WSRA Trustee Election Hustings

I had a reply from David earlier in the day. I don't regard it as entirely satisfactory, so will post it tomorrow morning along with my reply as I am out with friends this evening.

I also have a view about voting at the AGM which I will post tomorrow.

Kind regards

Robin White

 

I said yesterday that I would post David's reply to me and my response to that. When looking at it on my desktop this morning, as opposed to squinting at it on my I-phone during the plc AGM yesterday, I note that he has marked his e-mail to me 'private'. I have to respect that but I see no bar in sharing my response which appears below. I am now off to read that WSRA Constitution with considerable care..........

As far as the votes go, presumably there will be some 11-slot ballot papers provided at the meeting on which only 4 votes can be cast. I will make some enquiries next week as to what is intended.

kind regards

Robin

Text of my e-mail follows

David

Thank you for your e-mail. Regrettably it does not come close to allaying my concerns.

Dealing first with the particular matter, you have neither explained with any clarity what special qualifications Mr Walters has, not why his co-option at this particular time was necessary. Co-option is a departure from the norm, and no real justification of it appears in your reply. Why, for example, could Mr Walters not have provided his alleged skills through the existing Trustees charged with recruitment matters? Why could the Trustees, in seeking nominations, have not explained the particular need you felt? You will be aware that I have provided considerable Human Resources advice and assistance to the WSRA through the relevant manager or Trustee over many years but neither of us have ever felt that co-option was a pre-requisite for my providing that assistance.

With regret, I am forced to conclude that in the present circumstance the Trustees have felt themselves to be under electoral pressure and have resorted to ‘gerrymandering’ to reduce the chance of a troublesome new Trustee being elected. I have considerable differences with a number of the other candidates. I cannot see, for example, how the Chairman and Secretary of the rival FoWSR can, in all conscience, put themselves forward for election to the WSRA Board. However, ALL candidates, no matter what you or I think of their views, have a right to their candidature being considered under a fair process. You would appear to be unlikely to adopt my suggestions as to how the difficulty with Mr Walters be dealt with, given that you will now be re-issuing the proxy forms, and so I will now have to consider how to proceed given that you appear to intend to conduct the election in an improper manner.

At the plc AGM yesterday, which WSRA Trustees Nick Nichols and Ian Aldridge attended, there was universal acclamation for my call on the plc and the WSRA to settle their differences like adults and allow us all to get on with enjoying our Railway. I wholly acknowledge that differences between the WSRA and plc are not entirely of the WSRA’s making. The WSRA Trustees must, in my view, now seriously consider both what they intend to do, and how they are seen to act. I was not able to attend last year’s AGM for personal reason but a number of commentators whose opinion I respect have the view that it was not conducted with apparent openness. This year promises to be more controversial, and leading up to the meeting with apparent electoral impropriety is not a propitious introduction.

I am grateful for your acknowledgement in your e-mail that my question about electoral propriety will be dealt with before any votes are cast.

Kind regards

Robin White

 

Thank you,Robin for your efforts on the behalf of us all. I have looked at my posts on the proxies, and have NOT suggested any impropriety in the past ,but merely that the association should guard against any potential dispute by adopting best practice used elsewhere.As to hand votes on the day,I had some years of experience dealing with classes of upto fifty restless youths waving arms around- not one I would ever want to repeat.Losing count,double counting and mismarked registers was not uncommon in that school, and would wish to spare our fellow members a similar experience in the crowded and possibly heated meeting that may occur next month.

 

As an outsider trying to follow what is going on, has the co-option Robin refers to reduced the number of places up for election or increased the size of the Board? Has Mr Walters replaced somebody or is he in addition to the Board as previously formed?

Without checking the Articles, it is normal for a co-option only to be until the next AGM, at which the co-opted Director must be submitted to a membership vote. Is that not occurring here?

Thanks

Steven

 

Speaking personally, I would not wish to imply that there is a deliberate attempt by the existing trustees to favour certain candidates by virtue of how they stage the election (*); but rather, that a badly thought out system could inadvertently favour some candidates over the other; and, further, in such a contentious election, absolute propriety, trust and clarity in how it is handled becomes doubly important.

In particular, the biggest danger seems to be to have a series of sequential trustee elections in which the result of one is known before the next one is carried out, since knowledge of the early results might influence the way later votes are cast. There is a very good reason why counting of votes in a general or council election doesn't even start until voting has finished, and probably contrary to the opinions of some in New General Chat, that reason isn't simply to allow council officers to rake in some money by doing overtime in the middle of the night! I'm somewhat reassured by various noises suggesting it will be carried out with a ballot paper carrying all names, of which you mark up to four.

(*) At least in terms of the conduct of the voting and count itself. Putting additional recommendations on the personal statements struck me as a bit of a low blow, though technically legitimate.

Tom

 

Can I also add my thanks Robin, you, at least, are privileged to get replies, albeit incomplete, to questions posed to the chairman of the WSRA. I have not been so fortunate but then perhaps the question I asked in respect of potential future lease costs to the plc was not one the chairman wanted to answer. However sometimes silence speaks volumes.
I have to say that I am appalled at the co-option of a trustee so close to the AGM in a year where there will clearly be some heated debate about how the trustees have conducted themselves over the past year. That said some of the trustees do have my sympathy as I suspect that things have been done in their name without them being in full possession of all the facts. I have now had the chance to read the correspondence to members posted out with the journal and the lengthy article in the journal itself, written by the well known "we". The quoting of a councillor who is the subject of an investigation over his conduct as part justification for the actions of the WSRA is incomprehensible to me and shows a total lack of understanding of the situation that has largely been precipitated by the WSRA bid.
As you have said now is the time for fences to be mended. We have a new plc chairman who seems open and willing to have a dialogue with all stakeholders, perhaps there was too much baggage between the previous plc chairman and the chairman of the WSRA, maybe we need a new WSRA chair as well in order to make progress?

 

Steven

I read it that the co-option fills the vacant place, but the place is still up for election.

What I would like to know is, was this done before or after they knew who was standing?

Paul

 

There was one vacancy, prior to the co-option of Mr Walters. That meant that even if all three standing-for-re-relection existing Trustees were re-elected, there would be one new face on the Board of Trustees. The co-option of Mr Walters (on 2 June I believe) now give four 'to be confirmed' candidates which, it would appear, the existing Trustees would hope to be confirmed by the proxy votes from members unable to attend.

I plainly do not know this was intentional, but it certainly looks to be so. At very best, it has given the appearance of considerable unfairness.

As I have said elsewhere on this o0r the other thread, in my working life I am a barrister practising in equality and discrimination law. On heritage railways I have spent many, many hours assisting railways and individuals with processes and procedures such as internal enquiries, staff reorganisations, selection processes and the like.

I may have my differences with the other candidates, and my views about the way forward and who is best placed to achieve that. Others may (and are entitled to have) opposite views about me. But (apparent) unfairness in the process takes things to a different level.......

kind regards

Robin White

 

After. I believe the co-option was on 2 June.

kind regards

Robin

 

Thanks Robin and Paul - that also part answers another of my questions - who the other candidates are. I gather 4 are from the WSRAMAG, then there is Robin and it seems 4 (not 3 as I had assumed) "existing" Trustees, so there are presumably 2 other candidates in addition.

Steven

 

Maybe Steve Edge would like to comment on this as his name is on the nomination paper.

Rodders

 

Apologies to Steve that I had missed him off the "known candidates!"

Steven

 

Steven - I can't link to it on the mobile interface of this site, but see post 18 on page 1 of this thread - Robin attached a document with the personal statements of each candidate.

Tom

 

This gets more and more bizarre by the minute. At least they are not managing the Beer Festival.

 

Thanks Tom - seems a long time ago!

Steven

 

Are you sure voting for trustees is by show of hands rather than counting ballot papers? If so, you have bigger problems than just how to use your proxy, since effectively, as far as I can see, the outcome of the election can be dependent on which order the votes are taken. You need a secret ballot to eliminate that possibility, which is best achieved by marked ballot papers.

Tom



At the last WSRA AGM several votes were close so tellers counted the hands raised but the minutes don't reflect this, perhaps so long has passed when the minutes were published the records were no longer available, I look forward to the next Generel Election when Labour win and the result is declared A good number of people voted so Labour won.

Know All

 

I don't think the present WSRA Trustees have thought this through at all.

WSRA Article 9.6 provides:
'Any vote at a general meeting shall be decided by a show of hands.'

There is no provision for a paper vote of any kind.

and

WSRA Article 14.6 provides:
'If there are more candidates than vacancies for Trustees, the election of candidates shall be determined by a vote of the Members in accordance with the provisions of these articles. In the event of an equality of votes, the candidate or candidates to be elected from those having an equal number of votes shall be chosen by lot.'

The only way I can see both provisions working practically together are that all attendees can vote for as many candidates as they want, with the total vote for each candidate being counted and the (four from eleven) candidates receiving the greatest number of votes being elected, after paper proxys have been added. However, the proxy forms have limited such votes to four votes only, which is easy to check on paper but impossible to do in a packed (as it is likely to be) hall.

oh dear......a real mess....

Interesting times.

kind regards

Robin White

 

Sounds like the best thing to do is everyone fill in their proxy forms even if they're turning up and hand them in at the start, so no hand voting, which I imagine will not go well. Congratulations wsra again...

 

Well, not quite - you can't have an election unless everyone has a clear understanding of how it will work beforehand! You can't have half the people voting by paper and half by hand waving ...

I can't believe that someone somewhere doesn't know the answer. Surely with about ten trustees and terms of about three years, you must have three or four up for re-election every year - even if historically the norm has been exactly as many candidates as vacancies. So surely the rules must make it clear what mechanism you use to elect multiple candidates from a field?

Tom