Seniors fight to give themselves the vote

Published 3:10 pm Friday, January 18, 2008

Members at the South County Senior Center have battled the center’s board of directors for months for the right to vote in an important senior center election.

Now, it appears the membership has won.

A tentative settlement agreement between the members and the center was reached Jan. 11, said attorney Ben Goodwin, who represents the members.

Final terms haven’t been reached, but the outline of the agreement is simple: Members will be able to vote for officers on the center’s board of directors, and any of the roughly 1,500 members of the center will be eligible for office, Goodwin said.

“This sounds great. It seems like we are progressing quite well,” said Bob Jones, the presumptive president of the board. Members have advanced Jones as their candidate for the office.

They have also promoted their own candidates for the vice president, treasurer and secretary positions.

“We will see how the vote goes, but basically it seems we will get all the controversy settled,” Jones said.

In December, Goodwin filed a lawsuit on behalf of the members. In the 40 year history of the center, the membership has never voted.

The lawsuit highlighted a discrepancy between the center’s bylaws, which blocked the membership’s vote, and the center’s Articles of Incorporation, which granted it. According to state law, the articles trump the bylaws.

The center’s attorney, Patrick McKenzie, was out of town and unavailable for comment.

Officials from both sides said the conflict between the bylaws and the articles needs to be resolved, but an election was a healthy first step for the center.

“The convoluted screw up with the bylaws needs to be rectified, but right now we just need to acknowledge that the membership does get a vote, and we need to make that work,” board vice president Mel Steinke said Jan. 14.

Board president John Wagner did not respond to a request for comment.

The 2007 board of directors, led by Wagner, sparked the current controversy in October, when it abruptly fired popular executive director Farrell Fleming. The board never explained Fleming’s dismissal, which further infuriated the membership.

A new executive director, Hallie Olson, was hired without a board election. She briefly served on the center’s board, from September through November 2007, and began work as executive director Jan. 1.

It is unclear when the officer election might take place, or who might officiate it, Goodwin said. Members of the center would like to see third-party officials oversee it, and have suggested people at the Northshore Senior Center in Bothell could perform the task, he said.

It is unclear how many officers the members will elect, or what sort of organizational changes will follow. In most organizations the members elect board members, who then elect their own officers, but that situation is reversed at the SCSC.

It would be traditional for the SCSC to revert to that procedure, Goodwin conceded.

“The problem with that is, what do you do with the current directors who were not elected by members?” he said. “One possibility would be to have the whole board simply resign and have a new election for directors. But I’m not sure that the current directors are willing to do that, and it is certainly not set forth in the bylaws.

“Ultimately, that might be a good idea, but we are trying more or less just to get to first base at this point.”

Steinke scoffed at the notion that current board members might resign.

With Olson installed, and a new direction evident, things are starting to improve, he said.

After the officer vote, the situation will just need time to heal, Steinke said. Members want the center to function, and they want it to work for them, he said. There probably won’t be a longer push to evict the current directors.

“I think at the end of this, people are going to just say, ‘Here’s my $20 (membership fee). I just want to have fun. I don’t want to get involved in the politics,’” Steinke said.

Jones said he believes the vote will start the healing process, but wasn’t sure how the future would look.

He said the membership’s future actions would be dictated in part by a general membership meeting Jan. 16, which was after the Enterprise’s deadline.

Reporter Chris Fyall: 425-673-6525 or cfyall@heraldnet.com.