In September, about 75 members and guests gathered at the Stormcloud Taproom for a special member meeting. The purpose of the meeting was to conduct a vote to change the Friends non-profit corporate designation from a member organization to a directorship.
“Last summer, we were looking into updating our by-laws and discovered that it had been literally decades since they had been reviewed,” commented Jed Maker, Friends Board President. “With the help of some outside counsel, we learned that in order for us to continue to run our non-profit in the most efficient way, we would need to change to a directorship, and to make that happen, we would need to have a vote of our members.”
Consequently, the Friends organized a nice reception and presided over an official member meeting where members heard from Jed and Heather Hudson, new Board Member and retired attorney. The change was fully discussed and then voted on, passing overwhelmingly.
The Friends are now a directorship organization and can make decisions, including updates to our by-laws, with a vote of the Board of Directors. As always, we will continue to invite members and the general public to our annual meeting in July. Anyone can submit comments or questions to us anytime by emailing info@betsievalleytrail.org. We greatly value the input received from our members and the general public.