ANC 5C Dec 2006

As reported by little birdie:

Mari,
Went to the 5C December meeting and was glad
to see how a good ANC meeting is run. There was disagreement, conflicts of
interest and yet healthy, respectful debate. Commish Brannum respectfully
acknowledged his colleagues in the ANC and dutifully addressed his replacement
among the other newly elected officials as he made his good bye speech. I begged
his for his printed copy so I could scan it and post it on one of the blogs to
show just how a dignified ANC commish passes the torch.Two things came up that
were interesting. In the 5C commission's rules, a grant proposal must be
submitted at the previous month's meeting in order to be considered for a vote.
I suppose the rules are different for 2C but that stuck out in my mind. Also,
one grant was proposed by a group which two ANC commissioners served on as board
members so they chose to "recluse(sp?)" their votes to avoid any appearance of
conflict of intererest. This was apparently a choice and not a requirement.They
had the opportunity to vote in favor of several grants, but becuase it was the
last meeting of the current commission, they opted table all but one of the
grants and give the new commishes the opportunity to vote on the grants instead
since the projects would be developed on the new commission's watch.There was
some discussion about the fact that although the DC auditor's offices has no say
in what grants are approved, they can fine the organizations (and even the ANC
that approved the grants?) if the grant funds are not used for their stated
purpose. This should apply to the ECCA's mis/un-used computers.The commishes
could have done things differently and still gone by the book, but they chose
instead to be conservative in their giving while being encouraging to those
requesting grants and respectful of the new commishes. I think the treasurer
mentioned that 5C has over $100k in their account. 2C must have much less or
ther wouldn't have have been much sqabbling over the ECCA's $3k.