[Missouri-l] Board Meetings

[John and Donna Weidlich]

I have just finished listening to the live streaming of the open portion of tonight's MCB Board meeting and I feel that I need to make some observations for what they are worth. As you know I have been a member of the MCB Board during many administrations and have participated in Board meetings in many venues. I have been at face to face meetings and on conference calls. I have been in open meetings and closed meetings. i have participated in meetings where members who were not on the board were not allowed to speak and in meetings where guests could freely speak. I have seen well run meetings and poorly run meetings, controversial meetings and quiet meetings. I have sat through meetings and listened to them over the Internet. I fully realize the meetings via conference calls save this organization a considerable amount of money and that this is very important in a time of budget cuts. But the more I have observed conference calls, both as a participating Board member and  as a passive listner, the more totally and completely convinced I have become that teleconference calls are an extremely inefficient way for a Board of our size to conduct business. On every teleconference call that I have participated in or observed, there has  been confusion. There has consistently been problems with roll call votes that have affected the outcome of motions. Even though members are repeatedly asked to mute their phones, there is background noise which is very distracting. The constant muting and unmuting of phones is also distracting and makes it hard to follow the discussions. Some callers can be heard clearly while others can barely be heard at all. Members come onto the call late and are not aware of the motion being debated or voted on. Members often  leave the call and then are not present when a vote is taken. Members are called on to give information but they are not there, even though they were on the line when the call started. A good deal of time was spent on Monday night's call dealing with the issue of a member who was not on the board and therefore ineligible to participate being on the call and being asked to hang up. There was no way to know if the member obeyed the President's request to leave the conference. On a close roll call vote, a member lost  her phone connection and was unable to vote and her vote might have changed the outcome of the motion. These problems are not confined to tonight's call. They have happened frequently on numerous calls. I could give many instances of this but I won't go into long details. But trust me, I could. As I said, I know this saves us money but are we saving money at the cost of the most efficient way to conduct the business of the organization?  I know we need to have more meetings because of all of the business that we need to deal with and I know it is not always pracgtical for us to travel to a meeting site but I also know that teleconference calls are filled with problems. I believe we need to look seriously at this issue and figure out the most cost effective way of dealing with board business that  is also   in keeping with good business practice and, most important with democratic procedure.  If we must have calls, members must be aware of how to conduct themselves while on the phone. Members cannot continue to come on the line and leave the line and come back as some are doing. It makes it impossible to get accurate vote counts. The other problem with calls is that they are essentially closed meetings. Even though we can listen, we can't speak or have input. Members without computers are completely exxcluded from even listening to the call. In the case of tonight's meeting, to my knowledge there was never an announcement that the Board was meeting or that the meeting would be streamed. I heard that there was going to be a meeting and went online to see if it was there and it was. I suspect that many members who might have listened may not have even been aware that there would be a meeting or that it was being streamed.  I admit I don't know the answer but I don't believe that what we are doing is working. The democratic process is being compromised for the sake of saving money. Any thoughts on this? John 
ASAP! 
ALWAYS SAY A PRAYER!
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