ORIGINAL: gingertoad
I would be the first to agree that the current zone arrangement is not ideal. Zone sizes vary from a couple of hundred members to a couple of thousand, and geographically from one fair sized island to a zone that encompasses four provinces.
Five or six is not enough Directors to run MAAC, or service the zone members properly. I think that a reduction from thirteen to eleven zones, and thus Directors, would be a reasonable scenario. The number of Directors should be odd to reduce the number of tied votes. There would be a cost savings. Whether this would involve collapsing two zones into neighboring ones or a total reshuffle of all zone boundaries is up for discussion.
Obviously you, Marc, have something in mind. You have been a Zone Director and, while in that position, were able to effect a change of zone boundaries between two adjacent zones. This gives you EXPERIENCE!!!.
What do YOU think should be done?
Richard Barlow
MAAC V.P.
Actually, I don't. The first time I heard of this was at my 1st AGM in Moosejaw where the idea was being floated "off the record". Recently, Jean mentioned the idea as a possible cost-saving measure in a post and I'm just wondering if there is any motivation out there?
Tough call. By numbers alone, our area up here would be cut down to 1 ZD over an absolutely mind-boggling geographical area. Pretty tough to have any kind of an effective representation. Politically, it would be a barrel of *****ly things and you'd would likely drive a big east-west wedge in the works. One thing the "old" system of AGM voting did, by allowing the number of votes held by the ZDs reflecting their membership numbers, was keep it realively fair from a membership number standpoint. Larger zones had more clout. (not sure where that is now)
If we now have to rely on proxy collection for AGM votes, I can see it being troubling to Southern Ont, where the largest zone can barely muster enough bodies and proxies at the AZM to have a quorum. Potentially, the smaller zones could have more clout because of the higher percentage of interested members in those zones.
...... It would be hard to keep this issue from becoming a huge issue of power and control if changes were put forward.