[UK-TUG] Jay has "no intention [...] to weaken the accountability of the committee"

[Jonathan Fine]

Hi

The background to this is that 3 months ago a special general meeting
decided that UK TUG should be dissolved, with its surplus assets divided
equally between TUG and DANTE. Our accounts state that the net assets at 31
July 2021 were £8667. We've not yet been informed of any of our funds being
donated to TUG and DANTE.

On Thursday 20 January I wrote to this list: Where are we regarding the
dissolution of UK TUG?

Later that day, Jay Hammond replied (in part): The UK TUG dissolution
committee has no obligation to report to ex-members on its activities.

This was followed by a discussion between myself and Jay, also involving
Joseph Wright. Much of this discussion was off-list.

On Tuesday 1 February Jay wrote (off-list): I have no intention of trying
to weaken the accountability of the committee [...] as provided by the
constitution.

I welcome this clarification of Jay's attitude towards the reporting
obligations and accountability of the committee. (I hope Jay accepts my
quotation as giving a fair and accurate summary of his statement, even
though "as provided by the constitution" comes from an earlier part of his
message.)

The constitution provides (clauses 20 and 23)
a) committee decisions are to be made by voting
b) these votes must be minuted
c) along with the matter being decided
d) and which committee members voted on the matter
e) and "these minutes must be made available by the committee to any member
upon request"
and further it is custom and practice for electronic committee meeting that
the voting take place on https://tug.org/pipermail/uktug-committee-motions/,
which is a publicly viewable list.

The people that Jay describes as ex-members are the people who were members
at the special general meeting last October.  I prefer to describe these
people as members of UK TUG.

I've be most grateful if we could soon be informed, either as members or as
ex-members, as to donations made of UK TUG funds to TUG and DANTE. I've
started a new thread for this purpose.

wishing you happy TeXing

Jonathan
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