This press release was sent out at 6am this morning, but I don’t think one single reporter called. I don’t know what to make of that. I guess its not sexy enough, not like when someone gets fired.
PRESS RELEASE
Wednesday, June 26, 2019
Last Thursday, at one of the largest annual meetings in its 39 year history, the Tenant Resource Center membership voted in a new Board of Directors. During four hours of impassioned presentations and debate, the staff, volunteers, and board members remained united behind themes of democracy, transparency, and the need to heal and move forward after 8 months of major internal changes.
The Board now includes former Executive Director Brenda Konkel and former longtime staff members Laura Dixson-Kruijf and Anders Zanichkowsky, who all cited their deep institutional knowledge as critical assets they would bring to the Board. The other Board members re-elected were Erica Lopez, a poverty lawyer practicing in housing who joined in April and Justin Schober, an accounting technician at The Overture Center Foundation and former TRC Board member from 2014 to 2016 who rejoined in May. Other new Board members are Joan Kemble, member of Veterans for Peace and MOSES, frequent Solidarity Singer, and long-time social justice activist; Michael Moody, Community and Partner Relations Specialist at The Beacon, who hopes to bring a focus on personal relationships, social justice, and system changes to create healing and growth; Zeb Patek, a UW-Madison law student with experience woking in the Wisconsin Division of Energy, Housing and Community Resources; and Andrea Singletary, a Madison native tech worker and volunteer EMT, who brings nonprofit board experience and a desire to grow the TRC’s reach into underserved parts of Madison and Dane County.
The Board’s most urgent priorities are to hire a permanent Executive Director, build strong and collaborative relationships with staff and funders, and reinvigorate TRC’s fundraising to make sure staff have all the resources they need to provide critical services to people in Wisconsin. Eager to get working, new board members met on Monday with Interim Executive Director Sterling Lynk, sent a survey to staff, and will meet with the whole TRC staff soon. During their candidate presentations, Board members applauded the incredible work of TRC’s staff and volunteers, and listed racism as a root cause of the housing crisis, pledging concrete steps to ensure that TRC is a positive and actively anti-racist workplace. At Monday’s meeting, the Board also elected Erica Lopez as President, Andrea Singletary as Vice President, Michael Moody as Secretary, and Justin Shober as Treasurer.
The community is invited to meet the new Board and celebrate Housing Justice in Wisconsin at a “Moving Week” happy hour fundraiser on Wednesday, August 14th at 5:30 PM at Robinia Courtyard.
FACEBOOK POST
People probably have lots of questions about this. Many of the answers are still being worked out, here is my account of what happened that I posted on Facebook the next day.
Yesterday morning when I woke up, I wasn’t planning on going to the Tenant Resource Center Annual Meeting. I had given up hope that anything productive was going to happen. Through a strange, twisted turn of events, this morning I find myself one of TRC’s new board members!!!!!
How’d that happen? Heidi Mayree Wegleitner was trying to give me her proxy and I was telling her to give it to someone else. I figured if I showed up they’d contest my membership or something. Heidi pointed out to me that I was on the list of members. The email about the membership meeting had been forwarded to me, but I glanced at it and didn’t give it any more thought, and I don’t think I opened the membership list or if I did I just figured it didn’t matter. I was just too angry. After realizing that morning that I was on the membership list, but hadn’t gotten the emails and being reminded that Martha Kemble (a short-time former staff) hadn’t gotten the emails either, I figured the least I could do was send a quick email to folks who were on the list that I knew and had contact info for to make sure they got the notice. I was still not planning to go. Too awkward, too emotional, too stressful – all the reasons.
In response to my email, a former board member Kayleigh Chiono, who also hadn’t gotten the notice, couldn’t attend and asked if I would be her proxy. At this point, I figured I should just suck it up, be a big girl, stop pouting and go since I’d have three votes and maybe we could at least knock a few of the destructive board members off the board for the staff.
I arrived at the meeting, there was no registration or place to sign in, despite DETAILED instructions about being there 15 minutes early and going to the credentialing line and then coming back to registration, not being late, yadda, yadda, yadda. None of that was happening. When Michael Donnelly finally showed up, I registered and got my ballot, but he said I had wait on my proxies because the line was too long. I was quite certain other people were getting their proxies. When I finally got to the front of the line again, he tried to refuse me Kayleigh’s proxy. He said that it had to be notarized or sent from the person’s email directly to the board. Erica Lopez who was assisting with registration asked where that rule came from, it wasn’t in the email about proxies and the Heidi pointed out that the form had no instructions to that effect and no notary space on the form. I showed them the email directly from Kayleigh Chiono. He said we have to follow the rules! But then when Erica pointed out that he was late and none of the rules about registration were being strictly followed, he relented. I now had three ballots and three voting paddles when Heidi had to leave. But absolutely no plan.
The meeting started, all the people who were running for the board were seated in the front of the room. Anders raised his hand and asked what happened to his application he submitted months ago. Why wasn’t he being considered for the board. They said that people had to apply by the 13th and it was all in the emails and rules. Anders said he hadn’t gotten the emails. Jonathan Bartnick then moved that we take nominations from the floor. He got ruled out order by the chair. I raised my hand to challenge the ruling of the chair to allow nominations from the floor and the membership overruled board president Pearl Foster’s decision. (Yeah, it was going to be one of those kinds of meetings) Anders was then nominated for the board. Heidi Mayree Wegleitner then nominated me. That all happened very fast. When they asked me if I would accept I froze – I thought I was moving on in life and had given up. Why would I volunteer for this organization when I have no job? And yet, I accepted. My only thoughts were maybe one more choice might knock the most destructive board members off the board and I didn’t have a chance in hell of getting on the board.
And so Anders and I found ourselves in the front of the room on the panel of people who were candidates for the board. Jackie Woodruff immediately withdrew her candidacy in a huff. Justin Schober just disappeared at some point – we were told he refused to participate in this, but still wanted to be considered. Michael Donnelly suddenly had to leave because his girlfriend was sick. He gave his proxy to Steve Vig, who also left. Jordan Kreiger hadn’t even bothered to show up – he was “busy at the capital”. Only Pearl Foster and Jim White from the former board were participating at this point. (Joanne Brown and Riley Reyes weren’t running again)
As the night went on Sawyer Johnson (facilitator) and Koz (impromptu parliamentarian) from the staff seemed to take over running the meeting in the absence of Pearl understanding Robert’s Rules or seemingly anything that was going on. They did an awesome job of running a contentious meeting when they were facilitating. We had done our introductions and answered the first of three questions when the staff of color asked that they be heard and allowed to ask a question that wasn’t one of three questions. Board members objected, but the membership overwhelmingly agreed to allow them 15 minutes and then extended that time. And then we combined the last two questions. It was all very contentious and sad. The votes were getting more and more lopsided.
Finally we voted, waited for about a half hour for the votes to be tabulated. Heidi Mayree Wegleitner observed the tallying process and the new members were announced!
To my freakin’ surprise not one board member who fired me made the list. They announced the votes Andrea Singletary, Erica Lopez, Joan Danskin Kemble, Justin Schober, Laura Dixson-Kruijf, Michael Moody, Zeb Patec and . . . drumroll please . . . Anders and myself!!!
Now what, you ask? There is no plan – Erica Lopez was the only former and new board member in the room and she was appointed to call the first meeting. Everything seems to be on the table. Erica was going to send an email to staff this morning with a survey asking them for input. (She also has a trial this morning) Hopefully the board can meet over the weekend and create a plan? We have a lot of listening (to staff and volunteers) to do. It’s been a very rough year. By August 2/3 of the staff that were there when I left will have quit. (Huge thanks to Molly, Julio, Sarah, Melinda, Luke and Koz for hanging in there. And thank you to Jo, Mary, Megan, Madeleine and Laura who did their best to hang on!) There is a lot of healing to do. We also have a lot of assessing to do. TRC is currently hiring a new Executive Director, the Program Manager for Homeless Services and the Program Manager for Tenant Services, or 3/4 of their leadership team. And many of us believe there is about a $100,000 hole in the budget. And TRC has lost or is about to start losing some contracts. They are 1000 phone calls behind. And, I learned a lot more disturbing confidential things last night.
So, its a mess, BUT we have a great board! Anders, Laura and I have nearly 45 years of combined experience working and volunteering for the TRC. (As a side note, I just have to say that Laura recently quit after 10 years, and on her last day there was no good bye lunch, essentially no acknowledgement of her leaving. That is a travesty given the heroic work she has done on the fundraisers, seminars, the blog, grant writing and so many other crucial things) And we are joined by several awesome community leaders. We have what we need to figure it out.
TRC STRONG!!!! Let’s rock this!
p.s. OMG, so sorry, I forgot to mention how lucky we are that Robin Sereno has stepped in as a staff member in the past month and restored a small amount of sanity and leadership and hired some great new staff!
WHAT CAN YOU DO TO HELP RIGHT NOW?
Sustainers! Many sustainers left when I did, and we’d love to see you back! Here’s the donation page. Sustainer = makes a regular monthly contribution. Regular unrestricted funds are what makes an organization flexible to meet the needs of the community.
Volunteers! Stay tuned, there will be a volunteer housing counselor training soon. Watch TRC and my facebook page for details. I may even blog it. TRC has very few housing counselor volunteers and we need to rebuild the volunteer base. If you’re an old TRC volunteer and would be interested in coming back, please feel free to contact Luke at the TRC. (I won’t be at the training, just doing my job as a board member to promote it!) We also need volunteer mediators who already have training and are available to mediate evictions on Tuesday’s at Small Claims Court. Also contact Luke if you are interested.
Stay tuned. As the new board gets settled and starts listening to the staff and volunteers and finding out more information, there is sure to be more!
