Fall 2013 statecom meeting minutes

I couldn't find the roster of attendees. Please comment with any additions and corrections. --Frank

 

Call to order

Present: Tim Wright, Joanna Hirlihey, John Andrews, Elie Yarden, David Spanagel, Joyce Palmer Fortune, Rick Purcell, Danny Factor, Patrick Burke, David Gerry, Merelice(Left Before the Roleplays), Brian Cady, Roni Beal, Scott Laugenour, Mike Heichman, Wes Nickerson

Observers: Darlene Elias


Roles:
Observer: Darlene Elias
Alternates to be seated:
Time Keeper: Tim Wright
Parliamentarian: David Spanagel
Vibes Watcher: Elie Yarden/Mike Heichman
Stacker: Rick Purcell

Approval of Agenda:
The agenda is approved by consensus

Next State Committee Meeting:
The next state committee meeting will be held on January 11th with the 25th held for bad weather
Facilitators: Joyce Palmer-Fortune, Danny Factor

Minutes April 21st and July 13th
There were no concerns to the amendments concerning ranking of proposals and the proposal to make urgent business to nominate Francisco White

Scott Laugenour had concerns there were no recordings of who made what votes

The April 2013 minutes were approved by consensus

Both Mike Heichman and Danny Factors hope the

July 2013
Scott Laugenour had concerns there were no recordings of who made what votes

The July 2013 minutes were approved by consensus

Co-Chairs and Ad-Com Report
Jill Stein is at the Womens Convention, and Green Party speakers are taking prominent  roles in meetings nowadays.

John Andrews in his addressed cited issues in political financing, the Transpacific Partnership. It is very powerful for the secret police to have so much information. John is glad we are on the right side of the issues, and are founding ways to get the word out.  We are a political party have candidates who are running, which makes us different from those fighting for issues. We have several candidates this coming election, Mark Miller, Elie Yarden, and Rick Purcell for city councils, and Joe Carvalho for Mayor. We definitely had a response, and many members came through. Members are encouraged to donate to candidate’s campaign, and volunteer. These local races are critical and can be very important to us, as in Richmond the Green Party mayor, we could make a national impact.

There will be a debate October 29th  

It would be good if more people could be recruited into the committees. Everyone should be on at least one committee.

John asked members to be more active in the email collections.

Elie Yarden hopes we can enable people to communicate


Darlene thinks it would be helpful if we could clarify our platform to help increase membership.

Dru mentioned that we must make clear that we stand with citizenship and democracy.

Endorsement of Rick Purcell for Holyoke City Council

David Spanagel the CDLC liason for the campaign introduced Rick and his campaign who has applied for endorsement.

Darlene stated that rick is highly regarded in Holyoke fighting on the issues. Rick does not want to play the games. There is a referendum on the issues of casino which Rick is opposed to. Rick’s campaign is also anti-walmart. The mayor supported needle exchanges, and now it being faught against to remove the needle exchange. Two members of the current city council have been derogatory and masoginistic.

Rick has been standing up for women and started a petition to get the city councilors involved to resign.

Mike Heichman has a concern that we are running candidates late in the season.

There are 13 candidates for 8 at large seats. 8 people running for 3 viable openings.

Rick Purcell was endorsed by consensus.
 
By-Law Section 8
Merelice stated that we need to hold our regional conventions next year if we do not pass the by-law change. Merelice said we can make changes to the region over the coming years however it is critical to get this passed.

Concerns were raised by Joyce, Elie, John, and Joanna over the layout of the districts.

Danny thinks we can pass a truncated version, stating we are doing it by senatorial districts but that we not include the map.

RolePlays
Brian demonstrated outreach with Frank, and brought us into a workshop in pairs to practice.

Scott and David S. had roleplay on candidate recruitment. They then broke up the group for practice on candidate recruitment.

Lunch

Bylaw Section 8
Frank Proposed an amendment to the By-Law proposal removing the Senatorial Districts to be combined in the interest of giving us flexibility.

The amendment was approved by consensus
The bylaw change as amended was approved by consensus (See Appendix for proposal text)

Budget Preparations
Sean explained there would be 2 tiered items. Some critical to running the party which will continuously occur, and some which will hopefully be allocated based on fundraising sucesses in the coming year.

The budget would be prepared by the new AdCom in December with the old AdCom.

Scott Laugenour would like to see a deviance from budget with the quarterly report, and a fundraising estimate.

Danny Factor presented Merelice’s concerns.

David Guerry explained that the months of November and December were thought to be best by AdCom so the old and new officers can work together.

Joyce Palmer Fortune was unsure StateCom should approve the budget, however Scott Laugenour and John Andrews, thought State Committee should

The facilitators of the January meeting are asked by consensus to place on the agenda the discussion and approval of a budget.

Bold Action Plan

A working group is a temporary structure. It was therefore renamed Slate Working group, so the group could keep working if asked by State Committee.

The winter meeting would get a report and be able to decide on how to proceed.

Frank made a suggestion to the authors, to spell out the committee names.

There will be workshops at the convention, and those who participate in this workshop may become part of the working group.

Mike thinks we should include background for the proposal.

We could have people express their priorities, and maybe later the state committee could decide to actually launch them.

The issue campaigns, do not have that much room in the agenda. It was therefore not included as a responsibility of the EAWG

Danny Factor read Merelice’s concerns

Fundraising Plan
This would be similar to the budget but address the revenue.
At the convention we will make a push to get more monthly donors.

Committee Assignments
Frank passed the sheet with what committees people are a part of and allowed committees time to present to recruit the new members to committees.

Action Proposal Follow-up

Calling for enhanced member database
People need to start helping with the phone calls.

Comparison Document
Mike and Brian have done a lot of work to prepare the document. It has gotten a lot of feedback from members of the party.



Treasurers Report
~$2000 state fund
~$2000 convention checks
~$100 candidates fund
~$438 participation fund

Committee Report
CDLC
There are 4 more local candidates and 1 more federal candidate from the last reporting period.

Convention Planning
The agenda is almost ready to share.
Wes Nickerson has 2 Green-Rainbow Party banners
There is discussion of a silent auction however it is not something we can handle.
We will be selling t-shirts
We do not think we will be able to prepare childcare

Membership
Mike is glad to see many committees coming together and working on various issues.

Platform
They have been meeting biweekly and both reading and considering more effective small group interactions.

Appropriation for email collection
Mike has had concern about the first contact to our members coming for email addresses.

There was a straw poll taken favorable for Adcom to allocate $1000 towards the email collection effort.

Nashua river has had average attendance of 7 members.
Berkshires Scott is hopeful about the possibility of Bershires being active
PVGRP, the pioneer valley chapter has been instrumental in saving 160 affordable housing units at liman terrace.
Assabet River average attendence of 5. Most are members of the Party and one is unenrolled
GBC there were 2 candidates for boston city council and one candidate for city council in Cambridge. There were members participating in protests and sit ins for environmental actions.

Round Robin



ByLaws Section 8 As amended and passed.

8.5 The state committee will consist of three groups of representatives elected or appointed in the following ways. In all cases, state committee representatives must be members of the Green-Rainbow Party and their term of office will end on or before the thirtieth day following the presidential primary. Although these bylaws describe several methods of electing state committee representatives, all representatives other than the 80 elected at the presidential primaries are appointed seats in terms of Massachusetts State Law.

8.5.1 Forty women and forty men shall be elected to four year terms at the presidential primaries as described in Massachusetts General Laws. Their terms shall begin on the thirtieth day following their election and end four years later on the thirtieth day following the presidential primary to be held that year.

8.5.2 A number of state committee seats, to be known as proportional representation seats (PR seats), created and apportioned to regions. The number of PR seats shall be the larger of 60 or the number of state committee representatives elected in that year's presidential primary.
These state committee representatives shall be elected for four-year terms at regional conventions based upon the state senatorial districts. Regions may combine to conduct fewer conventions by providing break-out sessions at their convention for separate regional elections of state committee representatives filling PR seats. Until it is deemed likely that more than 60 representatives will be elected at the presidential primary, the regional conventions will be held soon enough for the terms of the 60 proportional representatives to coincide with the terms of representatives elected at the presidential primary.

The regions will be generally based on the 40 state senatorial districts.

Each Region shall be assigned at least two PR Seats. The number of PR seats per region shall be determined as follows:
1. The proportion of voters registered Green-Rainbow to the total nuber of voters in that region (at the beginning of that year) shall be determined and then applied to the total of 60 PR Seats. Leave the fractional results.

2. In cases where the 2 minimum seats per region is more than the calculated proportion for that region, fractional results will help determine which region(s) might get assigned one less seat to compensate.

3. The fractional results might also provide guidance in assuring that the total number of PR seats is 60.

Each Region must reserve half (rounded down) of their PR seats for each gender. In the event that there are not enough candidates of a gender, then those seats will remain empty. Candidates must be nominated by at least two other party members.


A GRP member who resides in the appropriate region may be nominated and appointed at a State Committee meeting to fill a vacant PR seat during the four years between regional conventions. Priority will be given to candidates brought by other representatives of the region or by a party member in the region. Such proportional representatives shall have identical responsibilities and rights as proportional representatives elected at quadrennial regional convention.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/o8lflrg6r2bf0ph/minutesfall2013grpstatecom.rtf

Showing 2 reactions

  • Scott Laugenour
    commented 2014-01-10 20:14:09 -0500
    The minutes should reflect that Joyce Palmer-Fortune and I were the co-facilitators.
  • Scott Laugenour
    commented 2014-01-10 20:12:36 -0500
    We did not receive a Treasurer’s report at the October meeting. The minutes should not reflect that there was one.