigate the past, however, she believes knowing how things occurred and why is helpful. Brook stated she is going off of memory, emails she still had (at times officer’s cc’d her personal email and she has them), from meeting minutes she pulled off the DFWWW website, Board Decks.

Brook’s Presentation:

Brook said the bylaw changes followed a journey: they saw a problem, developed a process, and implemented a solution. It started in 2016. Brook mentioned she had been a member of the board by 2016 in various positions during the past 3 ½ years. In 2016 Brook said she was the president.

The problem Brook stated identifying was that the board had a lot of money for a non-profit and no real organized way as to how to use those funds.

The process Brook states in looking to solve the problem she identified and as president at the time she got all stakeholders in one room to discuss what to do about it. Brook stated that even with a room full of officers, she as president, was not comfortable figuring out what to do with the money and said that was a big responsibility. Brook’s main reason to get everyone in the room is so she did not have to bear the whole responsibility. Brook mentioned having Mega Meetings that lasted 4 hours. These Mega Meetings were held with the sole purpose of discussing things outside the Officer’s Meetings and they were intended as meetings to discuss outside of the normal day-to-day operations of the organizations. Brook said there were members on the Officer’s call tonight that were present at the meeting, Brook did not say the names. Brook said there were 4 Mega Meetings, all lasting 4 hours each. Meetings were usually held at country clubs with snacks.

Brook went on to discuss the process of how those Mega Meetings were run and what they discussed. Brook created the presentation and has the presentation deck she read from in tonight’s officer’s meeting as well as the original board deck when Brook was president.

Brook discussed the organization’s growth in 2016 as well as the money the organization was making from the conference. Brook mentioned one question she had at the beginning of the Mega Meetings was what will the organization look like in ten years. Brook mentioned positives that came out of those meetings and sited the example of ideas of what we could do like funding grants, residencies. Brook mentioned that back 30 years ago DFWWW use to do a monthly publication. Brook mentioned other possibilities to do with the money.

Brook mentioned that all the officer went off with the new ideas to explore possibilities and the officers meet the next month and reported on their findings.

Brook mentioned Grants were one of the ideas that passed the exploration phase and was being seriously looked at with the support of internal champions and others.

Brook said that at the following month’s meeting it was learned that the organization needed to pass an audit in order to apply for grants. Brook mentioned that at the time the accounting for DFWWW and DFW Conference were “stinky”. Brook mentioned that upon looking at the accounting practices deeper, they recognized problems that could not pass an audit. Brook mentioned the steps they took to organize the organization’s finances, which included things like combining bank accounts, putting $10k in a CD to earn interest, acquire liability insurance, etc.

Brook stated the real problem was that there were no checks and balances, no formal procedures to follow which prompted her to switch her original thought on “how do we spend the money wisely” to “how do we protect the money wisely.”

Brook mentioned the officers all got together to brainstorm ideas on how to solve the problem of protecting the organization’s money. They discussed their structural needs, their organizational needs, were we covered in the bylaws, does the bylaws take care of us? etc.

Brook stated that in the meeting of December 2017 Officer’s Meeting the bylaws were discussed, introduction of new bylaws wording were discussed, organizational structure was presented, term limits, etc. with all stake holders (officers, newer members, past presidents, and others) per the December 2017 Officer’s Meeting Agenda.

Brook said that everyone was very invested in the Mega Meetings and what came out of them.

Brook said they conducted a soft audit in 2018 and started to move to online accounting, etc. January 2018 hard drafts of the new bylaw language was prepared with the help of professionals. Brook mentioned that from February 2018 to May 2018 they discussed the bylaws and made the members aware that the bylaw changes were coming. Brook stated that Leslie Lutz copy edited the draft and created a style sheet for the new amendments. Brook said during this time Daryl McGinnis joins the officers due to a vacated spot and made suggestions but no substantial changes. Brook said that in 2018 the bylaws passed unanimously (Brook acknowledged she may not remember if it was unanimously, but she does recall having overwhelming approval from the majority of members.

Brook acknowledges that bylaws may not be perfect and believes that there are improvements that could be made.

Brook said that at the end of her term as president she decided to step down, after 7 years on the board. Brook went on to reiterate that the “purse strings” for the money resides with the Treasurer. Brook said that in 2019 organization was functioning: organization was in compliance with bylaw, accounting in order, etc. Then COVID hit and disrupted our organization. Membership was decreasing and she felt organization was on “survival” mode. Meeting minutes began to be “spotty.” Brook acknowledges that if a board had been in place during this time of COVID, it could have been helpful to the organization. In 2021 Brook acknowledges not being present during much of the meetings in 2021 and is putting together information about 2021 from meeting minutes. Brook states she found 26 meeting minutes out of 52 for 2021. Brook sited various issues discussed at business and officer’s meetings according to the available meeting minutes online. Brook said during this time the binders that constituted the processes and procedures for the officers were gone. Brook stated Steve Manning and Leslie Lutz proposed changes to the amendments. Brook acknowledges not being present at the discussions between Leslie and Steve. Brook said she reached out to the officers after she heard of the meetings that talked about possible changes to the bylaws to offer her opinions and recollections as a resource. Brook stated she never heard back from her and no one reached out to her. Brook said she heard about the bylaw changes electronically where she could offer input. Brook said Robert’s Rules was too limiting for her to be able to share the information she shared at this officer’s meeting and expressed her gratitude for being allowed to speak on the history and purpose for the 2018 bylaws. Brook acknowledges the difficulties during COVID. Brook expressed disappointment that the accounting is in need of a “house cleaning”.

Brook believes the bylaw changes are of a large proportion and said not all stakeholders were brought to the table for discussion. Brook said she believes it is too soon to introduce bylaw changes of this magnitude.

Brook said that it is good that our lawyer dispelled a lot of the fears through Texas law. Brook said there are amendments that have merit discussing.

Brook said she believes the organization is struggling, the community is struggling. Brook went on to site various questions she suggests the current officers ask themselves. These questions are in the presentation deck Brook Fossey created. Brook read through all the questions in her slide and cried.

John thanked Brook for the presentation. John asked Brook to please send slides of the presentation to include in the meeting minutes. John asked if anyone present had any questions for Brook or would like to have clarified.

Charlie Hilliard asked how many members in DFWWW prior to COVID and said she was not aware that we had lost an officer and asked to clarify who.

Brook responded that DFWWW was at 200 members pre COVID.

Rosemary agreed that membership ran to about 200 members.

John said no officers left. He said Alex resigned but came back to the organization.

Leslie acknowledged she got close to resigning but did not.

Sarah Terentiv raises her hand and is called to speak. Sarah asks Brook why during her presidency they did not enact a board of directors.

Brook said she believes they wanted her to be on the board. She said during that time she sold her book. Brook said she takes full responsibility for not implementing the board. Brook wants everyone to know she is not accusing anyone of not implementing a board just that it has not been done.

David Jones said to Brook that all binders have not been lost.

Rosemary said she has hers also.

Some members present (all speaking at once) stated having their binders as well.

John said that during the business meeting where Samantha Jorden presented the question was asked as to why don’t we just call these amendments back and take them of the table. John said there seems to be a lot of support to calling back the amendments, but Steve says they can’t be called back.

Sarah Terentiev asks if Steve was invited to speak at the meeting since the opposing view, Brook, presented.

John said this officer’s meeting was to educate and inform the officers of how these bylaws came to be presented. John said anyone can speak.

Sarah asked if Steve knew he had an option to present at the officer’s meeting.

John said no.

Sarah then stated she believed it was unethical to discuss the topic of the bylaws without the perspective of the other side. Sarah said the opposing side had an opportunity to present for 20 minutes. Sarah said it was her understanding that Steve would be presenting on Wednesday’s meeting and asked why he had not been asked to speak at today’s officer’s meeting.

Rosemary stated she was on the bylaws committee too and was present at this officer’s meeting as another perspective.

Sarah said she did not believe it was ethical to discuss without Steve having the knowledge that he could present for 20 minutes and said she did not think it was ethical for us to discuss this topic without Steve present. Sarah said is presenting this to the ethics committee.

John asked Sarah’s intention was to silence the officers from talking about the amendments.

Sarah asked if it was alright if it was the other way around.

It was acknowledged that it is important for the officers to hear the information regarding the background of the amendments from a person that has that institutional knowledge.

Brook said she did not speak to any of the amendments and spoke only of their history.

Sarah asked Leslie to please go over what the process will be on Wednesday.

Leslie said the process was going to be one person speaking on the 2018 amendments, one person speaking to the proposed amendments, and then opening the floor to the members to speak. Leslie stated that recently she found out that Brook did not want to be the speaker for the 2018 amendments. Leslie asked if anyone in tonight’s meeting would like to speak on behalf of the 2018 amendments in order to not present just one side.

Sarah stated there are two perspectives and she does not agree with having just one side present for 20 minutes in tonight’s meeting.

Leslie stated that, the way she sees it, is that Brook spoke on how the bylaws happened which was something she felt we did not have and is important to understand. Leslie stated she did not believe they Brook was speaking to the actual merit of the amendments. Leslie said the goal of having Brook speak tonight is to understand the process that brought about the 2018 amendments to see how we want to do this (referring to the new bylaw amendment vote) in order to have a healthy organization. Leslie stated tonight is an officer’s meeting, which everyone is always invited to attend. Leslie feels she’s an advisor trying to impart institutional knowledge to the officers. Leslie said she understands that Sarah would have liked Steve to be invited to speak to offer a different perspective, and if Sarah believes that Steve has a different recollection of the events or a different memory of what happened then that’s a whole different thing, however, Brook is speaking only on what happened and not offering her perspective on the merits of the proposed amendments. Leslie posed the question to Sarah: Is it that these meetings didn’t happen? That these things were not discussed?

Sarah said that you have a history of something like that and then be offered a list of questions that should be discussed. Sarah stated questions like: should we be discussing these things? Should we this or should we that, after the history is presented and does not understand why you would not have the other side to discuss unless you don’t want to hear about it. Sarah asked why wouldn’t you want to know the other side of that history if you knew 24 hours in advance that the history was going to be discussed. Sarah does not understand that and does not believe it is not an unreasonable thing to ask.

John said that Rosemary was part of that history.

Rosemary offered to speak on Wednesday if that would help.

Sarah said she did not think this was funny and does not think we should discount it.

John asked Sarah to please stop interrupting people.

Rosemary said she cannot speak to the entire committee because she is only one. But for one, this presentation was not for the entire voting membership, this is stuff that would have been useful to have when we started talking about why do we have this board, what are the dangers, what does this language mean. This history speaks to why we need a board and why it was put into place. Rosemary stated she has opinions on gaps that need to be closed and admits she has a spotty recollection of those years, however, she thinks at this point counting minutes is counterproductive, if we are going to talk about Wednesday we need to address something that has to do with Brook’s question. Rosemary said Steve and she talked last night. Said Samantha Jorden’s presentation was very enlightening to her and she read the Texas code and it clarified a lot of fears and showed her some places where the membership can benefit by defining procedures for the advisors on how to remove someone from cause. Rosemary said it helped her narrow her focus and what we should concentrate on. As of the last time Rosemary spoke to Steve, Steve is planning to make a motion on the amendments that are slated to be voted on. There will be a motion to take the remainder of the bylaws back to committee so that we can focus our efforts. Rosemary said if we are going to “wrangle” it should be outside of the view of membership with the stipulation that we don’t want to be secretive about it, but it will allow everyone to have their say. Rosemary said she’s hoping that in the spirit of looking at what is going to be the most beneficial to the workshop at this time and believes to look at those wide-reaching number of amendments and maybe focus our efforts better.

John reiterated that Rosemary and Steve talked and he plans to make that motion. John also said that Daryl and he talked about this for an hour a couple of weeks ago. John said we started out way apart and came together after that one-hour meeting. Daryl drafted the language of the board’s oversight. John believes that a lot of the issues can be solved by talking and coming together.

Dave said he has been out of the loop for the past few years. When he got the emails he did not have any idea of what was happening and when he saw the changes being proposed he felt they were overwhelming. He saw them as a long list of things and could not search through them. He is concerned with overwhelming people at meeting. He said if he walked in as a new member to two twenty-minute presentations he does not know if he would come back. He said he is not invested in any one side and believes that new people coming to the meeting would be turned off and not return. He asked if there was a way for those who want to be more involved to simplify the process, what are the priority bylaws that need to happen and focus on those instead of all at once and offered suggestions.

John agrees with Dave and said that at the last business meeting which was an hour long we got through 2 of the 22 amendment changes. John said we spent 10 minutes arguing if we should put them on the screen and were going to vote on them one by one. The bylaws committee since has come up with clustering them and voting on them.

Leslie, as chair of the bylaws committee, said anyone has the right to motion to group the amendments in anyway they want. Leslie acknowledges and agrees with Dave in that they are very overwhelming and admits that the March meeting did not go well. She acknowledged that as chair she did not perceive the meeting going the way it did. Leslie went to the authors of the amendments as to how they want it group and suggested groups to have 3 or 5 votes and would be spread out. This Wednesday we would have a vote on a group that no one cares about, that no one is going to argue about and then we suspend the meeting and finish in May to spread it out. Leslie said that this is always in flux because every time she thinks she has a plan figured out as to how the voting is going to go then she begins getting emails and text messages and then things change. Leslie said there are a lot of people with a lot of opinions. Leslie agrees and the bylaws committee agrees that these should not be done one by one. Leslie said this is getting divisive and causing ills in the workshop.

Sarah said, because she’s in the bylaws committee, the plan was spent the time between business meetings, approximately 5 minutes at a time, educating the membership. The presentations were not going to be 20 minutes each, they were supposed to be 5 minutes each as to not turn off members. We had a plan in place to educate the members before the next vote.

Leslie said finding out who is going to speak is difficult and we got some emails.

John adds that what we have talked about, what the committee has talked about, is you have 5 minutes for one side and 5 minutes for the other side during the regular meetings. Then during the business meetings there would be debate prior to the vote. Currently debate is limited to 18 minutes and any member can raise a motion to extend or shorten that debate time.

It was acknowledged by a member (unclear as to who spoke – male voice) that Leslie is trying to come up with a process that can facilitate the vote in an orderly way that benefits the workshop members regardless of the way the vote goes. He stated that was what he understood about Leslie’s proposed voting process.

Leslie believes a lot of the fears and confusions regarding these amendments will come out during the business meetings. Leslie also said that bylaw committee meetings are open to any member who wants to be a fly in the wall and listen in on how they are “hashed out” if they want. Leslie believes this is a much healthier way and a way to start moving forward. We are a bunch of writers and do not know how to do this contentious stuff.

Brian said we need to have a good process to get back to who we believes we are on that path.

Brook said she feels like the process that has been proposed, if works on Wednesday, can work. Brook said she did not want to speak on Wednesday because she does not believe the conversation lends itself for five minutes mano-a-mano conversation. Brook also believes the officers needed to understand the history. She is now a member and does not believe it is fair to put a member in the position to solve the problem. Brook said she does see merit in some of the changes. Brook said it is really nuanced and does not lend itself well to Roberts Rules. Brook said she will not even come on Wednesday because she wants to come to the following week as she said it is too hard to watch this and trusts the officers to do what is right for the organization and trusts the organization to do what needs to be done without her.

Charlie requested another officer’s meeting this month.

John agreed with Charlie on another meeting and moves on to other topics. John said it looks like Steve will make a motion to bring the bylaws back to committee. John believes that if that happens and the bylaws go back to committee we won’t fix things from 5 to 7 and the 3 years, but in the end it doesn’t matter as long as the process strengthens and makes the workshop better. John moves to discuss the emails he is receiving. John said he got an email (which all at meeting have seen) and is concerned with where the author was getting their information from and what was left out. John acknowledged that part of that could be due to his not communicating to the workshop on what was being done. John is concerned about the comments of this person who wrote the email and sited concerns in regard to Samantha being misconstrued and being called “the lawyer girl” which to John was offensive. John did say that the author of the email did apologize. John acknowledged that he had part due to him not providing that information. John also mentioned multiple emails to Leslie which concerned him more. John said these emails were harassing and bullying the chair of the bylaws committee and feels like this is part of the breakdown of the thread of our culture as a group. John does not believe anyone wants to file charges against this individual. John said we need to be civil to each other and set them out for awareness. John said we cannot tolerate this type of behavior and asked if we run across this please stifle or bring this up to the officers.

Charlie asked how we can get to the Ethics statement. John said they are in the bylaws on the website.

John hopes that bringing bylaws back to committee can simmer emotions.

Charlie asked if we could put up the ethics statement on the screen.

John asked to drop them in the chat.

Leslie said it is important that we are transparent and shared the emails on screen with blocked name. Leslie noted that this email was sent to her treasurer’s email address and some of the authors and felt this email was a public “dressing down”. Leslie went on to discuss the points the author of the email stated as true and brought up the meeting minutes to show said statements were not true per the minutes of the meeting. Please refer to the attached email copies as well as the meeting minutes.

John wants to point out that in the email the author said, “it was taken awry”.

Leslie said the intention of her going through the email in this meeting is to ask if this is the impression others have of the job she has done so far. Leslie said she likes to be upfront with people and asks the same. If anyone is in disagreement with her she would like to have it brough up directly to her. Leslie said, if anyone remembers the Zimmerman incident, she likes to sit across from someone and tell them exactly what she thinks and wants the same. Leslie continues to discuss points in the email and refers back to the meeting minutes.

Let the record show that Leslie acknowledged Paola for her incredibly detailed minutes and said, “you are getting a fruit basket.”

Leslie recapped the statements made by the author in the email that Leslie proved (through the minutes were false) and stated that this individual is an expert in Roberts Rules and knows how to make a motion to extend debate and chose not to do so. Leslie also stated that Samantha Jorden comes to us as a recommendation from Frank Snyder and mentioned her credentials that go to her credibility and professional ability.

Leslie acknowledged that she tried to do the right thing and asks that if any officer or any member sees it that she was trying to engineer the vote as the author of the email states she was, to please bring it up to her and lets have an open discussion.

John calls Sarah to speak.

Sarah wants it to be known that out of all the people involved in these discussions, Leslie has been the most unbiased and calmest person. Sarah said it makes no sense for that email to go to Leslie. Sarah said she told her at the Thai restaurant that she was not going to let her “fall on the sword” as it was all of their mistake. Sarah said we all made mistakes. Sarah went on to say that we all have made mistakes and we are trying to fix them. Sarah went on to state there are a lot of heated emotions and Leslie has never been one of them. Sarah said she, herself, is for the amendments and said she does not know where Leslie’s opinion on them as Leslie does not share her views on them. Sarah wants to get this out for the record.

John said he knows a lot of people have their hands up. John said he was invited to a lot of the bylaw meetings along with Sarah and Leslie and said Leslie was always concerned about the fairness of how they would be presented.

Dave said the way he looks at it is that this is a volunteer committee, and no one is getting paid to do this. Dave said that having worked in multiple non-profits before going into teaching said that mistakes are made on Roberts Rules and insulting someone on those mistakes is not valid here. He went on to say that he has experience with people who “want to throw around Roberts Rules” and find every option to joust to fight someone you have to wonder what the goal behind that is. Dave questions the motivations behind the email to Leslie. Dave said perhaps mistakes were made but no one’s life was in danger, no cats were stuck in a tree, and we can arrange things and move on without the need to insult anyone.

Lauren stated she is not on camera because her daughter gave her a stomach bug. Lauren said she thinks what Dave said is fine, but went on to say that members of the ethics committee have not had an opportunity to discuss these emails and should not weigh in at this time. Lauren acknowledges that nothing has been brought or files with the ethics committee at this point in regard to the emails to Leslie, but feels members of the ethics committee should refrain from weighing in. Lauren advices members of ethics committee sit back and listen for the time being. Lauren said she will be sending out an email to the members of the ethics committee to set time to meet and discuss.

Brian said he thinks both examples show how off track this whole thing has gone and agrees with Rosemary and what she’s doing. Brian said that the officers and committees need to be protective of each other and come together as a unit. This is a volunteer organization, and we can disagree within each other, but should not disagree with letting an officer be treated disrespectfully. Brian said it is unacceptable.

John agrees with Brian.

Leann said wants to add, in a “Devil’s Advocate way”, for everyone’s consideration, that she agrees with Dave’s statement that if she was coming for the first time to these meetings she would be turned off.  Leann said that it is the decision of members to educate themselves. Leann worries that we are trying to “spoon feed” the membership because we don’t trust them to educate themselves and believes we need to trust the members. Leann remembers that that was the way they did it when they did the bylaws, they announced the bylaws, where to find them, read them and make your decision. Leann stated that if officers want to have a separate “all members meeting” to discuss the changes she is for it, however, she does not believe Wednesday nights is the place to have those discussions.

John appreciates Leann’s comments and believes it is something to consider but would like to put a pin on it since he believes this won’t be a problem this Wednesday as we are voting on the easy amendments and remainder may go back to committee. John said her suggestions will be taken into consideration if and when the bylaws are presented if they do go back to committee.

Colin speaks and refers to the ethics section of the bylaws in regards to the emails that Leslie received and asks what the next action should be: should John speak to the membership at a meeting regarding the emails and how this type of behavior is not allowed and is in the bylaws. Colin asks if we should consider charges against the author of these emails to state we do take these seriously.

John said he struggled with this as well. John sent the letters and are discussing them today is so they are included in the meeting minutes, but does not believe he wants to stand up and read them to the membership. John said he is going to speak to the emails broadly and direct members to the minutes if they want to read them.

Leslie said an officer reached out to the person sending the emails and asked them to behave better but then Leslie got another letter. Leslie said she has 16 pages in a word document and is now venting to other people and spreading misinformation.

Leslie said they brought it up for awareness but not necessarily to file ethics charges. Leslie said she is expecting to get hit with ethics charges.

John said he does not think anyone faults Leslie for being upset over them and does not believe anyone agrees with the sender of the emails. John moves to discuss that at the meeting on Wednesday, at some point, will bring it up. John does not want to be seen as manipulating the vote.

Rosemary asks if we can do a vote of confidence in the chair to have it in the minutes.

John stated we are having a vote of confidence for the chair of the committee.

For the record all officers (7) voted YES to vote of confidence in chair of the committee.

John acknowledged this process has been stressful to all involved and believes we will all come out stronger when all this is done.

Other order of business:

VP of Outreach Report – none presented

VP of Programs – none presented

 

Treasurer’s Report - April Business meeting 2022

 

Date of balances: 4/4/22 

 

Frost Bank Accounts:

            Workshop account ending 7532: $95,470.74

            Conference account ending 7540: $14,326.27

CD: $10,457.59

PayPal: $5461.43

 

Total: $125,716.03 

 

Expenditures in Workshop account for March and April 1: 

Outgoing for April 1, $150

**Three security payments of $150 each, one $73+ Chase card payment 

Total incoming $100, membership

Total outgoing in March/April 1 from Workshop Account: $523.76

 

Expenditures in Con account for March and April 1:

Reimbursement to Steve Manning for past years con expenses: $1,335.46

Payment to the Hurst Conference Center: $11,115 (cleared April 1)

Total Con expenditures for March/April 1: $12,450.46

 

2021 Taxes: 

David Eversole, our accountant, is filing an extension on our taxes. He is setting up a time after April 15 to work with me one-on-one to resolve some problems in Quickbooks that have cropped up because income has not been categorized correctly and some of the information from the Frost Bank has not appeared properly in the reports. David Eversole will file our taxes for 2021 after those meetings, and the president has approved his hourly fee. I do not expect this to take more than three hours.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Conference Chair – none presented

 

 

VP of Infrastructure – none presented

 

John acknowledged the work that Leslie is doing as Treasurer plus the work she is doing on the committee and deserves to be acknowledged for her hard work.

 

John acknowledged to Charlie’s point; they did not get to discuss other topics. John knows Charlie has ideas and BJ has been doing good work out there as well as other people and asked if we want to meet in two weeks again. 

 

John will be sending a meeting invite for a couple of weeks to continue officer’s meeting.

 

John thanked everyone in attendance and closed meeting.

 

Meeting adjourned – 8:06 P.M.

3/30/22 GENERAL MEETING MINUTES

 

President: John Bartell

Vice President of Membership: Rosemary Clement

Vice President of Events and Programs: Charlie Hilliard

Treasurer: Leslie Lutz

Secretary: Paola Lastick

Vice President of Community Outreach: BJ Sloan

Vice President of Digital Media: Brian Tracey

Infrastructure:  Dylan Larkin

Conference Chair: Steve Manning

 

Officer(s) absent: Dylan Larkin

 

Meeting opening: 7:00 PM

 

 

Active members: 164

 

Attendees: 28 Online/Undetermined In-Person

 

Visitors: 2

                        Caroline (in person)

                        Marq (online)

 

New Members: 2

                                   

                        Rajiv Kalra (attended in person)

Steven Rogers (attended online)

 

Book Reviews: 0

                       

 

Rejections: 2

                       

                        Kendall Furlong

                        Paola Lastick

 

Submissions: 2

 

                        Paola Lastick

                        Shawn Rogers

           

 

Acceptances: 1

 

                        Leslie Lutz got offer for her novel

 

 

Announcements:

 

Brian – Announced we have a standing ethics committee now.

 

BJ Sloan – Attended the Granbury Writer’s Group last Monday. They are running a short story contest. Submission period for 1500 words or less ends April 30, 2022. All winning entries will be featured in a book. Email BJ Sloan if you have any questions. Announcement will be posted on website.

 

Charlie – Reminder that April 13, 2022 is poetry reading night. Please sign up via the appropriate sign-up link on website.

 

In-person Member self-published book and is donating it to the library. It is a sci-fi book.

 

John announced the presence of Samantha Jorden, attorney specializing in non-profits. Samantha joined the meeting to discuss bylaw changes in general.

 

Samantha – Introduced herself and spoke about the DFWWW bylaws in a general sense and the Texas laws regarding non-profits and how they apply to our bylaw and proposed changes. Samantha stayed in a separate Zoom room to answer individual questions from members.

 

Leslie – Announced the next meeting falls on the first Wednesday in April and will be our business meeting. We will continue to vote on the proposed amendments to the bylaws. Leslie apologized for how voting went the last business meeting. Leslie also mentioned that the two amendments that were voted on in the March business meeting passed upon reviewing how votes are to be counted. Leslie also thanked Samantha Jorden for her pro-bono work with the DFWWW.

 

Time adjourned: 7:23 PM

 

 

 

3/23/22 GENERAL MEETING MINUTES

 

President: John Bartell

Vice President of Membership: Rosemary Clement

Vice President of Events and Programs: Charlie Hilliard

Treasurer: Leslie Lutz

Secretary: Paola Lastick

Vice President of Community Outreach: BJ Sloan

Vice President of Digital Media: Brian Tracey

Infrastructure:  Dylan Larkin

Conference Chair: Steve Manning

 

Officer(s) absent: none

 

Meeting opening: 7:00 PM

 

 

Active members: 163

 

Attendees: 37

 

Visitors: 1

                        Kathy

           

 

New Members: 0

 

Book Reviews: 1

                        BJ Sloan reviewed Lolita

 

Rejections: 0

 

Submissions: 1          

                        Brian Tracy

           

 

Acceptances: 0

 

 

Announcements:

 

John Bartell – Keeping an eye on COVID numbers. So far things are looking good. If COVID numbers start to go back up we will revisit in-person meetings. We will keep everyone posted.

 

Leslie – Discussed the proposed amendments that were voted on last business meeting. After analyzing the votes and how votes are to be counted it looks like both proposed amendments voted on passed. First proposed amendment changed the name of the Board of Directors to Advisory Board. The second proposed amendment removed oversight and trust language and passed. Samantha Jordan, our pro bono attorney will be coming to the next scheduled business meeting on Monday, March 28, 2022 at 7:00 PM to explain and answer any questions members have on the proposed amendments. Any member is welcome to attend.

 

Sarah – Dana asked in the chat if April business meeting would be in person or hybrid. This is to be determined and everyone will be notified.

 

Collin – Conference dates for DFW Con will be October 8^th and 9^th. If you have any questions email [email protected]

 

Carolyn – BJ and Carolyn are working on organizing a book signing at the Haltom City Library. Six people have signed up so far. Please reach out to Carolyn if interested. Dates have not been set yet.

 

BJ Sloan – Grandbury event this summer. The event will start in June and go through September.

 

Leann Robinson – Put out an invitation to anyone interested in a writing partner. Looking to write together via Zoom so that you are not alone in a room writing. Can be in person or online.

 

Charlie – Poetry reads are held the 2^nd week of every month. The next poetry read will be April 13^th. Please sign up for the poetry room.

 

 

 

Time adjourned: 7:11 PM

 

 

 

3/28/22 SPECIAL OFFICER’S MEETING MINUTES

 

President: John Bartell

Vice President of Membership: Rosemary Clement

Vice President of Events and Programs: Charlie Hilliard

Treasurer: Leslie Lutz

Secretary: Paola Lastick

Vice President of Community Outreach: BJ Sloan

Vice President of Digital Media: Brian Tracey

Infrastructure:  Dylan Larkin

Conference Chair: Steve Manning

 

Officer(s) absent: Dylan Larkin

 

Meeting opening: 7:00 PM

 

 

Active members:

 

Attendees:

 

Purpose of the special officer’s meeting: To discuss proposed amendments to bylaws. Samantha Jorden, pro bono attorney for DFW Writer’s Workshop presenting and answering any questions from members. Special Officer’s Meeting open to members.

 

Samantha Jorden opened with a power point presentation introducing herself and her work.

 

Samantha stated the goals for the meeting to be:

• Get a bird’s eye view of DFWWW bylaws and Texas law as it applies to non-profits.
• Review portions of the bylaws as they pertain to the DFWWW.
• Answer questions/discuss any issues brought up by officers and members.

 

Brook mentioned that before DFWWW had a board the officers were the individuals that handled all the money and asked if because of this they were essentially considered trustees in the eyes of the law. Samantha response was that officers, if handling money, are going to be held to the same standards of duty of care as it pertains to the money. The Board in this instance still had a responsibility to make sure that the money was being handled properly.

 

John asked if holding in trust meant the same thing as opening up a trust since the bylaws state moneys to be held in trust. Samantha did not believe, from all the research she has done regarding holding in trust and opening a trust, that a trust needs to be opened. The “holding in trust” refers to the responsibility and care in which the monies are being handled.

Sarah T objected to John’s questions arguing that that specific question of trust had already been voted on and discussed.

 

John asked a clarifying question regarding the officer’s responsibility for the funds as opposed to the Board of Directors. Samantha asked what the responsibilities were for the board regarding the workshop’s money. John did not know and thought this is a good questions to discuss further. Brook stated that as the bylaws are originally written, as she understands them, the Board is not allowed to cut checks or receive money since it has to go through the Treasurer which is an officer. Samantha recommends that the officers and the board find out exactly what the bylaws state as to how the money is to be handled as well as come up with wording that is clear and offers protection to officers, the Board, and members and create transparency.

 

Sarah T objected to Brian asking questions because his side already had a turn. John interrupted and reiterated that this meeting tonight was not to present sides or object to member questions, it was to ask Samantha clarifying questions to help them understand how the bylaw changes will impact the workshop. Sarah stated that she would like to move on to other questions as the vote passed regarding the trust language. Brook stated she would like to bring up a motion to reconsider that particular vote. Sarah T left the call. Frank stated that in his opinion the trust language created confusion and offered ways to make the language clearer.

 

Brian asked Samantha, as one of the people who put forth the proposed amendment language, if she thought there were any mistakes or created liability exposure. To which Samantha responded that she did not find anything that would be an issue.

 

Rosemary had a question as to who was then considered the Board, the officers running the day to day activities or the Board of Advisors that have the oversight. Samantha responded that the Board will always be the Board offering managerial oversight and has input as to how the money is being used.  

 

Brook wanted to understand that the bylaws are they are written are not legally problematic, the amendments as they are, are not legally problematic, and what all this comes down to is how the organization wants to govern themselves. Samantha agreed with this statement. Brook stated that she was unclear as to the responsibilities of the Board when it came to the money and Samantha suggested the workshop meet with a financial tax attorney that can help clarify the Board’s responsibilities regarding the money the workshop has. Katie wanted clarification in relation to Texas law. Katie asked if regardless of what the bylaws say the Board has managerial oversight as to the money. Samantha clarified that Texas law states the Board’s responsibility and stated that you can tweak what you want the Board to do but you can’t take away that managerial oversight granted by Texas law. Frank spoke about the importance of transparency going forward since trust is an issue. Brian wanted clarification that Texas law defines the Board, the bylaws restrict or expand how that Board will operate, and if there are any gray areas they will default to Texas law. Samantha agreed.  

 

Daryl asked Samantha a hypothetical question regarding how the money is spent and who ultimately has authority if an expenditure is unpopular with the membership, but the Board wants to proceed with it. Samantha stated that membership should be able to challenge any expenditures based on the fiduciary responsibilities the Board is held to.

 

Charlie asked if there was something in the bylaws that stated the Board had to share how the money was being spent. Rosemary stated that the budget is created by the officers and there are limits to how much money is spent and presented to members. Brook stated that if the Board is strategic they can make recommendations to the officers who then put it in the budget and can approve. John stated that that was his understanding also.

Brian and Daryl discussed how Board members are elected and how they can be fired and how the Board members are placed on the board at the workshop. Brook stated how the members of the Board are elected according to the workshop bylaws. Daryl brought up the fact that they are not removable by the workshop. Brook agreed that the Board members are removable by the board. Frank shared his experience on how board members at corporations are elected and their terms to safeguard against takeovers.

 

John asked a questions about Sec A, the prior language, the new language in the proposed amendment, and why he thought it was being brought to a vote. Samantha stated her points on what day-to-day operations the officers have and what the board’s managerial duties may entail. Rosemary stated her view of why the amendment was brought forth and what she saw as the day-to-day operations. Samantha stated her views of what the board’s responsibility is in regards to the money, which is to have oversight to make sure things aren’t going crazy and have oversight on the creation and approval of the budget by the officers. Brook asked a clarifying question as to Samantha’s statement being for the original language or the new language. Rosemary stated that, in her view, what would have more impact is procedure and not necessarily the language of the amendment. Samantha agreed with Rosemary in that the place to detail responsibilities is in the procedures.

 

John thanked Samantha for making time to meet with us and answer member’s questions as this is something very important for us to understand.

 

Daryl discussed various aspects of why we need an attorney to protect us. Daryl brought up the DFW Conference and the liabilities we may be exposed to and proposed we have insurance to cover the conference activities. Leslie stated that we already have that insurance and sighted the name, the premium, and the basics of what it covers.

 

Frank mentioned how he came to recommend Samantha and brought up other ways she can help members of the workshop. Frank also stated that the money from the workshop should be managed by professionals. John stated we should discuss that particular aspect of money management at a separate meeting or once we have settled the issues with the bylaws.

 

Samantha thanked everyone for having her at the meeting and looks forward to being at the Wednesday meeting to answer any questions that may come up from other members.

 

Leslie discussed how the process to vote on the proposed amendments was arrived at and discussed some of the shortcomings at the last business meeting and stated the officers welcome suggestions to ensure members feel they are being heard as we look to continue voting on the rest of the proposed amendments and discussed education plans to ensure those against and in favor of amendments have time to share their views and express those views. Leslie discussed how voting will be handled going forward based on how voting went last business meeting. Lauren expressed concern that if we open discussion/education to anyone that wants to speak we may end up with a lot of people talking for a long time. John stated we would still have time limits. Lauren suggested perhaps we can a certain number of spots for speakers to sign up ahead of time. Frank offered ideas on how to ensure all sides are heard and we can revisit if it does not give people enough time or information. Brook asked if it was too late to pull back the proposed amendments and bring together all the stakeholders to rally behind language they can all agree on as they had done in 2018 when they voted on amendment changes. John offered his experience talking with Daryl a couple of weeks before and how they came together on an issue. However, now the bylaw changes have gone through the committee and at this point can’t be pulled back. Brook brought up the reasons why changes to the bylaws come up and the issues that brought the changes in 2018 and the changes, perceived or otherwise, how they are coming up now. Charlie offered the idea of opening a separate read room for anyone that wants to discuss bylaw changes every week. Brook acknowledges she’s a proponent of building consensus and believes we can get to where we need to get together. Brook said she is prepared to defend the 2018 changes if she needs to because it had purpose and it had reason. John raised concerns with having just break out rooms because people who did not participate in those breakout rooms may feel left out. Katie brought up the fact that she believes we need to build consensus before we go to the membership again because the opposing views is what is causing the issues and is concerned we may turn people off from the workshop. Leslie agrees that we may lose members because it so contentious, but at the same time feels that if the members want to slug through the changes she can’t prevent that. Rosemary agreed and addressed Katie’s point and the next few amendments up for voting are things most of us can get behind which will create a little breathing room. Steve proposed rolling back all amendments to the 2016 version of the bylaws and starting from that point and discussed why. Brook doesn’t disagree with Steve but believes we may be too far along the process and brought up the fact that no one reached out to her about the 2018 changes as well as acknowledged that the way the changes were voted on were very limiting because they didn’t give space to defend reasons why previous changes were made. Charlie brought up the point that no one knows how changes to the bylaws are going to look until they are enacted, and we see how people carry them out. An unidentifiable member spoke in agreement with Charlie’s point and discussed the nomination and the seating of the board and the issues we had from that.

 

John stated we need to move forward as we are with Leslie’s education outline. John likes the idea of having two people speak on opposing views. Likes meeting in person to talk about bylaws and understands not everyone is meeting in person and likes the idea of a separate breakout room for members to discuss the bylaws.

Leslie outlined how voting will go at next business meeting to ensure everyone has their voice heard. Various members present at meeting raised concerns and asked clarifying questions which Leslie and John answered. Brian asked why seating the board was delayed. John suggested that he look at the minutes from that meeting as the reasons will be there. Brook also expressed her potential conflict of interest as she is on the board. Leslie asked if there are any suggestions for the education please email her at [email protected]           

 

John thanked everyone for attending the special meeting with Samantha. John thanked Leslie for all the work she is putting in with the workshop.

3/16/2022 GENERAL MEETING MINUTES

 

President: John Bartell

Vice President of Membership: Rosemary Clement

Vice President of Events and Programs: Charlie Hilliard

Treasurer: Leslie Lutz

Secretary: Paola Lastick

Vice President of Community Outreach: BJ Sloan

Vice President of Digital Media: Brian Tracey

Infrastructure:  Dylan Larkin

Conference Chair: Steve Manning

 

Officer(s) absent:

Paola Lastick- Secretary ☹

 

Meeting opening: 7:05 pm Simmons Center and Zoom also

 

 

Active members:

 

Attendees: 38 total

 

Visitors: none

           

 

New Members: none

 

Book Reviews: JB Sanders Thunder Road by Colin Holmes & Alex Martinez Constance Verde Destroys the Universe    Shawn Rodgers, Constance Verde Destroys The Universe  Kindle Furlong, Thunder Road by Colin Holmes   Stacy Kuntz Romancing the Doctor and Constance Verde Destroys the Universe

 

Rejections: John Bartel – 2 poems rejected    Carolyn Williamson- - a novel rejection

 

Submissions: Kendal Submitted Short Story

 

Acceptances: Carolyn Williamson – Searching for Justice – gally acceptance

 

 

Announcements: New Conference Chair- Colin Holmes

 

 

 

 

 

Time adjourned:  7:30 pm

Total attendance: 16 live + zoom 22

 

 

3/9/2022 GENERAL MEETING MINUTES

 

President: John Bartell

Vice President of Membership: Rosemary Clement

Vice President of Events and Programs: Charlie Hilliard

Treasurer: Leslie Lutz

Secretary: Paola Lastick

Vice President of Community Outreach: BJ Sloan

Vice President of Digital Media: Brian Tracey

Infrastructure:  Dylan Larkin

Conference Chair: Steve Manning

 

Officer(s) absent: none

 

Meeting opening: - 7:03 p.m.

 

President John Bartell opens meeting with poem called Sometimes.

 

Active members: 165

 

Attendees: 39

 

Visitors: 0

           

 

New Members: 0

 

Book Reviews: 0

 

Rejections: 1

• JB Sanders received a rejection for his short story Sandhills of Chihuahua. They will be holding this submission for future reading period.

 

Submissions: 0

 

Acceptances: 1

 

1. JB submitted Beyond the Desert of Time to a story anthology. Has made it through the first round of readings. Will know later if accepted for publication.

 

 

Announcements:

 

 

John Bartell –

 

Looks like we have enough people to set up next week for hybrid meeting. There may be some kinks to work out. Please don’t get frustrated.

 

We will not require masks. John does prefer people be vaccinated, but there will be no verification of vaccines. If you prefer to wear a mask, do. If you feel sick whether it’s COVID or Flu, please stay home.

 

John addressed the issues of last meeting and the breakdown we had. Discussed a couple of reasons as to why the voting fell apart. One reason was that we did a poor job educating the members of what the proposed amendments meant. Another reason it fell apart is we tried pushing the vote too soon.

 

The committee has met and has a couple of ideas to make the vote at the next business meeting go smoother. The officers will meet with our pro-bono lawyer Samantha Shorter on Monday, 3/22/2022. The meeting is open to any member who wants to attend. The following Wednesday, Samantha will be coming to the meeting and will be answering questions to any member. A separate room will be designated for questions with Samantha. This is in hopes that everyone feels they are part of the discussion and understand what they are voting on.

 

Sarah Terentiev apologizes to the members for her part in contributing to the confrontational nature of the business meeting last week.

 

John Bartell announces Steve Manning and other members of the conference committee have stepped down (Letter of resignation attached). Thank you for your service. We wish them well. We will still have the conference. More will be forthcoming.

 

Time adjourned: 7:28 p.m.

Total attendance: 39

 

 

3/2/22 DFW Writer’s Workshop

Business Meeting Minutes

 

President: John Bartell

Vice President of Membership: Rosemary Clement

Vice President of Events and Programs:  Charlie Hilliard

Treasurer: Leslie Lutz

Secretary: Paola Lastick

Vice President of Community Outreach: BJ Sloan

Vice President of Digital Media: Vacant

Infrastructure:  Dylan Larkin

Conference Chair: Steve Manning

 

 

Officer(s) absent:  None

 

Members attending: 55 total/54 members

 

Time Meeting called to Order:  7:00 P.M.

 

 

John – Welcome to DFW Writer’s Workshop. Today is the first Wednesday of the month and it is the business meeting. Today we are here to vote on the proposed bylaw amendments. Things to go through: internet is bad and may go down. Rosemary will take over if my internet goes down.

 

First thing is COVID. COVID numbers are down. CDC has changed their mask rule. We have decided tentatively to come back on March 16, 2022, hybrid. We will send out emails and discuss next week. We will have more details then.

 

Secondly, typically one of the highlights of the business meetings are the officer’s reports. We are going to forego those today to give us more time to talk about the bylaws. If you want to see the officer’s reports please go to the DFWWW website to read the minutes from the officer’s meetings.

 

Thirdly, we are going to have a vote before the bylaw vote because there is an officer vacancy. The position of VP of Social Media is vacant. Stacey Kuhnz had been in that position, but she needed to step down. Stacey is a valuable member that worked as an officer various times. The bylaws state that the President can nominate a member and call for vote at a business meeting. I will nominate Brian Tracey. Brian has been a member for a number of years and has served as officer in the past. Before ask for motion, ask if anyone wants to debate this, which is your right, we will then post pone.

 

Can I have a motion for Brian Tracy to fill the vacancy.

 

Motion passed. Vote taken. The I’s have it. Brian Tracy new VP of Social Media.

 

Now we are going to vote on Bylaws. What are we? We are more than a group of people killing time on a Wednesday night. We are a community of writers helping writers and we have been doing this since 1977. We do a lot of things, we do a conference, we do a lot, but the backbone of our group is doing what we are doing now, meeting on Wednesday nights and we present our art to each other for critique. And that is a very brave thing to do. We do it because we feel safe. It is this type of environment people have grown to love and want to contribute to it and make it better. It is in this spirit that these bylaw proposals were made. These are extensive changes and it took an extensive amount of time. The people that did these did them in the spirit of making the workshop better. But we also have to remember that these proposed changes change bylaws that were generated about three or four years ago and the people who did those also have the love for the workshop and have the workshop succeed. Please keep that in mind. Also to keep in mind the bylaws committee, Sarah, Leslie, and JB have put in a lot of work to make sure that these bylaws are presented in an efficient and fair manner. What I ask of everyone, is be present, pay attention, be respectful to each other. People with opposite views.

 

Leslie (Chair of Bylaws Committee) – The role of the bylaws committee is to help facilitate if someone wants to make a bylaw change. Our job is not to decide whether we like a proposed change or not. Our job is to ensure that the bylaw changes actually fit within the scope of the workshop and articles. We have proposed amendments tonight. I will run through how the voting will go tonight.

 

You will hear a series of motions. Chair does not make the motions. You will here these series of motions that if they pass will help us organize our meeting. This is your choice, this is your meeting. You get to decide.

 

First motion you will hear today is to limit debate to 3 minutes per speaker. If the motion must pass with 2/3 majority to pass. If it does not pass it will revert to Roberts Rules of 10 minutes per speaker. You will also hear a motion to divide the question. A lot of members have expressed the desire to vote on separate parts of the amendments as opposed to one large block of changes. This will also be voted on. Then you will also hear a motion to stop debate at 8:00 PM and go to our read rooms. We are here to do what we love and that’s reading our awesome stories.

 

When you speak on a proposed amendment I ask that you restate the amendment, tell us your opinion, then tell us how to vote. This last piece, telling us how to vote, really helps organize things. Do you want us to reject or accept it. You may also hear Pont of Order. Point of Order is the only time you can interrupt somebody, it is not meant to be personal. If you hear someone break a rule you will call point of order and the chair will recognize you and ask what your point of order is for. If someone were talking about advisory/board of directors and then someone starts talking to talk about your cat, you can call Point of Order to keep them on track. Not personal, just to keep things organized and ask for clarifying questions.

 

Sarah Terentive – would like to be recognized.

 

Leslie – The chair recognized Sarah Ternetive.

Sarah Terentive – I move that we limit debate to 3 minutes per speaker.

 

John – Seconds the motion to limit debate to 3 minutes per speakers.

 

40 yes votes to limit debate to 3 minutes per speaker. Motion passes.

 

Sarah Terentive – I would like to be recognized.

 

Leslie – Chair recognizes Sarah Terentive.

 

Sarah Terentive – I move to limit debate to 18 minutes per topic which allows for 6 speakers.

 

Leslie – Is there a second.

 

John – Second.

 

Leslie – Please vote on limiting debate to 18 minutes per topic.

 

41 yes votes to limit 18 minutes per topic/4 against. Motion passes.

 

Sarah Terentive – I would like to be recognized.

 

Leslie – Sarah you are recognized.

 

Sarah Terentive – I move that we divide the question by article and section.

 

Leslie – It has been moved to divide the question by article and section.

 

John – I second.

 

Leslie – Please vote on dividing the question by article and section.

 

47 yes/2 no – Motion passes.

 

Sarah Terentive – I move to suspend the rules and call for JB Sanders to preside as officer for this portion of the meeting.

 

Leslie – It has been moved to suspend the rules and JB Sanders preside as officer for this portion of meeting.

 

Motion has been seconded and voted on and has passed unanimously.

 

JB Sanders – Thank you very much. The reason I have been asked is because of my extensive experience with Roberts Rules.

 

Steve Manning – calls Point of Order for proposed amendments be read in order they were originally presented. Also move for proposed amendments be displayed on screen.

 

41 in favor/3 against. Motion passes. Proposed amendments will be read in order.

 

Steve Manning – will like to amend the motion to also include to display the original wording and share the comments as well.

 

Sarah T – is against that change to the amendment. The spreadsheet with the comments has been up for months and anyone can go and look up those comments. Also, the members that made those comments are present.

 

John – We will display the amendments without the comments.

 

Rosemary – Proposes amendment for someone other than the secretary to read the amendments.

 

John – Volunteers to read the amendments.

 

42 vote for/2 against – Motion passes to display original language in proposed amendments.

 

John reads the first proposed amendment.  Change name from Board of Directors to Advisory Council.

 

JB Sanders – Floor is open to debate.

 

Brook Fossey – Recognized to speak. I am a decade long member. I was an officer for 8 years and a President for 2 years.

 

Sarah T – Point of order. We are debating the wording not the history.

 

Brook Fossey – We are in between needing a Board of Governors who can fire the president, we are not that kind of organization, and a needing an Advisory Council, where our President can call when they need advise or clarification on something. We are in need of something in between. Personally what we call it is irrelevant. The upcoming amendment is more important.

 

JB Sanders – Is there another debate.

 

Rosemary – The officers use to be called the Board of Directors. The name is not meant to limit anything. It is just for clarification.

 

Daryl – Directors sound awful officious and powerful. Advisors works for us fine. We don’t need to call anyone directors.

 

Steve – I believe it is very important what we call this group. The group was originally billed as an advisory group to us. We have written this to match what was described. We are removing ambiguity and being specific on what this group will do.

JB Sanders - Debate is closed. Vote.

 

Frank Snyder – Is vote on closing debate or on amendment?

 

JB Sanders – We have the motion to call the question.

 

44 yes /1 no to vote to close debate and call the question.

 

JB Sanders – Vote on proposed amendment.

 

38 yes/6 no on proposed amendment to change name from Board of Directors to Advisory Council. Motion carries.

 

John reads next proposed amendment – Sec A. Purpose of Duty for the Advisory Council. (See bylaw change spreadsheet).

 

Brook Fossey – This is in addition to the comments written on the spreadsheet, but I wanted to go through the timeline that brought on this particular amendment. Having some long-winded 4 hour meetings in 2016 to get our finances in line with our bylaws finally. After May 2016 in July, it was brought to the organization that they wanted to chase some grants for the conference. The general conference because the structure of organization wouldn’t pass an audit. We value trusts, auditors probably don’t. After hours of meetings we introduced draft bylaw language changes.

 

Sarah T – Point of order called. What does this history have to do with the actual wording in front of us now.

 

Brook – I think it’s important to know why we moved to a Board of Advisors instead of an Advisory Group. We were trying to get the controls necessary so that we could pass an audit for when ever we wanted to chase grants.

 

JB Sanders – Interrupts Brook. Point of order by Sarah supported. We are here to vote up or down to vote. We are not here to discuss history.

 

Brook – our organization is volunteers and are not always able to maintain compliance with our bylaws. We are actually out of compliance with our bylaws right now. We really do need some oversight from a group of legacy members to give our organization some structure. We have over $100k in bank and we need control.

 

Daryl – Point of order called. We already voted what we call these people. This discussion here is irrelevant.

 

Sarah – Point of order called. We are not voting on the name change, we are voting on the word oversight. It is a significant change.

 

JB Sanders – Point of order upheld. Any other debate.

Steve Manning – With the current wording the small board of five people have broad authority over the workshop with loose wording on responsibility and very long terms in office and a huge climb to remove any one. That is a dangerous combination. Our proposed amendment brings the board into alignment with what we were sold.

 

JB Sanders addresses first point of order.

 

Steve Manning – I would like to apologize in my small part in creating this situation. In not recognizing the loopholes in the language. For not being more vocal about the concerns I had at that time. I hope we can correct it today and keep the members front and center.

 

Colling Holmes – I’m going to disagree with Steve. Without the existing amendment the advisory council has not real reason to exist. It offers nothing that another member cannot do. Any member can propose an amendment, a bylaw changes. Advisors are to have long term strategic and financial standing of the workshop.

 

Sarah T – I agree should be long term strategic planning. The issue I have is it will hold the assets in trust. Hold the property in trust and they will be the trustees having control of finances with five people that get voted every 5 years, we don’t nominate them, they pick their replacements. Also, oversight is not a defined legal language. It is too broad.

 

Brook – Point of order. Why can she speak of her personhood, and I wasn’t.

 

Sarah T – because it goes to our workshop protection. No control of the money, but yes strategic ideas brought to officers.

 

Brian – I agree with Sarah. Take out language on trust.

 

Sarah T – Point of Order. You can’t propose the language. You either vote yes or no on current.

 

Brian – All this comes down to is oversight. Eliminating board of directors with power of oversight, and adding Advisors.

 

Sarah T – Calls point of order. Address what is in the proposed changes or address the original.

 

JB Sanders approves Sarah’s point of order.

 

Brian – I agree with board of directors. I oppose watered down language of Advisory Council because we have been in violation of our bylaws for so long in several areas.

 

Sarah T – Calls Point of Order. Order supported.

 

Brian – we are currently in violation of our bylaws in several areas. If we had a board of directors with oversight capabilities that could have been avoided. We should reject this.

 

Daryl – Oversight means absolutely nothing. As for the trust, we don’t need it.

Allan – I opposed the proposed change. But respect the idea of oversight. Thank you.

 

Katie Bernet – Oppose. So for me the most important thing my hope for this board can act as a safety net in case an officer makes a change to the workshop that is detrimental to the way we all love and enjoy our workshop that we have a group of people with the power and ability to say not and keep us on track.

 

Sarah – Clarification. The bylaws already have provisions for a committee to keep those things from happening.

 

John – Point of order. That’s debating her.

 

Rosemary – The officers who are elected once a year, if the officer not fulfilling their duty or is off rails they can be voted out in a year or less. I feel like for the ultimate power needs to be with annually elected officers.

 

Frank Snyder – Strongly in favor of oversight. Supports this amendments.

 

John – Oppose this proposed amendment. The directors need to be watched because sometimes they want to buy buildings we can’t afford. As for the money, the Bylaws describe who has the authority to write checks. No one on the board can spend the money. I’m not concerned about that.

 

Don Eggspuhler – I vote in favor of this amendment. It removes a lot of the ambiguity that both the lawyers in our group have said is opening us for a lot of problems down the road. I propose to take a vote on this amendment right now.

 

Vote to close debate passes.

 

33 in favor/10 against proposed amendment. Vote fails. 33 doesn’t carry. Has to be 2/3 of the attending members to vote for.

 

Vote to adjourn meeting to be continued in our April business meeting passed.

 

Meeting adjourned: 8:28 PM.

 

Leslie recognized as the chair. General Meeting Starts:

 

General Meeting

 

 

Visitors: 1

 

1. Elizabeth Clark (found us on Google), Memoir and Fantasy. Has two manuscripts (one of each) and needs critiques to hone them.

           

 

New Members: 1

 

1. Ozzy, writes fantasy, supernatural, still trying to figure out her writing.

 

Book Reviews: 1

 

1. Jim Barrow reviewed Collin Holmes Thunder Road. Jim’s wife reviewed Thunder Road also.

 

Rejections: 4

• JB received a rejection for a short story, but then was told they will hold it and reconsider at next reading period.
• Marilyn Mathis received a rejection from The Boiler for a short story
• Grant Gargagliano applied to judge for the DFW Young Poets contest and has not received a response. Assumes no.
• John Bartell – Chapbook rejection.

 

Submissions: 5

 

1. Charlie submitted to 2 agents. Was scared and waited five months to submit to the 2 agents. Decided to let them reject her instead of rejecting herself.
2. John Bartell – Submitted some poems over the weekend.
3. Paola Lastick submitted Dana Swift interview to MFA’s lit magazine and got accepted.
4. Carolyn – sent proposal for giving a talk at writer’s conference in July.
5. Member – submitted short story to a podcast.

 

 

Acceptances: 2

1. Paola Lastick’s interview of Dana Swift accepted.

 

 

Announcements:

 

Charlie – Reminder next week is poetry room week.

 

 

 

 

Time adjourned: 9:00 PM

Total attendance: 53

 

1/12/22 Business Meeting Minutes

 

President: LeAnn Robinson

Vice President of Membership: Rosemary Clement

Vice President of Events and Programs:  John Bartell

Treasurer: Leslie Lutz

Secretary: Maureen Davis

Vice President of Community Outreach: BJ Sloan

Vice President of Digital Media: Stacey Kuhnz

Infrastructure:  Mike Gelhausen

Conference Chair: Steve Manning

 

 

Officer(s) absent: 

 

Members attending: LeAnn Robinson, Leslie Lutz, Mike Gelhausen, John Bartell, Maureen Davis, BJ Sloan, Steve Manning, Rosemary Clement,

 

Time Meeting called to Order: 7:03

 

Business: LeAnn let people know that normally the business meeting is done on the first Wednesday of the month but January is the exception when it is on the second Wednesday

 

• Financial Report:
• Workshop account balance: $95,045.45
• Conference account balance: $27,015.62
• CD: $10,457.59
• PayPal account: $6,640.66
• Total: $139,159.32
• We had $792 of expenses in December (P.O. Box, credit card, a random reimbursement from July).

 

• Membership:
  • We have 158 members
• Events: Nothing to report

 

• Community Outreach Report:

 

• Social Media: Nothing to report

 

• 2022 Conference: Nothing to report

 

• Infrastructure:

 

 

 

Old Business: Covid numbers still too high to meet in person, the president will let you know when it looks like that will change

 

New Business: Leslie Lutz chair of the bylaws committee has the floor explaining that the organization is a nonprofit ruled by a set of bylaws that we (the organization) formed ourselves, the bylaws responsibility is if a member submits an amendment to the bylaws , we (the bylaw committee) look at those amendments to insure they are consistent with the purposes of the workshop according to Article 11 of the bylaws. Speaking about the general purpose of the workshop—to establish cooperative relationships with writers, help educate in the craft, etc. If an amendment was deemed inconsistent with the purposes of the workshop ie. Someone proposes that you only can read mystery novels at workshop, therefore it would not be presented to the workshop for a review for a propsed amendment.

 

John Bartell, Leslie, and Sarah Terentiev went over some proposed amendments that were submitted to the committee to make sure they were consistent with Article 11 and deemed they were in fact consistent for the workshops review, they are amendments to address the relationship between the board of directors and the officers of membership,

this is how you (members of workshop) can express your opinions about them, tonight a brief description and then get suggested/proposed amendments by email, by our bylaws you (the workshop) have to have at least 30 days notice before we vote, which in this case you will have longer than 30 days to take a look, which is why Leslie discourages anyone to try and start a debate tonight without first reading it. In February, according to Robert’s Rules of Order, there will be a discussion of these bylaws, but before then you (members) can send comments or questions to Leslie Lutz

[email protected]g —Leslie asking John Bartell to place contact into the chat

- where it will be posted on a Google sheet that Sarah Terentiev came up with that everyone can follow along with the conversation to see what peoples thoughts are

-February meeting we will talk about it, but since that will not yet be 30 days, the vote will be in March where discussion and debate where people can have their views can be read into the minutes

-Turning over to Steve Manning shortly

-Leslie expressed the people who created the bylaws two-and-a-half years ago when the board of directors were created, and the people who are creating these amendments, all love this organization and want it to do well

 

Steve Manning spoke about the proposed amendment being considered—in 2018, the workshop approved the new bylaws that set up the creation of a board of directors, what we’d (members) been calling the board before that was changed to the officers: president, vice president and so on. The new board of directors was described as a group that would advise the officers on strategy, and maintain a long-term view of the workshop’s direction and growth. For a number of reasons the implementation of these bylaws was delayed, but now the workshop is getting ready to move forward on them, it’s become more clear what the full impact would be with the current wording. This was all done with the best of intentions, but we (officers) recognized some loopholes, ambiguities, and unintended consequences that would be wise to address. That’s why a motion was made last month to amend the bylaws, and since then a team of current and former officers: Rosemary Clement, Daryl McGinnis, and myself (Steve Manning) have been putting those amendments together, Steve thanked Rosemary and Daryl for all the time put into this. As we wrote these changes, we were thinking beyond our trusted friends who will be the initial board, and looking ahead to how somebody in the future could interpret and exploit this wording in ways that we did not intend. In particular, the disposition of the workshop’s funds had to be protected and our officers authority to operate the organization had to be clearly spelled out.

 

Slide being shown of proposed bylaws Amendments: because of the confusion called by the term Board after the officers were called The Board for forty-one years, and because this group was described as having an advisory function, we recommend renaming it to the advisory council, increase size of group from five directors to seven advisors to make it a little more representative, instead of a majority of three, you will need four votes to make a decision, current bylaws have five year terms which we thought was excessive for an organization of this size, and it reduces the number of chances for the members to influence the makeup of the council, recommending a change from three years at a time, you can come back and serve again after at least one year gap. The current bylaws don’t give the directors a lot in the way of specific duties, while at the same time making the extent of their power unclear, which is a risky combination. We will give them a specific role, creating and updating a five year and ten year strategic plan that the membership has to approve and the officers have to follow. The most dangerous issue is that it describes the creation of the legal trust, containing all the workshops assets, including its money. This would be completely controlled by the directors. Under a trust, you the members would have no control over how the workshop’s funds are being spent. We’ve changed the language to make it clear that the officers you elect every year are in charge of finances and there’s no wording that allows creation of a legal trust. Also currently (current bylaws), the directors can choose replacements when one of them leaves office. We’ve changed it so that officers present you the members with multiple candidates to choose from so it will always be up to you, the membership, who is on the council. One important benefit of the current bylaws is that it created a process to remove a problematic officer with the directors being in charge of that process, and we need that, because in the past we have had rogue presidents and we didn’t have a practical way to remove them, so we’ve kept that process in place. Our goal with these changes is to create transparencies, so the members know what the council is working on, to make sure that the officers authority to run the workshop is clear, and to keep as much power as possible with you, the members, whose participation and membership dues make this organization possible. 

 

Leslie Lutz asked in order to have any kind of productive debate about any of these issues we would love everyone to read those proposed amendments. There is a side-by-side comparison coming to you (members) by email tomorrow which will make it easy for you to look between the two versions. In healthy organizations, people participate in this process and Leslie is really looking forward to hearing everyone’s thoughts. Leslie asked the members of her committee if there was anything she had missed.

 

John Bartell asked if the link was mentioned

 

Leslie said it doesn’t even need to be in the chat because it will be in the email to send comments to her [email protected] you can do it anonymously and she will put ANON, but if you don’t say that she will put your name, the link will be in the google sheet to see if there are any new comments posted to see how the conversation is going before we have two different nights of debate in February and March.

 

Sara Terentiev is asking people that if they do send comments, please reference which section, because the comments will go out next to the wording, avoid commenting on all of them together

 

Leslie asking for specific feedback because it will resonate more

 

John Bartell reminding that this is just a starting point for discussion in February

LeAnn Robinson thanking everyone for their hard work

Carolyn Williamson wondering if it would be easier to label each section

Sarah Terentiev commenting they are labeled of the sections of the bylaws

John Bartell thanking everyone for their hard work, Steve, Rosemary, Sarah, Leslie, Daryl

Leslie Lutz commenting one last thing, that this group has been around for 40 years partly because we have wonderful volunteers who put in so much work on the bylaws in 2018 and today, who care so much about this organization, she hopes we have very productive discussions about how this will work and how we can take this to be the best workshop we can be

LeAnn Robinson echoing John, appreciating all the hard work that went into this

Brian Tracey thanking LeAnn for making this happen, this had been three years in the making and he’s looking forward for the board to getting started

 

Sarah Terentiev requests to make a motion

President LeAnn Robinsion recognized Sarah Terentiev to make a motion

 

Sarah Terentiev made a motion out of an abundance of caution, solely to protect the board of directors from any liability concerns while the proposed bylaws amendment process is ongoing and not meant to be any kind of reflection on the current bylaws wording or the proposed  amendments just out of an abundance of caution. With that said, Sarah moves to delay investiture of the board of directors as it is currently named in the bylaws until the bylaws amendments under consideration regarding that body have been voted on by the membership. This would mean they would not hold any duties or responsibilities for the operations of the workshop until this question is voted on.

 

John Bartell seconds the motion.

LeAnn Robinson restating the motion and seconding of the motion

Brian Tracey asked if we are going to debate this?

 

LeAnn continuing with the motion and then asking if there is any debate.

 

Brian Tracey raised his hand

LeAnn recognizes Brian Tracey.

 

Brian Tracey disagrees with the delay since there has been three years to seat this board and by delaying this action is actually biasing the assumption that these bylaws are going to pass as is and that’s not obviously an assumption, we (membership) are currently in violation of our bylaws because we do not have a board. If we are going to be run by rules, I (Brian) think the rules should be…today we seat the board and let the bylaws take their process, if the board wants to act quickly and do the activities as they were designed to do by the officers in 2018 who created these bylaws including Steve, John, Leslie, Daryl, Stacey— officers who are involved today were involved originally and Rosemary (Clement) was the one who made motion to pass on the floor. There is enough here to say let’s get moving on the board so they can start their work and if we are going to change the bylaws, we change the bylaws and that happens, but the board should be in place to do that. If we have one issue about one term about the assets held in trust, if we want to address that separately, but to me (Brian), that’s the only topic so far that would in any way indicate why we shouldn’t seat the board and it’s been on the books for four years.

 

Frank Snyder asked for a point of clarification.

LeAnn going to Rosemary first and then Frank

 

Rosemary deferred to Frank

 

Frank Snyder asked if we are voting on a board of directors tonight and will BOD be seated as a result of this meeting.

 

Brian saying that’s what the bylaws call for unless Sarah’s motion passes

 

LeAnne-yes, we are going to vote on them regardless of this will not ? (can’t hear) assume their roles according to Sarah’s motion, they won’t assume their roles until the amendments have passed

 

Sarah Terentiev clarifying that she is a commercial liability insurance adjuster who specializes in litigation and work with nonprofits and bylaws all the time as well as companies, reason for making the motion is from an insurance adjuster perspective there is a risk of personal liability for the BOD candidates as the wording stands now. If we don’t change it and it stays the same after the vote, totally fine, but the BOD should know what they are getting into before taking responsibility for the workshop. If we delay the investiture, if something happens, a suit is filed against them personally for something that happens in the workshop their personal finances could be at risk as well as some other concerns with the trust language that open them up to personal liability, and Sarah doesn’t think it’s fair to ask the BOD to do that without knowing how this will fall out. 

 

The president recognizes Don Eggspueler: He suggested all these changes just made are a great example of getting lawyers involved in writing the bylaws, novices who have worked on this for several years who came up with a lot bad ideas including a whole slate being selected in one swoop, officers have always been elected singularly and that should be the case for this as well and there ought to be a lawyer on this advisory council, thinks it’s nonsense we are trying to write legal documents and not have legal background

 

Leslie Lutz is asking people to only focus on the issue of this motion only and that it is not a time to debate the bylaws until February recognizing a lot of people have great ideas, also reminding everyone there was a lawyer on the committee two-and-a-half years ago, understands there are concerns

 

Rosemary Clement is in favor of postponing the investiture and is in favor of voting who will be that board agrees, we are voting on five, not presuming the passage of anything, there is an end date to this delay in March, pass or no pass, the advisory council or BOD, whichever they are going to be called will be invested. This is a hard deadline and we are not kicking the can down the road, this is not trying to get out of anything other than unintentional gaps, trying to clarify roles and responsibilities

 

The president recognizes Brooke Fossey:

 

Brooke Fossey- has a question if the board is seated but not vested, does the not official advisory board get to speak to these changes as an entity, do they get to get together and speak as a unified group to make a unified statement…about the amendments that are about us, even though we are not vested or seated, are we allowed to speak as a unified group?

 

Sally Terentiev clarifying while she is not a lawyer she would say personally that if you make a group statement that is acting as a group which would negate the whole not seating thing, but doesn’t see why if you as members couldn’t identify yourself as a potential member of this and I personally think this, but if you do get together and come up with a group statement it could be argued that is taking action as a group when you’re not yet a group and might negate the protecting you from liability thing, but can’t say that for sure, so something to think about.

 

Brooke Fosse is asking because the implementation of the board is three years behind, which was Brian’s point, so now here you are changing it but you have no advisory board even though you should have, she understands wanting to protect them from legality of

risk

 

President LeAnn Robinson asking if there are any more comments up for debate.

 

Frank Snyder wants to echo everything Sarah Terentiev said if you seat the board now they will not be operating, not in accordance with the current bylaws for two months and if someone has a problem with what they are doing in the two months, they may well have fiduciary liability to members for things that are done during that period, even though the chances of that are very small… the current board is free to get together and talk about what they would like to do so long as they are not looking like they are running an organization that is not in compliance with the bylaws, he wouldn’t council someone to become an advisory director or what is now a member of the BOD until it was settled what they were going to do, always tells clients it’s up to you, access the risk and then make your own decision. If there is going to be a big problem holding it up two months that would weigh in favor of doing it right now.

 

Daryl McGinnis speaks in support of Sarah’s motion for two reasons, first one is if the advisors are going to start leading us in some direction and then they don’t have the right to direct anymore but just advise, that will start down a road and then turning around and making a u-turn somewhere else, for two months that’s probably not worth it, but the bigger thing is while they are directors if they contract us to do something knowingly or unknowingly we are bound to do it forever. We can’t say the directors did that during the two months and then we didn’t want directors anymore, once they sign a contract, we (membership) signs the contract and it lasts for as long as it was signed for, doesn’t think we want to do that.

 

LeAnn asking from the nominees who are here to send her something in chat your feelings about whether you are concerned about the potential risk of becoming a member of a board while the bylaws are under amendment.

 

Sarah Terentiev spoke to the risk about the potential BOD, but second risk is to the workshop, if there is something that happens and the workshop gets sued, we have liability insurance, but liability insurance covers the cost of hiring defense council if the people are acting within the course and scope of their duties and the question is we don’t know what those are, and even if the wording doesn’t change, it’s vague right now, and the potential BOD need to know that those duties are vague so there is a very small chance if we are sued workshop could be sued and insurance could decide that people were not acting within  the course and scope of their duties as the BOD  they could deny coverage

Sarah was one who voted to delay implementation of this when she was on the board, she understands that people are upset with the time put into the bylaws and still they haven’t been implemented for several reasons, waiting two more months is not going to make much of a difference and not worth it for the risk that would be taken

 

Brian Tracey asked Sarah Terentiev what kind of insurance we have liability or D&O (directors and officers insurance)

 

Sarah Terentiev- as far she knows it’s only liability which does cover bodily injury, property damage for directors and officers and volunteers, as far as she knows she is unaware of any D&O (directors and officers) insurance

 

Brian Tracey wondering are the current officers under the same liability risk no matter what or is it only that the way that the language of the board, the trust, the assets, is what’s creating this new liablity

 

Sarah Terentiev said she doesn’t do trusts but has researched it since this came up but not an expert, there is some liability for trustees can incur personal liability if taking action if they don’t do stuff proactively if you look at the board now. The second thing is with the officers that we have right now, their role is defined as long as they are acting within those responsibilities, the liability insurance should apply in general terms. The board responsibilities currently say something about that they have oversight which is vague not outlying what their specific…

 

Brian Tracey clarifying the bylaw motion one issue is risk to liability to the BOD because of this language and creating the trust and that is something the officers want to tackle right away, everything else is because the officers don’t like how the board was set up and want to change it, is that accurate?

 

Sarah Terentiev said she is not talking about amendments at all only about liability

 

Brian Tracey understands that it is for protection

 

JB Sanders if you want to vote on the advisory board in order to follow the bylaws, but the board could suspend any decision making processes until after the bylaws are voted on, until the changes are in place, also says we are getting way too far off what the original motion was about moves to end floor debate and get on with the vote

 

Sarah trying to clarify what JB had said which was incorrect and misleading

 

LeAnn is stopping debate and said at least one nominees of the prospective board who is not comfortable with the risks as they have been outlined and thinks they should wait until the bylaws have been amended before they begin their duties. Based on that she is closing the debate, asking for a second to JB’s motion to close the debate.

 

Motion seconded by ? (Daryl McGinnis)

 

LeAnn Robinson- On the motion to delay the investiture of the Board of Directors as it is currently named in the bylaws until the bylaws amendment under consideration regarding that body have been voted on by the membership all in favor? Any opposed? The ayes have it.

 

Motion passes

 

Brian Tracey thanks Sarah for being very persuasive.

Frank Snyder thanking LeAnn for using Robert’s Rules of Order to run the debate very helpful and he appreciates it

 

LeAnn Robinson- Thank you to Leslie on doing a lot of research, thank you to all the members and the officers who served with her, and now to vote on the BOD

 

JB Sanders asking how the vote came out

Mike Gelhausen saying he’s going to go ahead and assign people to rooms but do not accept until voting is done

 

Sarah Terentiev asked if we got into the minutes what the result of the vote was

 

LeAnn Robinson asking Maureen (me) if I got it (the count) in the minutes

 

Maureen Davis has the motion passed but don’t have the count because unable to see everyone’s hands—the ayes have it, yes, I have that down

 

LeAnn Robinson- The Board of Directors, as it is currently constituted in the bylaws we have Brook Fossey for a five year term, Alex Martinez for four years, Collin Holmes for three, David Jones for two, and Katie Bernet for one

 

LeAnn asking everyone to unmute to verbally say aye or nay as a block, if anyone objects to one or more of the people then make your objection in the nays.

 

Brook Fossey asked a point of clarification, she knows the bylaws have a staggering assignment to the board, is that established after the board is seated?

 

LeAnn has not read the proposed amendments

 

Sarah Terentiev-the current bylaws do not say how you choose those people

 

LeAnn the current bylaws say that the officers select the nominees to be during those individual time slots, does that make sense?

 

LeAnn-All in favor say aye, any opposed?

 

Don Eggs opposed to being rushed to making a decision

 

LeAnn asking if he is opposed to a person nominated or to the vote

Don Eggs is opposed to the whole thing being voted on now

LeAnn-okay so you are abstaining from the vote, any other opposed, so the Board of Directors have been voted in

 

Congratulations all around

 

LeAnn asking Harry Hall to read the people who are running for officers of the organization

 

Harry Hall- President- John Bartell, Secretary-Paula Laostick, Events- Charlie Hillard, Infrastructure- Dylan Larkin

 

John Bartell clarifying that they are all running unopposed

 

Harry- everyone is unopposed so it’s accepting the slate as presented

 

LeAnn asking-All in favor of the slate as presented say aye? Any opposed? New advisor board elected

 

Brian Tracey-asking when you send the bylaws out can you also send Steve’s presentation go out with it.

 

Leslie is asking you mean the slide?

Brian is saying yes

John said what is going out is a direct comparison which is more detailed than the slide

 

LeAnn expressed how much she has enjoyed being president and the people she’s worked with

 

Frank Snyder moves to extend its official recognition to LeAnn for the wonderful work she has done and that it be approved by the members

 

Rosemary Clements and Brook Fossey seconded the motion

 

John Bartell making the requests to do one more official act as president and say all those in favor…

 

LeAnn-All those in favor?

Members-Aye

John-All those against-shut up

 

Collin appreciates everything LeAnn did but also wants to extend appreciation to Mike Gelhausen putting together all this for two years

 

John Bartell- Thanking LeAnn because it was such a tough year getting us through hybrid and to Mike, thank you to past officers, Maureen

-going to have a short meeting next week to talk about logistics and expectations Zoom meeting

 

 

Meeting adjourned: 7:58

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1/12/22 GENERAL MEETING MINUTES

 

President: John Bartell

Vice President of Membership: Rosemary Clement

Vice President of Events and Programs:  Charlie Hilliard

Treasurer: Leslie Lutz

Secretary: Paola Laostick (Maureen Davis taking minutes for tonight)

Vice President of Community Outreach: BJ Sloan

Vice President of Digital Media: Stacey Kuhnz

Infrastructure:  Dylan Larkin

Conference Chair: Steve Manning

 

Officer(s) absent: 

 

General Meeting Opening: 7:58

 

Visitors: - None

 

New Members: - None

 

Book Reviews: - None

 

 

Rejections: - Leslie Lutz-The Dark Place was sent out to eight publishers but rejected by seven, going to send it out to list two, Brooke Fossey tried her hand at poetry and received rejections from DMQ Review, The Pen Review, The Colorado Review, Southeast Review, The Rattle and Split Lit Magazine

 

Submissions: -John counting Leslie’s as submissions too

 

Acceptances:  Dana Swift book comes out in six days and she has her author copy

 

 

Announcements: Dana Swift’s book comes out in six days link in chat for her event at Interabang books on January 20, masks are required, would love to see everyone would love to sign your book, JB Sanders reminding everyone his Anthology—L is for Lycans will be out Friday for downloads or copy purchase on Amazon,

Allen Crowley reminding everyone it’s Alex Martinez Appreciation day for one of our newly elected advisory board

Frank Snyder’s file page proofs for…? (can’t hear) The Majestic Eighth (?) Position of Uniform Commercial Code by White Summers Barnheizer Barne and Snyder has gone to the printer and will be out in the spring on Amazon

 

Time adjourned: 8:09

 

Total attendance: 41

 

Date:  2/28/2022

Time:  7:30 p.m.

 

Attendance:

John Bartell, President

Rosemary Clement, VP of Membership

Charlie Hilliard, VP of Events and Programs

Leslie Lutz, Treasurer

Paola Lastick, Secretary

Steve Manning, Conference Chair

Dylan Larkin, VP of Infrastructure 

BJ Sloan, VP of Outreach

Vacant, Digital Media

Absent Members: None

General Housekeeping:

John presented Google Doc for officers and confirmed cell phone numbers and preferred email addresses with each officer.

John announced Stacey Kuhnz has stepped down from her position as VP of Digital Media. Brian Tracy will fill that role.

John tasked Paola to collect all the passwords and domain registrations for all workshop and conference logins in one document to load into Google Docs. Rosemary to get this information to Paola to put in one document. Jason may also have a collection of this information to be sent to Paola. Leslie also has information from Dave for PayPal and other accounts that needs to be put into this document.

Rosemary suggested we begin to document our activities related to our position for future officers. For example, log into Gmail everyday to check email, instructions on how to change over email addresses, etc. In order to transition cohesively at the end of officer’s term. And explain what the logins are for.

John – Things are looking a lot better. CDC removed the mask mandates. John proposed to start up the hybrid meetings again. Proposed a trial run of hybrid scenario with the March 9^th meeting to ensure set up is correctly set up and functioning and then the following week (March 16) starting the hybrid meetings officially.

Charlie will be unable to help the week of March 9^th for the set up. But may be able to help on March 16.

Steve – Who is in the hybrid crew?

John – John was in charge of the hybrid committee last year and asked for volunteers. The volunteers included John, Leslie, Allan, Matt. If anyone wants to be in charge of the hybrid committee that is fine. Rosemary will be happy to join now that she has reliable transportation. The new chair is Allan. Allan’s mom is in the hospital due to a serious fall. She will be recovering. John will continue to coordinate the hybrid committee, however, due to his knee he may not be able to be there Wednesday. Has knee surgery Thursday. There will need to be some coordinating, making sure people have the key. John and LeAnn have a set of keys. No one else has a set of keys. We are missing a set of keys. If we can’t find the keys we will need to ask Euless for a new set of keys. Reaching out to LeAnn for keys.

Rosemary thinks she may have Gary’s set of keys in a box in storage and will be looking for it before Wednesday to give an answer if she does or not have it. Rosemary will be able to attend in person in three weeks.

John to ask LeAnn to FedEx keys to Rosemary. Rosemary lives close to LeAnn and can get them personally.

John – Who is the contact for the police?

Leslie – Should that be the treasurer’s responsibility since the treasurer pays?

Rosemary – When I was the president I coordinated with the police, even thought, the treasurer paid.

Charlie – How much does the police get paid for security on the nights we meet at Euless?

Leslie - $150 right now for 7 – 10 P.M.

John – Will announce at next meeting we will be starting hybrid meetings up again.

Dylan – Do we have a set up guy for the hybrid meeting?

John – We assembled it and organized it in a way and Leslie made very clear direction to follow that are in each box. We can always adjust those directions, but each box is color coded based on the room and you follow the directions. Takes about 15 minutes to set up.

Leslie - will go early next week to charge all the laptops and make sure all the updates are done as they have been sleeping for a while.

John – The president should be at the meeting live. If John misses a couple times, Rosemary will run the meeting.

Dylan – will be coming live to meetings depending on work schedule. Will play it by ear. Ideally would love to be at Euless for the test run hybrid meeting and read through guide in order to be helpful in the future, but this is tentative due to work schedule.

John will reach out to those who volunteered last for the hybrid committee.

John moves to discuss how bylaw vote will take place on the March 2^nd Business Meeting

John lays out how voting process will work. Steve, Rosemary, and Daryl have put in a lot of time to come up with the proposed amendments. Thank you for your time. These bylaws proposed amendments are coming from a place of trying to make the workshop better. We also have to keep in mind that other members have made bylaw amendment proposals that these proposed changes will affect. We need to keep in mind that the people that put in the time to come up with prior amendments also had in mind how to make the workshop better. We have to make sure that passions don’t get out of hand. People love the workshop and the community we have formed and in order ensure a civil debate and that we all can walk away after the vote, no matter the results of the vote, stronger. Leslie, Sarah, JB, and John have spent a lot of time focusing on the facts so the vote can be run efficiently.

Leslie – John will open the meeting by making a statement focusing on the big picture. Then Leslie, as committee chair will make an opening statement to make sure members know what the meeting is for. For example, this is how the meeting will run in order to facilitate and get proposed amendments to the membership to make decisions themselves. B, Leslie will go through an outline on how the meeting will go. Says something like this “We will go through a series of motions, that if they pass, etc. One of these is to limit debate. Someone is going to make a motion to limit debate. If you like limiting debate to 3 minutes per opposing view. If you like that vote yes, if not vote no. It has to pass with a 2/3 majority. Per Roberts Rules the consequences if limiting debate time to 3 minutes does not pass then it reverts to 10 minutes per speaker. If the workshop members chose “no, we want to talk forever,” we are not to impose what we want, we are here to let the members determine what they want. We are simply here to facilitate the vote in the most efficient way possible. The next thing we will be doing is we will be using the hand icon on the Zoom and all members will be asked to find that icon. You will hear another motion to divide the question. Dividing the question ensures that all members understand the bylaw changes. Voting on articles separately. This will be a vote. The power resides with the membership. Then there will be a motion to suspend the vote at 8:00 P.M. This will be a motion made by someone else. Leslie is the chair and cannot make this motion. If, at any time, anyone tries to talk over the chair, Leslie will state “the chair does not recognize you at this time.” If there is someone that needs to jump in they need to wait until the chair is finished speaking and will take clarifying questions. There will also be another motion to allow power to go from chair to Jamie. Leslie will also make the suggestion to the members that when they are speaking they divide their comments into tree parts: 1. Restate the motion, 2. Give your opinion, 3. Tell people how they want them to vote. Leslie will also explain what point of order is. When you hear somebody trying to attack someone’s motivation as to why they did it in 2018 or today, that is a personal attack, and you can yell out Point of Order. JB will stop the speaker and ask what the point of order is about. Then the person that called Point of Order will state they want the speaker to refrain from personal attacks and focus on the ramifications of the proposed amendment. Refocus on what the law is going to do.

John – if someone goes off topic, Point of Order will be used as well.

Leslie – we need to keep the meeting orderly and focused. Leslie will start to call point of order once she transfers power to JB. Hopefully this sounds reasonable. We have agonized over this to ensure we run this smoothly.

John – we will be limiting debate to 3 minutes per speaker, no more than 18 minutes per amendment.

Leslie - You can speak twice, but after you have spoken once you have to wait until everyone else has had an opportunity to speak. Kind of like in a read room where seconds are after first critiques.

John – This process is not debatable. We will run the meeting according to Roberts Rule.

Leslie – will refer to members that oppose these rules by siting the article section from Roberts Rule. Your opinion will be reflected in your vote.

Charlie – Does the quorum have to be from the date of members as of the vote meeting day?

Leslie – About 40 people have to show. Also, the signing up to speak is not limiting anymore. If someone didn’t sign up and wants to speak they will be given that opportunity. As long as it’s 3 minutes and follows alternating view.

Dylan – what does it mean sign up?

Leslie – Will ask JB about the sign-up process to speak.

Charlie – Charlie to take down the names of the people who want to speak and will send to JB to call on the members who want to speak.

Leslie – If someone didn’t sign up but heard a point and they would like to speak they have the right to address the chair and ask to be recognized and be allowed to speak per the rules.

John – If someone signed up they go first. If someone did not sign up but wants to speak they must go after the member that did sign up. Leslie to check with JB about this process to make sure it conforms to Roberts Rules.

Steve – what if we don’t have a quorum? How long do we have to wait to vote again?

Rosemary – Per Roberts Rules the purpose is to get business done, not impede. If we don’t have a quorum we need 2/3 of the present members to suspend the need for a quorum. Rosemary will look for the article where this is stated in Roberts Rules to confirm this is the case.

John – Will Rosemary raise that as a motion.

Rosemary – Yes, if we are close to quorum, will make the motion and have the reference to the article.

Leslie – JB will run the meeting. JB will be the one calling on the members to speak.

John – will put the link to the proposed amendments with the comments in the chat so members can follow along.

Steve – Pertaining to fact-based comments, there is a comment in the spreadsheet of bylaw proposed amendment stating that there was a point in time when the officer did not have access to the conference bank account. I am not aware of a time when that was the case. As I have explained a multitude of times the workshop has bank accounts and money earned from the conferences is electronically transferred to those workshop accounts.

Leslie – Please make a comment and I will put it next to it. Perhaps they need to be asked to be more specific, is it something that happened ten years ago?

Steve – If something that is not true comes up is that a point of order?

Leslie – Will check with JB how to address something that comes up that is not factually true. You can also call point of order and point out we are discussing about these amendments now and how they will impact the workshop going forward, not discussing the past.

John – Vote will be recorded for purposes of accurately documenting the meeting in the minutes. Formal announcement will be made about the recording.

Other order of business:

John – Stacey Kuhnz has stepped down from the media role. Brian Tracy has done this before and will do a great job in this role. John proposes to vote on Brian Tracy being the VP of Social Media. Also website is in bad shape. We have gotten emails from members. The $10 fee is problematic, we can’t find where to sign up for reads. We need to revamp website and make it more user friendly. Not sure how to go about that. Do we form a committee? Make suggestions? Not sure if this falls under infrastructure or social media.

Dylan – Website revamp should fall under infrastructure. Will take a look at it. What do you mean by bad website?

Rosemary – 85% to 90% of the problems of the website is that it is built on Nationbuilder. There are other options that are easier and no code is needed.

John – Goal of this administration will be to revamp website and move it off of Nationbuilder. Needs to be vastly improved.

Rosemary – Let’s put a pin on it, until we get through the bylaws.

Charlie – How much do we pay for the website. There are options that are cheaper. Wix is about $40, Wordpress is about $60.

John – We’ll put a pin on it now but start thinking about it. Membership – we had a legacy member pass away – Jimmy Busts(?). We will be sending flowers.

Rosemary – Leslie and Rosemary discussed what do we call lifetime members once they have passed on. Possibly legacy members for those who passed on or have made vast contributions to the workshop. It might be cool for those of us who do remember those legacy members who have not been around in a while, perhaps we can collect sayings or quotes that we can share with the families. We can add these quotes in a card we send.

John – One thought he had was to read an excerpt from his book. Just a paragraph in the book. I was thinking Carolyn can read it. Would be a lovely gesture.

Rosemary – I have a big shelve of paper in three-ring binders that needs to be scanned and electronically uploaded to keep. They also need posted notes on them to identify the people that wrote them, so we don’t forget who these people where. Perhaps some of our members who have been around longer can help with this.

John – How about we rent the space for $100 and order pizza on a weekend afternoon and have some of the members come out and work on the project.

John – We have a pro-bono lawyer. She made some comments and suggestions.

Leslie – Our pro-bono attorney looked over the amendments and one of her takeaways in looking at comments was that she believes passions are running high and some people appear to feel distrustful. From an uninterested third party, the focus should be on transparency, clear delineation of duties and suggests purpose in the amendment is defined in article 2 and does not need to be defined a second time. She recommends one or more advisory members can be given a compliance role to check in with an officer to check on performance. Also mentioned a 3^rd party registered agent that is $99 a year if we don’t want to worry about it. Under bylaws, article 2, section A what type of meeting. Also changes to allow for reasonable lapses and other small things like that. Bylaw’s article 2, section D members need to understand they are the ones selecting officers and can remove officers. Advisor compliance can help in helping members understand if there are issues with an officer. Article 9 should say one week. There are little tweaks like that. She just got it today in email. We don’t have to do anything with it. But it was very helpful to have this advice. She has signed an attorney-client privilege.

John – At some point in the future there will be another round of amendments and the feedback from attorney will be incorporated.

VP of Outreach Report –

JB Sloan – Thanks to John we got JB Sanders to be a judge for the Young DFW Poetry competition. It’s kind of a big deal. Talking to Alice Long, Librarian, at Holtom City Library about future book signings. She wants to hold another book signing with other genres besides romance. Maybe JB can approach other libraries for other book signing opportunities or workshop opportunities. Could be a good vehicle for our authors exposure.

Charlie – has a list of different libraries in Fort Worth and can talk to them about book signing opportunities since she’s already going.

VP of Programs –

Charlie – Will monitor the poetry room for poetry reading night. They will screen share their first poem and read it, stop screen share, then receive critique. Then their next poem, the same: screen share their poem, read it, stop screen share, receive critique. Once meetings go live they will need to bring printed copies of their poems to share. Sign up will run the same as the Valentine’s Day read.

Dylan – only one person got confused with the Valentine’s Day read instructions. Will repeat process of writing in red to sign up for poetry room. This worked well. Will repeat again.

John – Another thing to talk about is the scholarship.

Charlie – Heard submissions and acceptances were down and we have too much money. I thought that we can have a rewards program quarterly for each person that submits they get a point and then at the end of the quarter they can get a scholarship like half-off to Workshop Conference to get people excited to submit again.

Leslie – I like that idea.

John – how do we track that?

Charlie – relying on Paola a little bit to keep track of who is submitting.

Paola – I’m okay with keeping track as this is already part of the meeting minutes.

John – We need more discussion on this. We don’t have time tonight. Personally, I like the idea of people winning stuff because it does motivate.

Charlie – Would also like to acknowledge frequent monitors. Perhaps acknowledgement on website as most contributor.

John – How about a parking space up front? We will discuss in April meeting.

Treasurer’s Report - February

 

Date: 2/28 

 

Frost Bank Accounts:

            Workshop account ending 7532: $97,668.45

            Conference account ending 7540: $25,002.98

CD: $10457.59

PayPal: $3,943.78

 

Total: $137,072.80 

 

Expenditures in Workshop Account for February: 

Nonprofit paperwork fee (once every few years we do this) $5

Chase Card Payment $372.00

Storage Unit for Feb $173.95

Euless Rent payment (gets us through June 8): $1600

            Total outgoing this month in Workshop Account: $2150.95

 

Expenditures in Con account

Refund $179.00

 

2021 Taxes: 

I am in contact with David Eversole and am working on fixing a few journal entries from last year so that he can run the reports he needs to file taxes. 

 

John – Thanks to everyone who showed up to help clean out the storage space!

 

Proposed Budget for 2022:

 

2022 Budget Comparison
		2022 Budget	2021 Budget
	Membership income	15000	$ 14,700.00
	Conference income *		$ 3,788.00
	Total Income	$ 15,000.00	$ 18,488.00
	* the 2022 approximate income from the conference is hard to project this early. This number is based on last year's net income from the conference.
Projected EXPENSES in comparison to 2021 actual expenses
Facilities
	Rent	$ 2,600.00	$ 2,600.00
	Security	7800	$ 3,380.00
	Liability Insurance	1778	$ 1,600.00
	LifeStorage	360	$ 1,075.00
Operations
	Nationbuilder Website	836.4	$ 537.00
	Wordpress Forwarding	13	$ 13.00
	Domain Emails	60	$ 60.00
	Post Office Box	90	$ 90.00
	Tax Return Prep	600	$ 310.00
	Berevement Fund	200	$ 200.00
	Zoom accoount	319.59	$ 400.00
	Quickbooks	755	$ 755.00
Supplies
	Name Badges	300	$ 300.00
	Library	50	$ 50.00
	Misc. Supplies	50	$ 50.00
Programs
	Conference
	Scholarship Fund	500	$ 500.00
	Teen Workshop	0	$ 50.00
	Writers' Bloc	600	$ 1,500.00
Other Expenses
	Transaction Fees	500	$ 500.00
	Meetings	100	$ 200.00
	Unbudgeted items
	Total Expenses	$ 17,511.99	$ 14,170.00
	NET	$ (2,511.99)	$ 4,318.00

 

 

 

Budget unanimously approved.

 

John – Deficit may need to be adjusted by raising membership dues. Membership dues have not increased in 15 years. Perhaps we can raise by a nominal amount ($10) as everything is going up and everything is more expensive.

 

Conference Chair –

 

Steve – Conference will be held October 8 – 9, 2022. We have a signed contract. No other updates.

 

VP of Infrastructure –

 

Dylan – No big updates to report. Read list generator working. Charlie ran a read list generator to ensure it works. It does. Cut off time is 5 P.M. to ensure late registrations make it into the read list.

 

Meeting adjourned – 9:00 P.M.

2/16/2022 GENERAL MEETING MINUTES

 

President: John Bartell

Vice President of Membership: Rosemary Clement

Vice President of Events and Programs: Charlie Hilliard

Treasurer: Leslie Lutz

Secretary: Paola Lastick

Vice President of Community Outreach: BJ Sloan

Vice President of Digital Media: Stacey Kuhnz

Infrastructure:  Dylan Larkin

Conference Chair: Steve Manning

 

Officer(s) absent: Stacy Kuhnz

 

Meeting opening: - 7:03 p.m.

 

Active members: - 158

 

Attendees:               33

 

Visitors: 0 - 2 signed up but did not show.

           

 

New Members: 0

 

Book Reviews: 2

 

1. Harry Hall reviewed Thunder Road by Collin Holmes.

 

1. Leslie Lutz reviewed Romancing the Doctor by Carolyn Rae

 

 

Rejections: 2

 

1. Maureen Davis had two rejections on queries she sent out.
2. John Bartell received one rejection.

 

 

 

Submissions:

 

1. Dana Swift fired her agent so within the next two months will be in the query trenches again.

 

1. John Bartell submitted two poems.

 

 

Acceptances: 1

 

1. Maureen Davis has a full request for manuscript.
2. Rosemary Clement accepted a car 😊

 

 

Announcements:

 

John Bartell COVID numbers are coming down. Expect we will be hybrid around mid-March. We will have one or two practices with the hybrid crew to get it all set up and running smoothly. The hybrid committee has done a lot of work to make things run smoothly. Also if the host internet goes down with any rain, Zoom will switch over to co-host. If co-host doesn’t work, because things sometimes don’t, we’ll call it a night.

 

Charlie Hilliard Reminder that next month is the first month we are going to start doing a poet read. There will be a poet room starting on March 9^th and it will be the second Wednesday of each month.

 

Leslie Lutz Please take a look at the email with the bylaw proposed changes. There is a side-by-side comparison. Wants to remind everyone if they want to see the bylaws proposed amendments. The bylaw changes were sent via a link to member emails. Please request, if you don’t have the link, by emailing [email protected]. This link will take you to a side-by-side comparison of the changes with an area for member comments about these proposed changes. Please send comments prior to vote meeting, before the first meeting in March, for your comments to be included. We need to have a quarter of our members present to vote as we need a quorum. Please attend the first meeting of March to vote on these amendments. We urge members to attend the business meeting in March as we need a quorum. JB Sanders has volunteered to run it because he is great with Robert’s Rules.

 

Frank recommends that leadership email all members prior to meeting to encourage attendance for March meeting.

 

Allan What is the magic number for quorum.

 

Leslie Lutz Needs to look at how many members we have the week of the meeting. We need between 39 and 41 for a quorum.

 

John Bartell The business meeting will not be held in person. It will be done via Zoom.

 

Time adjourned: 7:12 p.m.

2/23/2022 GENERAL MEETING MINUTES

 

President: John Bartell

Vice President of Membership: Rosemary Clement

Vice President of Events and Programs: Charlie Hilliard

Treasurer: Leslie Lutz

Secretary: Paola Lastick

Vice President of Community Outreach: BJ Sloan

Vice President of Digital Media: Stacey Kuhnz

Infrastructure:  Dylan Larkin

Conference Chair: Steve Manning

 

Officer(s) absent: Dylan Larkin

 

Meeting opening: - 7:02 p.m.

 

Active members: - 158

 

Attendees:               33

 

Visitors: 0

           

 

New Members: 0

 

Book Reviews: 2

 

1. John Bartell reviewed Ellis for like hands about weird creatures.
2. BJ Sloan reviewed Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Outsiders, A Thousands Acres, Perks of Being a Wall Flower, and a book by Tony Morrison.

 

 

Rejections: 6

 

1. Marilyn Mathis – Read rejection letter from The Writer Magazine.
2. Charlie Hilliard – Got a generic rejection
3. Carolyn – Entered The Savvy Writers Pitch Fest. Sent in “Six Days to Live” and “Worth the Risk” - They were both rejected.
4. JB – ran across submission request a couple of weeks ago. Looking for short stories for anthology called Queer Weird Tales. Got rejected.
5. Meredith – Submitted to English Department, did not get in.
6. John Bartell – Got rejection of a poetry chap book.

 

 

Submissions: 2

 

1. Carolyn – submitted to a pitch fest 2-3 editors Six Days to Live, Worth the Risk, “Double Jeopardy,” and another one.
2. Frank – pitched two books to one competition and another one to another publisher.

 

 

Acceptances:

1. Lee Martinez book coming out March 8^th – Constance Verity Destroys the Universe

 

 

Announcements:

 

John Bartell – COVID numbers are dropping. We’ll be going back soon. Wait for the email announcing going back to hybrid.

 

Leslie Lutz – During next week’s business meeting we will be voting on our bylaw’s amendments. We need a quorum which is approximately 40 people. JB Sanders will be running meeting as he is very knowledgeable about Roberts Rules. Please sign up ahead of time in order to speak at the meeting so we have an idea of who wants to speak for and against and we have a balance. I highly recommend reading the proposed amendments and email [email protected] any comments.

 

Daryl – If you don’t sign up before hand, can you still speak if something comes up in the meeting?

 

JB – It’s best to sign up to speak before hand. The way the debate is going to be handled, if you don’t sign up you may not get a chance to speak. If there is a chance for you to speak, then you will be given time. According to Roberts Rules there has to be an even number of speakers for and against. We will be considering each amendment separately.

 

John Bartell – We will discuss how to address the speakers in the board meeting and we will be sharing that in the business meeting.

 

Leslie – vote will be done separately for each amendment as there are multiple changes and an up/down vote will not address individual amendments. Some people may be for one amendment, but not another.

 

Debate ensued about how the voting for the amendments would go. Some expressed members may feel they did not get their voices heard if they do not have the ability to speak due to the equal for/against number of speakers. The officers will discuss in board meeting and will let the members know how voting will go according to Roberts Rules at next business meeting. Members will have their voices heard per their vote on each amendment. If members have comments on the proposed amendments please email Leslie at [email protected]

 

 

Carolyn - $2.99 Romancing the Doctor came out.

 

Collin – Is Missouri still a state? Last week Thunder Roads came out and is available in stores everywhere. Audio book is out as well.

 

Charlie – Weekly reminder that the 2^nd week of March is poetry reading night. You can sign up to read poetry on the March 9^th meeting.

 

John Bartell – Fort Worth Poetry Society has extended their deadline for poetry chap book. $10 fee to enter.

 

Xavier – Received approval from patent office for US and is not applying for international patents for CBGEO Tex and is preparing about 140 brochures to send to manufacturers.

 

Charlie – Can members of the Fort Worth Poetry Society join that contest.

 

John – No, that would be a conflict of interest.

 

Carolyn – I attended a book signing at the Holton Library. Person in charge there is interested in getting an all-genre book signing.

 

John – Connect with BJ Sloan for that Carolyn as she is the person in charge of outreach.

 

Time adjourned: 7:38 p.m.

2/9/2022 GENERAL MEETING MINUTES

 

President: John Bartell

Vice President of Membership: Rosemary Clement

Vice President of Events and Programs: Charlie Hilliard

Treasurer: Leslie Lutz

Secretary: Paola Lastick

Vice President of Community Outreach: BJ Sloan

Vice President of Digital Media: Stacey Kuhnz

Infrastructure:  Dylan Larkin

Conference Chair: Steve Manning

 

Officer(s) absent: John Bartell

 

Meeting opening: - 7:03 p.m.

 

Active members: - 161

 

Attendees:               39

 

Visitors: 0

           

 

New Members: 0

 

Book Reviews: 2

 

1. Harry Hall reviewed Thunder Road by Collin Holmes.

 

1. Leslie Lutz reviewed Romancing the Doctor by Carolyn Rae

 

 

Rejections: 1

 

1. Carolyn Williamson is working on a YA novel with her nephew. Their agency sent it out Simon & Shuster as well as other publishers, but none were interested.

 

 

 

Submissions: 2

 

1. Carolyn Williamson submitted article about grammar titled When Joey Met Joe to the Romance Writer’s Report Magazine.

 

1. Charlie Hilliard submitted poem to Sun Magazine.

 

 

 

Acceptances: 1

 

1. Lauren accepted contract last week from Cameron McLure, agent, at Donald Moss Agency. Lauren signed the contract and it’s official: she has an agent.

 

 

 

 

Announcements: 5

 

Leslie Lutz wants to remind everyone if they want to see the bylaws proposed amendments. The bylaw changes were sent via a link to member emails. Please request, if you don’t have the link, by emailing [email protected]. This link will take you to a side-by-side comparison of the changes with an area for member comments about these proposed changes. Please send comments prior to vote meeting, before the first meeting in March, for your comments to be included. We need to have a quarter of our members present to vote as we need a quorum. Please attend the first meeting of March to vote on these amendments.

 

Allen wants to let everyone know that his podcast What To Read Next is up and has an interview with Collin Holmes and another author. Has interviewed Amy Martinez. The podcast has book reviews, interviews, and other posts that may be of interest. Link to the post was put in the chat in Zoom: https://www.facebook.com/groups/426235328911591 A. Lee Martinez interview will be coming soon.

 

Charlie Hilliard Next week is our first Valentines read. Please sign up to read funny stories, memoir, poems, anything you would like to read about Valentine’s Day. Bring those and sign up so we can host more themed readings.

 

Carolyn Williams will be speaking at the Haltom City Library Night of Romance on Friday 2/11/22 from 7 – 9 p.m. Please check out this link for more information: https://happeningnext.com/event/night-of-romance-eid3a08h7vgas

 

Harry Hall on March 3^rd will be speaking at Highland Oaks Church of Christ at 10805 Walnut HI Ln, Dallas, TX. This will be for the Dallas County Pioneer Association.

 

Time adjourned: 7:19 p.m.

2/02/22 DFW Writer’s Workshop

Business Meeting Minutes

 

President: John Bartell

Vice President of Membership: Rosemary Clement

Vice President of Events and Programs:  Charlie Hilliard

Treasurer: Leslie Lutz

Secretary: Paola Lastick

Vice President of Community Outreach: BJ Sloan

Vice President of Digital Media: Stacey Kuhnz

Infrastructure:  Dylan Larkin

Conference Chair: Steve Manning

 

 

Officer(s) absent:  None

 

Members attending: 43

 

Time Meeting called to Order:  7:00 P.M.

 

Business:

 

Financial Report:

• Our combined balance is currently $138,089.44 in all accounts:

DFWWW Con account: $26,9655.93

DFWWW Workshop account: $98,045.45

CD: $10,457.59

PayPal account: $2,630.47

 

Membership:   

• We have 161 members.

 

Events:

Valentine’s Day Read – 2/16/2022

Poetry Night – last Wednesday of month starting in March 2022

 

Community Outreach Report:

 

Social Media:  

 

2022 Conference: 

 

Infrastructure: 

 

 

 

Old Business:

 

Meeting adjourned: 7:12 P.M.

1/26/2022 GENERAL MEETING MINUTES

 

President: John Bartell

Vice President of Membership: Rosemary Clement

Vice President of Events and Programs: Charlie Hilliard

Treasurer: Leslie Lutz

Secretary: Paola Lastick

Vice President of Community Outreach: BJ Sloan

Vice President of Digital Media: Stacey Kuhnz

Infrastructure:  Dylan Larkin

Conference Chair: Steve Manning

 

Officer(s) absent: - unsure

 

Meeting opening: - 7:00 p.m.

 

Active members: - 156

 

Visitors: 1 - Reese

 

New Members: 0

 

Book Reviews: 3

1. Sean reviewed two books on Goodreads: Archives of a Traitor and History of Murphy’s Law.
2. Allan reviewed Thunder Road on his podcast.
3. BJ reviewed on Goodreads: A Separate Peace by John Knowles.

 

 

Rejections: 1 - Donald received a rejection for his poem Coffee and Tea.

 

Submissions: 5

1. Charlie submitted a short story and a poem to Epoch Magazine
2. JB submitted a short story to an anthology.
3. Maureen submitted a book query
4. Sean submitted short story to Ellery Queen Magazine
5. Paola submitted a short story to Assignments Magazine

 

Acceptances: 1

1. Charlie had her poetry book accepted in library of school.

 

Announcements:

 

John Bartell - DFWWW will continue to meet virtually. COVID numbers are being monitored and they look like they are coming down. DFWWW is following CDC guidelines as far as meeting in public. Once COVID levels return to safe levels we will be offering hybrid meeting.

 

Business meeting will be next week 1/31/2022. Bylaw changes will be discussed and voted on in the March business meeting. If you did not receive the email with the bylaw changes please email the treasurer to receive.

 

Leslie – Please look at email that went out a couple of weeks ago about the bylaw changes. There is a link that takes you to the side-by-side of current and proposed amendments. Send your comments to [email protected]. A copy of the current bylaws are always available to members on website. Log in as a member and there is a link where you can download the bylaws.

 

Charlie – Next month is Valentine. February 16, 2022 will be our Valentine’s Day read.

 

Brook – Audiobook “Big Finish” is on sale now. It’s free for Audible members.

MEMBERSHIP

$150.00/year

Membership is open to anyone 18 and older who desires to promote the art and craft of writing. There are no limitations on membership. Writers with any experience level — from multi-published to just starting out — are welcome to join! Member advantages include:

 

*Only available to yearly members, or year-long subscribers

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