i'm sure he'll see it here, but i will forward.  feel free to forward it along yourself. 

 01-27-09

(Email Contacts deleted for privacy)

I would like to make you aware of some new developments related to monitoring the elections this Thursday. As you may be aware, at the last TWDC BOD meeting and commented on below, we chose to postpone any decision involving use of Tremont members as election monitors and to have this possibility reviewed by the newly formed TWDC bylaws committee.

I am pleased to let you know that we were able to secure representatives of the Cleveland State University Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs to monitor our election this Thursday. Therefore, we will have six independent counters from various other CDCs and two independent monitors from one of the most prestigious colleges of Public Affairs in the country responsible for counting and monitoring our election.

I hope you are all supportive and feel that this recent addition of independent monitors will further address any perception that our elections may not have sufficient oversight. I am confident in the TWDC staff, their professionalism and the great care they take to ensure a fair election. They have actively sought advice and support from 3rd parties to improve the processes and address even the appearance that there could be any lack of fairness in the election process. We should all be very proud of the TWDC team.

I look forward to seeing you this Thursday.

Sincerely,

Tom Cook

President, TWDC BOD

_______________________________________________________

OLDER COMMUNICATIONS ON THIS MATTER

01-21-09

(Email Contacts deleted for privacy)

I have just been made aware of this and other correspondence surrounding next week’s election(Please note I was not copied on any of this correspondence) Unfortunately some of the statement s are simply inaccurate and misleading. First, people may vote before the meeting is called to order. If they do so they may miss the opportunity to hear who may be nominated for write-in candidate but they can still vote, as long as they are verified as a member and receive a ballot. If they do vote before write-in candidates are announced and would like to change their vote they can receive a replacement ballot to do so. Our intention is to be as inclusive and accommodating as possible to all members of Tremont West. We are not looking for reasons to disqualify members votes.

Second, there has been correspondence about vote monitoring recently. Following is a copy of my response to Ken Pendergast of the Plain Press regarding the subject. I have no reason to believe Mr. Pendergast will report anything but the facts but I wanted you, as candidates, to be aware of my response.

Ken, I was just forwarded a copy of this email and now understand why you called this afternoon with your question.  Please be advised of a critical inaccuracy below(there may be others but I will comment on this one as it is relevant to your question).  Ms. Justus states  “The Board of Trustees of TWDC denied the written request from several members to monitor the election ballot count at their January 2009 Board of Trustees meeting.”.  This is simply not true.  The only written request of the TWDC BOD was a request by one member which stated “I am writing to officially request that since I am not on the board and not
running for the board that I be apart of the counting team for the annual board elections.”
 
The board denied this request for several reasons;
 
1) Counting is currently done by 3rd parties who are not stakeholders(TWDC members, residents, employees, business owners)which ensures an independent process.. To ensure independence we did not want a current TWDC resident and member counting votes.

2) In the course of our discussion the board did discuss potentially adding monitors of the counting process( at no point did we receive such a request in writing)and no change was recommended this year based on the following:

a. Allowing one member to monitor “because he asked” could open up considerable issues as to why he/she was afforded this privilege while others were not.  Why were other members not allowed the same privilege?  Should there be a limit on how many monitors we should have?  How are the monitors selected?  What is a fair process to determine who should be a monitor?  Should there be specific criteria to qualify as a monitor?

b.      What should be the role/expectation of a monitor?  Must they stay in the vote counting room for the duration to ensure they do not communicate with members before the final count is complete?  Are they limited on what they can share re: number of votes etc. ?  do they need training?

c. What is their process for identifying and communicating a problem? Who do they communicate any issues to?  Do we need a person to monitor the monitors?

The issues came up two weeks before the annual meeting and the TWDC BOD decided that the monitoring issue(#2 above) should be carefully considered with ample time to vet issues and be inclusive without playing favorites or appearing to play favorites. Therefore we requested that the monitoring issue be added to the agenda of the recently formed bylaws committee which will address bylaw recommendations this coming year.

Tom Cook