Poll: community organizations in Puna

[Thunderfoot]

Thanks for the support. yes we are looking at what didn't work, and are going to rewrite our By-laws to reflect that; so we can try and prevent this mess in the future. But we have to be careful to stay within the Law. Some suggestions were made to only allow residents of 3 years or more to run for office. It sounded like a good idea because people should get to know the ambience of their community before being in charge of it. But after further research I discovered it would violate the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. So, we have to be very diligent in how we approach fixing our issues. Definitely one thing we are throwing out is the "in good standing" clause throughout the By-Laws. Turns out that is electoral fraud and is considered voter rigging to attach the payment of money with the ability to vote. This is Highly illegal. Plus, it creates economic discrimination on top of that. This is where Robert's Rules are a problem because if you can create members in your organization where some members have more rights than others, you are immediately creating an entire second class membership that will be unhappy from the very start. So, that is why Robert's Rules can be a problem, and as you can see, the County that follows Robert's Rules, has its share of issues too. Unfortunately some people think running a community organization is political. I do not know how that got started but most community organizations are non-profits around the country, which forbids them from becoming active in any political campaign, therefore making it clear that most non-profits can not engage in political campaign activity in order to help keep things honest. There are some civic non-profits that are formed for political purpose but they are not 501c3s, and they are not considered charitable non-profits. Somewhere it got confused and coupled with the fact that many of the Board members on these organizations in Puna just have good intentions with no business or non-profit knowledge. This contributes to the problem. For example, separating your road organization from your community organization is not the general structure of a community organization. Usually the road people would be a committee under the community organization with a Chairperson of that committee reporting to the Board. This keeps things cohesive and has a measure of accountability for the road crew. This will help stop them from getting swollen heads and forgetting who pays the bills. When people think they can be drunk with power with no one to account to, you get people who end up abusing others to satisfy their personal needs instead of doing what is best for the community. We should all look at it as if how you would want to see your community long after we are dead and gone. To make decisions that will benefit future generations to come for the entire community, not just ourselves and what we want. The Board is supposed to represent the community as majority rules scenario, not what each individual wants to see and then force that on everyone else. Like changing the names of our streets without asking us, for example.

Anyway, we all need to stick together to help each other. And I am glad to see that other communities want to work together now as a team to help fix this. the County is definitely contributing to the confusion here. For example, they paved Captain's Drive under public access laws, but yet told us to maintain it because it is a private road. You can not have it both ways. it is either public or private. It can not be both at the same time. And the fact we pay road fees means it is private because I can not be taxed for the same thing twice. the road fee is essentially a tax and I already road tax with my vehicle registration every year.
So, with the County acting like that, why wouldn't these community organizations feel like they can act like that too ?
We have to start somewhere. If we do not fix this, it will only get worse