Please add your proposals at the end of the list! All proposals should be made by July 31, 2007 - 30 days before the AGM in Istanbul. This will allow those who cannot physically attend to have their say. It also allows us to finalise the AGM agenda by that date. Thanks!

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2007 PROPOSALS:

1. Financial Oversight

Proposal: Clarify who does (or should) oversee WCN finances and ammend statutes accordingly.

Backround info: WCN finances are currently overseen by the Administrative Committe of WCN Europe. Currently, the administrative committee is made up of 3 ICC staff-people, Kamila, Randy & Radka. Do members think this is adequate for financial oversight?

From the WCN Statutes:

c) It is the role of the network's Steering Committee - not the ICC's own board - to ensure that the ICC fulfills its ethical and project-related responsibilities to the network, and operates according to the network's charter and statutes. However, the Steering Committee is not a financial oversight body.

proposal submitted by Sara Stout 7/30/07

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2. Press Spokesperson:

Proposal: The 2007 AGM should clarify if the WCN supports having just one official spokesperson. If that's what members want, then the AGM or the SC should elect an official spokesperson.

Backround information: The 2005 AGM minutes say that the AGM passed a proposal asking the SC to designate one of it's members as the official press spokesperson for the WCN. The SC has never shown strong support for this decision. IN 2005, all SC members were reluctant to fill this role and we chose to elect region/continental spokespeople instead of one central spokesperson. This system seems to have functioned well.In any case, we have been without an official press spokesperson for over a year.

proposal submitted by Sara Stout 7/30/07

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(The proposal below seems to be more for addressing BEFORE rather than during the AGM. - Randy Ghent)

3. At some point, there was a discussion of how to make the network meetings more effective. We floated the idea that after an area of concern/work/opportunity is identified, a work group should be designated (ad hoc, I think normally) to study the issue at leisure. This group should prepare a report that should be available on the web site a month or so before the AGM. The AGM then has a group to work on the issues that have not been resolved by the working group and propose a course of action for adoption by the full gathering. There's nothing very sexy about this, but I think it would work. Where we have failed to prepare, the results have often been indifferent at best.
- Joel Crawford

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4. Steering Committee, transparency

Proposal: How individual Steering Committee members vote should be indicated along with results of any vote. In addition, there should also be a record of SC discussions (involving more than two SC members) outside of the official SC meetings similar to the one done in ICC meetings.

Background info: Results of any votes by SC are only known by final result. There is no indication how individual members voted. As SC members are elected as individuals, this makes it difficult or impossible to know a SC member's voting record, which is a typical criteria in democratic institutions.

In regards to group discussions, there are no records, which would be commonly refined to in other democratic instiutions as "secret meetings".

proposal submitted by Todd Edelman, Green Idea Factory, 26.8.2007

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5. Steering Committee, performance

Proposal: 1 - From one AGM to the next, performance of Steering Committee should be evaluated by the Advisory Board, based upon a report by a member of the ICC. The evaluation will be based on minimum requirements but also things like engaging the WCN members. The evaluation will be sent to WCN no later than one month before the following AGM.

2 - An SC which does not fulfil its minimum requirements six months after an AGM will be dissolved by the SC. In this case, a new SC will be formed within two months.

Background info: The current SC has not fulfilled minimum requirements such as issuing quarterly reports. In addition, it is clear than many SC members never engage the WCN members individually or via various WCN fora.

Throughout the year, the SC has been unaccountable in regards to these issues.

In addition, when at least one WCN member has attempted to engage the SC, it has been told it was interfering.

proposal submitted by Todd Edelman, Green Idea Factory, 26.8.2007

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6. Steering Committee, communication

Proposal: Steering Committee members must respond to all official email from members or which are put into SC Wiki within a timely manner. For email, the SC-ICC liaison should acknowledge the communication within two weeks, with a response from SC within four weeks, which will at least state how SC will act on the issue, if not actually solving it. (This might include adding the issue to the SC Wiki agenda). For items added to SC Wiki agenda, all should be dealt with at time of SC quarterly meeting, but need to be added at least one month before meeting.

Background info: There is no clear process for how SC must respond to and deal with emails from WCN members or to added items to SC Wiki. This results in emails which are never responded to and added items in SC Wiki which are are apparently never addressed or discussed.

proposal submitted by Todd Edelman, Green Idea Factory, 26.8.2007

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7. Steering Committee, meeting times

Proposal: Steering Committee needs to make clear when it will meet (e.g. in relation to subsequent quarterly report), so that members can communicate with them via email or by adding to SC Wiki in sufficient time that SC can respond.

Background info: The times when SC meets via email, Skype or other means is not always known.

proposal submitted by Todd Edelman, Green Idea Factory, 26.8.2007