11b) Motion 2012-A - Governor Allocations

[Christopher Mallon]

The parts I'm having trouble understanding here is why GTCL people are acting like this is a big surprise and they've never heard of Burlington being in SWOCL, and also why they're only getting upset about this now when Burlington has counted as SWOCL for at least six years.

[Bob Armstrong]

Hi Chris:

That Burlington Chess Club ( I don't think there was a vote of all the city of Burlington [ geographic boundaries ] chess players [ = CFC members - only ones that have a vote in the regional AGM's ] was part of SWOCL may have been common knowledge in SWOCL, but it was not in GTCL. I chaired the GTCL Constitutional Review Committee, and sat on it with Maurice Smith, then CFC Treasurer, and active tournament player, John Chidley-Hill,and none of us had ever heard of this. When we " continued " in the GTCL Constitution that its area was the GTA ( Toronto and the four surrounding regional governments ), we were unaware of this, or we would have changed the GTCL Constitution to reflect it, if it was true, and if it is even legal ( since it appears something did take place ). Is it legal for a " chess club " to be allowed to switch regions? Or can the only switch occur when all CFC members in a region are given a vote on switching their whole regional municipality to another one ( talking about the regional governments surrounding GTCL ).

Bob A

[Marcus Wilker]

The parts I'm having trouble understanding here is why GTCL people are acting like this is a big surprise and they've never heard of Burlington being in SWOCL, and also why they're only getting upset about this now when Burlington has counted as SWOCL for at least six years.

I know. This isn't the only thing like that either. Nobody is very clear about when the weights used to calculate CFC governor allotments and the weights used to calculate OCA distribution of these same governors diverged. (I.e., for the past few years, the total member equivalents calculated by OCA wouldn't have matched the total number of OCA governors, but suddenly this year, everyone's acting like this is a big surprise.) The incoming secretary and the incoming president have been out of touch with each other for most of their past term, and they're just finding out what the problem was, the inter-league team championship may have an officer in charge of organizing it, but everyone's acting surprised that it needs a budget, the GTCL president has been pestering the OCA president about his calculations and he's acting surprised that anyone wants to see the boundaries or postal codes or whatever he used to make the determination. (I know there are privacy issues involved and a list of member postal codes can't be made public, but it could be confidentially shared beyond the one person calculating it, and at least the basis fo calculation could be public.)

I'm OK with inheriting a venerable old institution, with clouds of dust and incense around the past (i.e., no clear public record of standard procedures and current states of affairs in many areas of OCA responsibility) and a lot of personal trust (e.g., a presidential election where neither candidate laid out a platform, vision, or direction to provide an objective basis to vote for either one of them). All I hope this year is that we clear out some cobwebs, and put up some clear information on the website, so everything doesn't depend upon individual personal memory.

[Rob Clark]

I know. This isn't the only thing like that either. Nobody is very clear about when the weights used to calculate CFC governor allotments and the weights used to calculate OCA distribution of these same governors diverged. (I.e., for the past few years, the total member equivalents calculated by OCA wouldn't have matched the total number of OCA governors, but suddenly this year, everyone's acting like this is a big surprise.) The incoming secretary and the incoming president have been out of touch with each other for most of their past term, and they're just finding out what the problem was, the inter-league team championship may have an officer in charge of organizing it, but everyone's acting surprised that it needs a budget, the GTCL president has been pestering the OCA president about his calculations and he's acting surprised that anyone wants to see the boundaries or postal codes or whatever he used to make the determination. (I know there are privacy issues involved and a list of member postal codes can't be made public, but it could be confidentially shared beyond the one person calculating it, and at least the basis fo calculation could be public.)

I'm OK with inheriting a venerable old institution, with clouds of dust and incense around the past (i.e., no clear public record of standard procedures and current states of affairs in many areas of OCA responsibility) and a lot of personal trust (e.g., a presidential election where neither candidate laid out a platform, vision, or direction to provide an objective basis to vote for either one of them). All I hope this year is that we clear out some cobwebs, and put up some clear information on the website, so everything doesn't depend upon individual personal memory.

Marcus,

I have made the basis for calculation public. I just haven't been the most pleased to discuss anything with Mr. Barron. For the record I did include Halton as SWOCL. The discussion with Mr. Barron took a nasty and personal turn. When I figured out he had lied to me and refused to address it, but kept asking questions, I felt no obligation to answer. You know he lied too, you have the emails, check the dates of his first email and compare it to what he said.

That's all besides the point though. The sad truth of the matter is that the OCA AGM is only attended each year by a handful of people, when these people leave OCA governance for whatever reason (or forget), with them goes much of what has been previously discussed and we are left with minutes that (should be better than they are) to try to piece together whats going on. You're not wrong, these questions are questions that should have been answered a long time ago. The membership issue shouldn't just being an issue right now if it is one, this has been around for previous years.

As for Burlington and Halton, I know they moved and I found the part in the minutes that Bob G referenced, but didn't find anything further that directly stated they they had moved. However, I am sure that they did.

I must sound like a broken record, but this is why I wanted to have the AGM online. These questions need to be answered (can't say its pleasant to be the one who finally brings these things to the surface though). Who from the GTCL will be serving on the committee to create a map of the league boundaries?

[Marcus Wilker]

Marcus,

I have made the basis for calculation public. I just haven't been the most pleased to discuss anything with Mr. Barron. For the record I did include Halton as SWOCL. The discussion with Mr. Barron took a nasty and personal turn. When I figured out he had lied to me and refused to address it, but kept asking questions, I felt no obligation to answer. You know he lied too, you have the emails, check the dates of his first email and compare it to what he said.

That's all besides the point though. The sad truth of the matter is that the OCA AGM is only attended each year by a handful of people, when these people leave OCA governance for whatever reason (or forget), with them goes much of what has been previously discussed and we are left with minutes that (should be better than they are) to try to piece together whats going on. You're not wrong, these questions are questions that should have been answered a long time ago. The membership issue shouldn't just being an issue right now if it is one, this has been around for previous years.

As for Burlington and Halton, I know they moved and I found the part in the minutes that Bob G referenced, but didn't find anything further that directly stated they they had moved. However, I am sure that they did.

I must sound like a broken record, but this is why I wanted to have the AGM online. These questions need to be answered (can't say its pleasant to be the one who finally brings these things to the surface though). Who from the GTCL will be serving on the committee to create a map of the league boundaries?

Thanks, Rob.

I think you know (I hope so anyway) that I'm not trying to be unpleasant to you or anyone else. I just want things to be clearer in the future. I appreciate the online AGM and the attempts that are now being made (better late than never) to shed light into some of these dark corners.

Everyone should know that I'm not going to be much use for knowing what has been done in the past. (I can research, though, if someone tells me where to look.) And everyone in the GTCL should know that I'm more interested in a clear definition going forward (and a process for Halton to re-join GTCL - only if they want to) than in fighting for any inherent GTCL right to represent Halton. So for both those reasons someone else might be a better choice. Everyone else in the GTCL knows more than I do.

But if GTCL is happy to accept me representing them on this committee, I am willing to serve and help put together a clear map for the OCA website.

Marcus

[Rob Clark]

To take things off track for a second and actually get to the motion at hand, I've been going back and forth on the issue. Over the last few days I've come to the conclusion I can't support the motion. We would be putting a fee on memberships (The OCA would) and then assigning governor allocation based on something not pertaining to the OCA at all. With the OCA governance tied to the CFC governance, the current model is certainly not representative of what people are paying for a year of OCA/CFC membership.

However, to cut out the OCA completely from the membership-fee-equivalence based governor structure and then using what people are paying to the CFC (but not OCA) to determine to OCA's board of governors seems really wrong.

Personally, I would like to see OCA governors based on a combination of OCA and CFC fees. I have an amendment crafted but alas, over the last few days I've talked to people and as chair am not able to put forward such a motion.

I do think its outdated because with our governors tied, it seems that we should give membership equivalents based on what people are paying for both organizations, but to take the financial contribution to the OCA out of the matter entirely seems incorrect. If someone could craft an amendment incorporating both the OCA and CFC membership fees together, it is certainly something I would support.

[Christopher Mallon]

Another alternative is to simply increase the Junior membership fee by $2 and then our ratios will match the CFC's ratios.

[Rob Clark]

I see that as a temporary solution and one that's not necessary. If the CFC raises their membership in the future we'll have to do so again and I'm not a huge fan of raising membership fees for the sake of making our membership fee equivalents easier to calculate.

[Marcus Wilker]

... to cut out the OCA completely from the membership-fee-equivalence based governor structure and then using what people are paying to the CFC (but not OCA) to determine to OCA's board of governors seems really wrong.

Rob,

I understand wanting to use a money-paid-basis distribution among us, like CFC does, but we get new problems if we do not use the same system the CFC uses. Here are a couple examples:

1. Imagine CFC changes its rates, or we change ours, so that the OCA's junior discount is less than CFC's (rather than more, as it is currently). That shouldn't affect your logic. I would assume you would still want to calculate membership equivalents based on our formula, rather than theirs. But then there might not be enough governors to go around our leagues (at one governor per 50 membership equivalents) even at a first pass, let alone additional governors (for highest remaining fractions of 50). In other words, having a divergent formula causes complications that are clearly unintended by the drafters of the constitution. And it is more of a lucky coincidence than anything (i.e., it so happens that our junior weight is less, rather than more, than theirs) that our divergent formula even works.

2. It has also been pointed out that governor allocations "reward" (i.e., give extra governors to) leagues who build up CFC memberships. But if we have a different system than CFC does (as far as the value of junior memberships) then the number of extra governors earned for the OCA by a league wouldn't match the number of extra governors awarded to the league by the OCA. In other words, a league that recruited more juniors could earn extra governorships for the OCA, only to lose them to other leagues under the divergent OCA membership-equivalence formula.

These effects are not impossible to handle, or at least buffer, with a more complicated formula, but they just point to the fact that something fishy is going on. Why mire ourselves in such complications? These kinds of strange logic pop up in a system that doesn't really make sense in the first place.

Let's just keep it simple and match the CFC formula.

If you need to have the membership fee calculation justified in terms of proportions of OCA membership revenues, then I like Chris's suggestion (for its simplicity). Let's just match CFC proportions and charge 2/3 of an adult membership as our provincial junior rate. (I'm not specifically advocating this, but it's way easier than the alternative you're suggesting.)

My first preference, still, would be to keep our membership rates the way they are, but use the CFC formula to redistribute amongst ourselves the governors they allot to us - as is proposed in this motion.

[Rob Clark]

The CFC will not lower their rates in the conceivable future. I just really don't feel comfortable about basing the governance of our organization on what people are paying a completely different organization.