Justine put out a couple of posts to our members about raising the age to 35. They shared or told their friends. Some came to The Store to sign up. About half of the 22 new people came from that age group, not enough to dominate us--and they are just a little older.
Zach said, "I think we should make this amendment once a year, just to make sure that no one gets kicked off because they got too old."
Sally said, "That will help us get more used all this formal stuff. We need a little more training."
Zach said, "Maybe we should have another amendment, raising the age to 36. Just for practice!"
I said, "I kind of have to agree with you two on that. Can we think about that and bring to the next meeting?"
That seemed OK.
"Len mentioned something to me after the amendment meeting. He thinks we need to ensure only members can vote. I know there were two non-members who voted at the meeting. They have since joined. But we need to follow our rules. Even the Tribal Council has its rules on who can vote. Often there is a lawyer present to explain those rules.
Zach said, "I'm new on the executive committee. Have you 'older guys' ever conducted a serious vote before that amendment?"
"We seem to find consensus on nearly all issues at the executive committee level. But our issues have been easy to resolve. I don't think we've ever taken a vote."
"So what happens when we disagree?"
"We had a little problem in our second election. This was the first time we actually had to count the ballots. And we had a little difference of opinion on how those ballots were to be counted. So we had a little disunity, probably our biggest clash within the executive committee. Eventually we turned 15 votes into six executive committee members, but some feelings were hurt."
Somehow the ballot counting went better next year. We used The Stall at The Store. And maybe that location was better than a living room. Or maybe we just got the practice we needed in the second election—and a year to think about doing it better. Who knows? But we did get better.
"You guys kind of elected the same people each time. We just had a big increase in members and more of them are voting. We are going to see some changes in how we do things. The results of these elections need to be believable."
I was seeing we weren't prepared that well for where we were going: "Maybe we need to call Len in again."
One last item on the agenda. Justine said that Riverbend TDG is now an official non-profit society. We weren't convinced that this was the best path for us at this time. Maybe later.
