WILMONT CONTROVERSY CONTINUES
By Hannah Heineman
The Wilshire/Montana Neighborhood Coalition (Wilmont) members who were elected to the Coalition Board of Directors in a controversial election on June 9 met along with a few other Wilmont members on July 16.The focus of the meeting was the refusal of the current Wilmont leadership to recognize the election and ancillary issues.
In fact, it was a regularly scheduled Wilmont board meeting, which current leaders of the Wilmont Board had cancelled, as they did
last month’s meeting. But when the “Wilmont Rebels,” as they have been dubbed, announced they would meet anyway, some members other members showed up.
The neighborhood organization’s annual meeting at which the 2012-2013 board would be elected was scheduled to be held on June 9, but, at the last minute, the current board, sensing the rising discontent in the membership, downgraded it to a regular meeting. Under the group’s bylaws, elections can only be held at annual meetings. In effect, the board simply canceled the 2012 Wilmont election.
The cancellation was made ostensibly because the existing board didn’t have access to Wilmont’s membership records, as the membership. chair, who kept the records, Marcia Carter, had broken her hip and was in the hospital. and the records, which would identify valid members, were locked up in her apartment. But it seemed clear that rising discord was the principal impetus.
Members proceeded to hold a provisional election over the protests of the current Board. Provisional ballots were used, so the validity of the candidates and voters could be established, the uncounted ballots were individually sealed and they were all sealed in a box, which was turned over to Zina Josephs, president of Friends of Sunset Park, another neighborhood organization. On July 7, three independent supervisors counted and vetted a majority of those ballots. Eight new Board members were elected along with one incumbent. Under the bylaws, the Board can have up to 15 members but the other six seats were not up for election.
Jeanne Dodson, who had been chair of the organization for five years, said she and the other newly elected members had been “trying for over a month” to work with the current board, which has included contacts with Secretary of State, the State Attorney General, Santa Monica’s Assistant City Manager Elaine Polachek, and the Carter Center at Emory University.
Another newly elected board member Alin Wall said, “We have a board that won’t abide by the election. We are now exploring what our next steps are going to be,” and noted that she was contacting lawyers who might represent the rebels.
Attorney Ivan Perkins from the law firm of Curiale, Hirschfeid, Kraemer LLP said he would check with his managing partner to see whether his firm could represent the newly elected candidates pro bono.
There was an extended discussion of the cease and desist and termination of Wilmont membership orders, which had been given to the newly elected candidates and other dissidents, on instructions from Becki Kammerling, the attorney hired by the incumbent Board members. Reinhard Kargl who was also recently elected to the board stated that “people who had nothing to do with the election …who have simply criticized the Board in public” also received the orders.
Dodson cautioned her colleagues that the “cease and desist order is reason to pause when considering our actions. We need to be careful or we could be sued.”
Wilmont Vice-Chair Albin Gielicz is a co-chair of the Friends of the Miramar Hotel, Dodson said, “This is a community when every year when we poll the residents their top concern is over-development. The co-chair of our own organization is working with the developers. It gives the appearance of impropriety and a conflict of interest.” The current Board has expressed support for the massive Miramar redevelopment while eight of the nine newly elected candidates are opposed to it.
Lenore Morrell, another newly elected Board member, alleged that “There have been some definite changes in Wilmont’s website in terms of notices” which led her to believe the website is being manipulated to benefit the current board.
Kargl complained that to his knowledge “there haven’t been any formal audits of the minutes, record keeping, or the financial statements. Those things are being treated like state secrets” by the current Board. According to Wilmont’s by-laws the members have the right to see the records. He believes this means the Board is violating its fiduciary duties.
Seven of the nine newly elected Board members were present. The two absent members were Jim Pickerell and incumbent Benjamin Steers. Betty Mueller was the only member of the incumbent Board who came to the meeting. She stated that she did not go to the meeting where the cease and desist and termination orders were approved by the current Board “because I don’t believe there should be closed meetings” when the public isn’t invited. She later recommended mediation as a way to bring the two sides together.
Wilmont member Ed Huntsacker stated that chair Valarie Griffin’s “claim that everyone in the room (on June 9) disrupted the meeting is 180 degrees opposite. When she began the meeting and adjourned the meeting that was the disruption. The members said no you are not going to disrupt the process and we continued on according to the by-laws and according to ‘Roberts Rules of Order.”
The Dispatch talked to Griffin after the meeting, which she did not attend. She stated, “ On June 9 we had a scheduled a meeting with wonderful guests from the city. Many of us wanted to hear what they had to say about real neighborhood issues such as zoning, crime and code enforcement. Instead, our meeting had to be adjourned because people were yelling and would not let our guests speak. There is a small group of people in this city who seem determined to prevent Wilmont from functioning. We would much rather be dealing with things like organizing community emergency response teams, looking at neighborhood conservation issues and trying to foster safety for pedestrians and others in our community than having to deal with disturbed meetings and other nonsense.”
I write this letter on behalf of the Wilshire/Montana Neighborhood Coalition in response to your recent article titled, “Wilmont Controversy Continues.” I am disappointed that the Dispatch article presents a biased account of the recent Wilmont controversy by failing to address the fact that the June 9th “election” was invalid and illegitimate. This so-called “election” was no more valid than if the “Wilmont Rebels” held a Santa Monica City Council election, and then upon counting ballots from unverified voters, pronounced themselves the “new” Santa Monica City Council.
A cursory review of the Wilmont bylaws and California law demonstrate that the purported election is in fact legally invalid, including:
(1) Election notices must be sent to Wilmont’s legal members with the names of board candidates at least 21 days in advance of the meeting. Wilmont lawfully canceled the election originally scheduled for June 9th because Ms. Carter’s sudden hospitalization prevented the organization from validating the legal members who were authorized to vote. The staged election was made without any notice to the members of the organization, and is therefore unauthorized.
(2) Only individuals who were members twenty-two days before the election notice is mailed are entitled to vote. As mentioned above, at the staged election the voting individuals could not be confirmed as legal members who are eligible to vote. Wilmont would have violated its fiduciary duties under California law if the organization held a vote without confirming that the participants were legally eligible to vote.
(3) Candidates also must be voting members twenty-two days before the annual meeting. Our organization sent an initial notice of our elections on May 17th. We have since confirmed from our official membership records that five of the eleven candidates listed on the “Wilmont Rebels’” fake ballot were not members on that date. Also, one was never a member of our organization. Therefore, these individuals were not eligible board candidates. Once again, Wilmont would have violated its fiduciary duties under California law if it held an election with candidates who aren’t eligible to serve on the board of directors.
Neither I nor my fellow board members could have anticipated that the “Wilmont Rebels” would take Ms. Carter’s unfortunate injury as an opportunity to stage an attack against our organization. It is clear that their actions are not made to further the purposes of our organization, but rather an attempt to destroy it and discredit all of the benefits we have brought to the community over the last 22 years. While the “Wilmont Rebels” make unfounded accusations that our organization is tied to special interests and is secretive, they have been tied directly to the Huntley Hotel, which is using them as puppets for their own purposes.
It is clear that these “Wilmont Rebels” have absolutely no legal authority to act on Wilmont’s behalf. We hope that the Dispatch will soon come to its senses and stop publishing false information that only exacerbates this unfortunate situation.
Sincerely,
Valerie Griffin, Chair
Wilshire/Montana Neighborhood Coalition
Valerie Griffin and her lawyer are wrong on the law, wrong on the bylaws, and wrong on the details.
But I think it’s a mistake to get lost in the details.
The key question is, do Wilmont members have the right to run for election to the Wilmont board?
This was the original question, before all these other discussions came up. Valerie Griffin believes she has the right to pick and choose who can run for election, and faced with eminent defeat, she first tried to ban all rival candidates, then tried to cancel the elections the day of, and tried all manner of lame excuses, invoking the rights of crippled people in the hospital and other irrelevant nonsense.
If members can run for office, then Valerie is wrong and everything she had done is illegal.
If Valerie can pick and choose who can run, and limit candidates to those who are currently on the board, then things will be a bit of a bore, but she’s entitled to do everything she has done.
I think members can and should run for office.
If you agree, then Valerie must be removed. A person who tries to cheat in elections has no place in our neighborhood organization. For this reason, I support a recall petition to remove Valerie Griffin from office.
Jim Pickrell
PS My name is Jim Pickrell. I teach at LACC, I am a three year member of Wilmont, a 25 year resident, and I was one of the candidates for the Wilmont Board.