October 13th Corporation Meeting in Worcester

Just a quick note to say that the meeting was very well attended, and that the "Public" version of the report was distributed to attendees. We don't have a mechanism set up yet for distributing the report to corporation members who weren't there. You might try e-mailing the corporation offices at office@starisland.org and see what happens. We'll work on this on Monday.

Tom Kennedy moderated masterfully. There were insightful questions from corporation members, only a few of which I can remember. They included:

• We'll want to sharpen up the linkage between some of our suggestions and the actual IOL events.
  
• One of the Pelican representatives asked us to clarify what we meant when we inquired about the relationship between how we deal with the Pelican community and the whether or not it was the "norm" for Pelicans to be ex-conferees.
  
• While we recognize that there is a need for healing and reconciliation, and we did have plans to try to do that in this meeting, in the end the logistical plans for the meeting went elsewhere.
  
• On the one hand, someone asked if our comment about "disrespect for authority" was overly broad, but on the other hand someone with long experience in Island governance enthusiastically said "Don't change a word about that - thank you for finally saying what I've known for years."
  
• There was a question about what action plan emerges from this document. We think that's a question for the board
  
• Someone asked, "What changed between 2006 and 2007 such that we opened in 2006 and not 2007?" This is a complicated question in part answered in the body of the report, which people admittedly had only a short time to review. But has more to do with the nature of regulation and what it takes to make regulators comfortable with a situation. The short answer is that between 2006 and 2007, despite continuing to make incremental safety improvements, we moved out of the regulators' comfort zone. Our efforts this year have been focused on concrete improvements, but also on putting in place the processes and communications mechanisms so that we can maintain a relationship with our regulators such that they feel they can, with confidence, approve our operations.
  
• A long-time volunteer talked about the frustration of trying to volunteer services and not even being able to figure out who to ask for authorization for a project.
  

There were a number of other questions. Fortunately, I was sitting next to someone who was taking great notes as I was concentrating on keeping up with the discussions. I hope to get a copy of those notes and boil down the important points for the committee.

Though our work is not done, I need to express my deep gratitude particularly to Jack Lightfoot, who, though not at the meeting, prepared the powerpoint that so succinctly yet thoroughly summed up our report. To Martha Copithorne, Doug Hatfield, and Kristi Vazifdar for being up with me on the podium and answering questions, and to Russ Peterson for advocating for us with the Board. Nick Dembsey,(even though he too couldn't be at the meeting), gets my undying thanks for educating us about regulatory matters so that we could sound intelligent up on the podium.