There have been complaints that officers have not been doing their jobs adequately or have appeared to have conflicts of interest. Please list specific complaints regarding the president. Any complaints should be based on verifiable information.
If you are aware of circumstances that would explain this officer's actions, please post this information here as well.
Failure to call meetings, Failure to follow bylaws:
January 20 2006, 12:08 AM
The guild has suffered from lack of regular meetings. OUr bylaws call for a minimum of four meetings to be called each year. One of these, in November, is for the general membership. Following is a list of meetings of which I have record. If some of you have an inkling of other meetings I didn't hear about, please fill me in.
March 31 2004 online attempt to set up a meeting in May. Bill was not involved except for having asked me to set up a meeting. The May meeting never did happen.
November 14, 2004 general memberhship. Decisions were made which did not comply in process or result with bylaws. Specifically "Bylaws were updated, shrinking the size of the quorum." Apparently some sort of audit was done, but the board recieved no audit report. In addition, the minutes state that a budget was established, but I was provided with no written budget document. Both the audit and the forming of a budget are board functions, not general membership ones.
March 13 2005 Board and officers meeting at Edgewood with open to other members.
October 2005, Online meeting, called by Susan, with agreement from Bill after I had contacted him.
This message has been edited by CCSG on Jan 20, 2006 12:09 AM
Many members have expressed the opinion that when opportunuties are offered to the guild, they are "picked over" by the officers and their friends before being presented to the general membership.
An example of this is the two years of carving at Monarch Sculpture Park. (Please refer to the "Old Business" posts of the October online meeting)
In spite of Bill's explanation, when I last spoke with Myrna Orsini, the park director, she indicated that she was under the impression that it was an event to which members of the CCSG were invited. It is disturbing that there was never mention of this opportunity in the newsletter. Nor did I receive notice by phone or email, even though the park is within easy traveling distance from my home.
I do not know enough about what was arranged at the railroad museum or other events to have an opinion. After all, it is OK to do jobs on your own or with friends. What is NOT OK is to allow sponsors to believe they are dealing with the guild when in fact they are dealing with an individual who uses the guild name for his own benefit.
This message has been edited by CCSG on Jan 20, 2006 8:29 PM This message has been edited by CCSG on Jan 20, 2006 12:42 AM
Besides a misrepresentation of himself as "The Guild" for the park job, a lack of meetings, a lack of communications with the Board (In his years as President, I never received a single communication via mail, email or telephone regarding the Guild functions or activities), we must add his complicity in the smelly elections process our Officers have lately put together.
In case you missed it, there is a ballot in the latest Newsletter which you must cut out & sign, and that had to be returned by Jan 15th, 2006. The problem is that it lists only one candidate for the office of President and Vice-President and those are the people who handled all of the nomination process.What fun to nominate yourself. Also, the nominations for three Directors to be elected (to fill which slots?)include our current President, plus a person of questionable repute who has never attended a single meeting (and who's enjoying a front-page ad in the Newsletter). The third candidate has expressed reservations about belonging to the Guild.
Single Candidate elections are popular in North Korea. It's the easiest way to get elected. You only need one vote to win. (Remember, our current President won with a total of three votes. Not by a margin of three. Three was the total number of votes cast. I think somebody else had two.)
There is nothing here that needs to be proven. The President is the President and he is in charge of the Officers and their activities. He cannot claim otherwise. He is responsible.
with the current president,is the poor leadership that has been demonstrated throughout his time,as for a conflict of interest,the point defiance logging museum project went as follows,they contacted vince brown a resident of the area and beginner carver,he contacted judy mcvay,who contacted myself,I called the folks and found out that there was a budget of $800 for some kind of logging related theme,this was a private job at this point.In a fit of generosity{what else could it have been} I contacted bill bruzas as president of the guild,and laid it out as a guild project, to bring carvers together,and use the $800 to fund a lunch and gas money alottment,with some to go into the guild for the newsletter which is where most of the guild money goes? this was a private job to me,coulda used $800 bucks,but being the financial genius I am,not to mention very loyal guild member,I turned over whatI considered to be a perfect little gig, over to the guild,under the impresion that it would be advertised and promoted via "the guild" did not hear much about it for a time or date? saw nothing in writing in the newsletter telling the unwashed about it{thatI can remember? if it was metioned somewhere in writing I will stand corrected} I was contacted and asked to supply a log,I chuckled but declined the offer,I noticed in the august-sept issue of the cutting edge that the president and vice president did this project ,this was in the farewell letter of the president,to be fair it was not mentioned that it was a guild project,but as it was, in the presidents bye bye speech,one would assume it was a guild project?
In the presidents farewell column, in the Aug-sept 2005 issue of the newsletter my complaint with the officers,the presidents and the secertary/editor is using the newsletter for their personal vendettas against members of the ccsg, our family in particular.It was personal, so I took it personal.It should never of been printed,for this I blame the editor. I feel the same about using the internet for these purposes.
Judy McVay
In regards to my family, I would like to add this quote from Albert Einstein.
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
