Safety

In an email to the committee in late January 2023, President Mary Furness said - “A member, Lee Cordner, put up suggestions re the club's safety procedures. When someone questions our safety procedures, I deem it appropriate to follow up quickly. I decided to do some preliminary work to inform our next committee meeting in March. A sub-committee of the committee met on Saturday to discuss Lee's question re safety procedures on walks. I called the sub-committee suddenly as I was in Vincentia that day."

This sub-committee was illegal. The SBW constitution says that the President does not have the power "to establish Sub-committee"s. This can only be done by the committee (Rule 22(b)(x))

Eventually, after some personal changes, the illegal sub-committee of Julienne McKay and David Campbell emailed their draft safety procedures to the committee for consideration in late April, to be discussed at the July committee meeting. Mary wanted those procedures uploaded to the SBW website in early May to replace the current procedures prior to their approval by the committee.

The Webmaster initially refused Mary's request but later uploaded the procedures to the website with a notation that they were draft procedures only and did not need to be followed. Mary was not pleased. An email exchange between the President and Webmaster from 15th May can be read here - An apology for my misunderstanding.

The Webmaster thought that the new safety procedures were unnecessarily complicated, and as he would be away for the July committee meeting when the safety procedures would be discussed, he emailed his concerns and input to the committee in seven emails from May 20-28. Those emails can be viewed on this page - Proposed New Safety Procedures emails. There was no reaction to those emails from any committee members, apart from a committee decision to defer discussion about the procedures until the Webmaster could be present.

When the proposed new safety procedures were eventually discussed during the August committee meeting, it was pointed out that the sub-committee that produced them was illegal as the SBW constitution states “the powers and duties of the Club committee shall be ... to establish Sub-committees”. It is not the President's job. A suggestion that the committee should not deal with the procedures - because legitimate sub-committees have restrictions on what they can produce - was voted down by the committee, and not recorded in the minutes.

Please note that nothing was said at this meeting about the Webmaster's emails being offensive in any way.

The next part of this saga continues on the CONSTITUTION page ...

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