Woodstock Chamber of Commerce – Booo

I’ve been booted out. Dismissed. Expelled. Excommunicated. Tossed out. Barred. And all without Due Process. Without a hearing. Without a warning. Without even a notice that it happened or was going to happen.

So, what did happen?

I found fault with too many irregularities at the Woodstock Chamber of Commerce. You know the squeaky wheel syndrome? Well, they don’t oil it around here.

In the April 2007 newsletter of the Woodstock Chamber of Commerce http://www.woodstockilchamber.com/ this month it is suggested that chamber members tell others about their experience as a way of inducing prospective members to join the chamber.

Well, let me tell you about my experience as a chamber member. First, let me explain that I have lived in many cities across the U.S. since 1965. I’ve belonged to four chambers of commerce as a member, and I have worked for four chambers of commerce, including as Vice-President of Membership Services for a 1,100-member Midwest chamber. I believe I have a pretty clear understanding of the purpose and function of a chamber and what membership services are all about.

A year ago I joined the Woodstock Chamber by signing up through the online application. No one asked me to join. No membership rep came to give me a sales talk. I believed in joining the hometown chamber before joining one in a neighboring town.

The first thing that happened was an error in the amount charged for my membership dues. I had indicated Semi-Annual dues on the application, but the Chamber office charged Annual dues to my credit card. Fortunately, they mailed the receipt for the credit card charge to me and, fortunately, I opened the envelope. The error was corrected as soon as I called the chamber office. That quick correction was the best thing that happened during my membership.

About a week after joining in March 2006, I telephoned the office and left a message for the Executive Director that I would like to meet with his assistant and him to explain my business. I was an independent representative for Pre-Paid Legal Services, Inc., and I asked for a ten-minute meeting to explain what my business was and why I had joined the chamber. How long do you think it took him to return the call? A year later, I’m still waiting.

Six months later, I went to the September meeting of the Board of Directors to share my disappointments (plural, you’ll notice) with the chamber. One of the disappointments, I told them, was that the Executive Director had never returned my call. And there were other issues.

I had noticed that the position of Chamber Secretary (the Board’s officer position) was not being listed in the monthly newsletter. A name of the Secretary was being shown on the Chamber’s website, and I asked why it wasn’t printed in the monthly newsletter. No answer was forthcoming, so I kept asking. It turned out that the person whose name was being shown on the chamber’s website was no longer the Secretary!

The Secretary of a corporation is a very important and legally specific position. A corporation must have a Secretary. After repeated inquiries, the Executive Director finally told me that he was “acting” as Secretary until the Board could elect a new Secretary at the first of the year. Now that didn’t make any sense to me, at all. So I went to the Chamber office and read the Minutes of Board meetings. In March or April (I’ve forgotten which), the Minutes reflected that he had been elected to the position of Secretary. So he wasn’t acting as Secretary; he was the Secretary!

So everything’s okay; right? Wrong. The Executive Director of the chamber – of any chamber – should not be the Secretary. The arrangement could possibly be too cozy – a President could tell the Secretary: “Sign this document or you’re fired.” Now, I had no reason to think that might happen, but having an independent Secretary – a business member of the Chamber - eliminates that risk.

I had read the By-Laws, but it was not until I re-read them later in the year that the “fine print” took on new meaning. Right in the By-Laws was the requirement that the Officers of the Board must be elected members of the Chamber. A-ha!!! The Executive Director is not an elected business member and so cannot serve as an officer of the board!

But this raised another problem! The Treasurer of the Woodstock Chamber was Woodstock’s City Manager. The City’s representative on the Board of Directors is not an “elected” position, so this meant that the City Manager, no matter how able or competent - or needed - to perform the duties of Treasurer, could not hold the position of Treasurer.

Why hadn’t a Board member caught this? And why hadn’t the attorney for the Chamber informed the Board that two of the four officers were not entitled to hold their offices?

The next problem was that the Nominating Committee didn’t present a slate of candidates for election to the Board at the 2007 Annual Meeting. The By-Laws require the Nominating Committee to present its report at the November meeting of the Board. It did not. Nor did it at the December meeting. Or at the January meeting. This caused me to wonder whether there were to be any nominees properly qualified for the election about to be held.

Last fall the Chamber conducted a survey of members. What did it do with the results? Other than falsely reporting percentage of member participation and of member satisfaction, apparently nothing.

My year of membership was up on February 28, and I expected to receive my renewal notice in the mail for March 1 dues. On March 22 I emailed the Executive Director that I had not received my dues notice. On March 26 he replied, “Just a note letting you know we received your request and will look into this and get back to you in the next couple of days.”

Today is April 16, and there has been no word yet. I’m delinquent in my dues, and I have no doubt that my membership delinquency will be called to the attention of the Board with a recommendation that I be dropped as a member.

Or have they already dropped me? When I checked the membership listing today, I found that my name is no longer listed there! So I’m out, gone, kaput. But there is always a bright side. I was reminded of Groucho Marx, who said, “I sent the club a wire stating, PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON'T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT ME AS A MEMBER.”