Talking to the Star Island Corporation Board of Directors

The board usually meets once a month on Tuesdays. I gather they've been meeting more frequently this summer as they get through all the work they have to do this year. One of their work items is the search for a new Executive Director since Amy Lockwood resigned in July. The board wanted to know if the IOL committee had any input to the search process; in essence, was there anything we had uncovered as part of our inquiry in to the history that got us to the Island closure that should inform the search for a new Executive Director?

We concluded that there was, and prepared a document as input to their process. Jordan reviewed this document with the Board this evening. Although we don't currently intend to make this document public, as it is part of the Board's personnel process, the thinking that went in to it and the substance of the recommendations that it makes will appear in our final report.

Interviews & other input

Our original plan was to create a formal interview protocol - a standard set of questions - from which to start interviewing. After much discussion, including debating the need for interviews, we have decided to go forward in a more "free form" way and let the interviewer and interviewee determine the agenda. In that sense, these are really more "conversations" than they are "interviews." These are the people involved in the process who sought us out, or whom we sought out:

• Irene Bush
• Nicholas Cricenti (our fire safety consultant)
  
• Bill Clegg
• Ron Cordes
• Dan Fenn
  
• Paul Jennings
• Amy Lockwood
• Sumar Maji
• Dave Reynolds
• Sarah Wicker
• Grey Wicker
• Joe Watts
• David Yermack

• Officials with responsibility for safety inspections at the island.

We've also had a number of "conversations" with people in an attempt to understand how people viewed these events and to understand their concerns, as well as gather any suggestions for going forward. I (Jordan) had the opportunity to talk to a number of people at LOAS I:

• Jill Brody
• Herb Emers
• Will Emmons
• Bob Gray
• Vic Henschel
• Tom Kane
• Betty McKinnell
• George Robbins
• Bob Romero

The following staff and Pels also provided input. During my two days on the Island, I was down in the Pel dining room a bunch, and had a chance to tell all the Pels there what we were about and how to contact us, as well as letting them know where I'd be for conversation. I was a little disappointed that we didn't a little more input from them, and I wonder if that points to issues we need to think about.

• Andy Gordon
• Leslie Lowrie
• Molly Mansfield

Finally, we got e-mails of greater or lesser length from a lot of people, but I haven't gotten their permission to post their names, so I'm not going to do that yet. If your name is on one of the lists above and you'd rather have it removed, let me know (e-mail me at StarIslandOpenedLate@gmail.com)

Dick Howe resignes from the IOL committee

After some consideration as to alternatives, and with much regret, Dick Howe has resigned from the IOL committee. Dick has just taken on a time-sensitive personal commitment that makes it impossible for him to continue working on the committee.

While we're all about openness and transparency, this really is a personal matter and we can't go any further in to it.

We will very much miss Dick and realize that our work will be more difficult without him. We look forward to any concluding thoughts he may have for us as input as we prepare our final report.

Thanks, Dick, for your experience, wisdom, and time on our efforts.

Jordan

Quick update during a "quiet" period...

I put "quiet" in quotes because we have been gathering information from interviews during this time, and at least two of us have even made it out to the island.

Martha attended LOAS II and took the opportunity to do some interviews.

And since I (Jordan) didn't get to go to All Star II, I managed to wangle my way out for a couple of days during LOAS I, and talked to a large number of people.

I'll post the list of people we've interviewed shortly, in another post with it's own title....

Time line of events

The idea of the time-line is to collect all the events from 2001 to at least June, relating to fire safety and other issues that led to the Island opening late this year. We also intend to fold board and officer terms, key staff positions, and the facilities committee tenures on to this time line.

Obviously, it's going to have a million entries. We intend to structure it so that it is easy to filter for items of interest and to assign "significance levels" to events so that one can see a "high level" overview as well as all the gory detail.

What's linked from this post is the versions of the time-lines that we submitted to the board for their August 28th meeting. The versions are a "major events" version, and a full version of all the events we have on the time line right now. In no way do we think that this is complete, but this version emerged from one of the draft documents we're working on, and it seemed like a good place to start.

We're very eager for input on these time lines, both in terms of their form, and and substantively in terms of what's on them. Please send us feedback at StarIslandOpenedLate@gmail.com. Thanks.

The files are both PDF files hosted at one of our personal web sites.

Time Line Level 1

Time Line All Events

If for some reason you can't get them and you want, them, e-mail me at StarIslandOpenedLate@gmail.com and I'll e-mail them to you.

Committee submission to the Corporation Board

Early on in the life of the committee, Brad Greeley asked what, if any, interim updates the committee could provide to the Board of Trustees. We were reluctant to committ to "interim" findings, but realized that a work plan and time-line of events relevant to the closure would be useful. We agreed to provide these for the Board's August 28th meeting.

Here's what we submitted to the Board as a narrative (slightly edited for clarity); the astute reader will recognize the "organization" piece from our August 7th post Work Plan for the IOL Committee:

The IOL committee has met once by phone and twice in person and has been working via e-mail. Our current approach to understanding why the island opened late examines events and processes from seven points of view:

• Regulatory issues
  
• Budgetary issues
  
• Communications issues with
  • Public
    
  • Staff
    
  • Community
• Board oversight of managers and staff
  
• Facilities committee
  
• Human Relations
  • Management by staff of front-line workers
    
  • Who we manage / how we hire
    
  • Why we need the staff we need
• Culture / "Island Mind" (by which we mean the 200+ year history of difficult relationships between the island and the mainland, and how that must change in the 21st century).
  

We have reviewed the documents provided to us by Amy (both paper and electronic); our not-yet-complete document inventory runs to 195 documents.

Our work is now focusing on the personal interviews needed to round out the picture provided by the documents. Our decision to interview specific people is driven by three factors: can they provide information about the process that was not in the documents; Can we help the future course of events by demonstrating to regulators the serious and dispassionate look we are taking at how to improve our processes; and were people significant actors in the Star Island process such that not interviewing them would make the report seem incomplete. It is very possible we will add people to our interview list, particularly regarding this last criterion.

LOAS I held a “town meeting” regarding their own governance. We were invited to attend but it ended up be scheduled directly in conflict with our second in-person meeting. Brad Greeley, Dave Boynton, and Joe Watts did attend, and our committee sent along an update (largely the same information as is on the blog) that was shared with the meeting. The feedback Jordan got from being on the island later in the week was that the transparency was appreciated. Martha Copithorne is on the island this week and has agreed to take input from anyone interested on the island.

We also submitted a time-line to the board; more about that in the next post.

Second Committee Meeting

The committee met again this evening in Concord, NH. As with the first meeting, the discussion was wide ranging but productive in clarifying issues and continuing to craft our ultimate report. Each of the members of the committee had reviewed all of the paper files we have received and many of the electronic documents. While there may be a little more to do in this regard, we think we have a handle on most of the documents now.

We received and reviewed the seven "thematic" documents we decided upon at our last meeting. Though different by necessity given their themes, each relates to the events over the last five years, and most include a chronology supporting their description of the events.

In essence, we have a good description of the "What". The next piece to be written down would be the "why" part.

We have committed to have a time-line for the Board of Directors by their next meeting, Tuesday, August 28. Jordan will synthesize this from the various "thematic" reports.

We have identified a number of people in the Star Island community with which we wish to talk. We have not scheduled formal "interviews" but several of the committee members felt that learning how these events transpired from the viewpoints of people involved in the process in different ways would be constructive. We expect to have those conversations over the coming days.

The committee is hoping to have a product we can release some time in October. In order to do this we need to have the "Why" portion of our documents completed in early September so that we can spend the balance of the month checking them and integrating all this material into a coherent whole.

Our next meeting will be in Concord on September 10th.