Weavers Way elects five new board members, changes bylaws

Weavers Way has elected five new board members and streamlined its by-laws that regulate committees on Sunday.

The five new members elected to the board of executive directors includes Margaret Lenzi with 400 votes, Jeremy Evans Thomas with 322 votes, Megan Seitz Clinton with 307 votes, Dave Tukey with 270 votes and Jonna Naylor with 246 votes.

The board will vote at a future meeting who will become president, vice president, treasurer and its two at-large members.

Current Board of Directors President David Woo says he would be serving on the board as the immediate past president. According to current by-laws, since he has served a total of five years in a row, he must now take a year’s leave from the board. He does, however, have plans to serve in the future.

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In addition to new elected officials, the members have also voted in favor a by-law change to broaden rules and regulations for its committees.

“We’ve gotten together to produce the much, much shortened version that makes much more flexibility for keeping communities much more active, ” said Woo. “There’s quite a bit of wordage in those current by-laws.”

The by-laws will allow for committees to form and dissolve as they please, in addition to allowing more flexibility in functions.

This year’s board election has the distinction of having the biggest voter turnout in the co-op’s history.

Spokesman Jonathan McGoran said 609 votes were cast out of the cooperative’s 5,000 member households. A typical election consists of somewhere around 400 voters.

The reason the election was so heavily participated in, Woo says, was because of the introduction of online voting.

“This is probably the most number of votes in a board election we’ve had in a long time,” he said. “I think the last [election] was probably half of that.”

He said around 400 of the votes were cast online.

But online voting may not be the only change for the cooperative’s election process.

Woo posed the question at the meeting Sunday night whether members on the board of directors should be paid for their services.

“It’s not anything I’m proposing, it’s something I want the membership to think about,” he said. “That’s the idea I wanted to throw out to see if it sticks to the wall.”

The board also said a heartfelt goodbye to member at large Sylvia Carter, who’s served on the board on and off since 1996.

Carter does not plan to return to the board after she serves her required one-year off.

“I’ll be hitting my 80th birthday this summer,” she said. “My term is up and I’m not going to run again. It’s really time to pass the baton to someone younger.”

Carter has been a Weavers Way member for over 30 years and said she plans on continuing to enjoy the cooperative as a shopper.

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