After many late night working meetings, a lot of draft versions, and much feedback, on December 1oth, 2013, the WSTC’s Interim Board finalized and ratified our initial by-laws. To read them in full, go here to our new by-laws page. Here are the high level basics:
- WSTC formed September 24, 2013 by unanimous consent of 40+ community leaders.
- Groups and people grant us their permission to speak on their behalf for transportation issues.
- Positions, issues, etc. all derive from those endorsers in aggregate – the WSTC is an executor.
- WSTC covers the “big stuff”, peninsula wide or multi-neighborhood transportation issues.
- Board and it’s officers work on and with committees to get results to those issues.
WSTC structure:
The basic flow and structure of our organization is this:
WSTC Board elections:
Starting in the December 10th, 2013 meeting, any Member–who lives in, works in, or serves on an organization in our boundaries (all of West Seattle, South Park, Seattle’s new District 1, White Center, North Highline (the county, south to Burien, west of the Duwamish River)–can run for a place on our board or vote in Board elections if they’ve come to at least one general meeting of the WSTC.
Here are the basics of how the elections will work:
- Terms are two years. Officer terms are one year.
- There are 11 board seats/positions.
- All 11 positions are up for election in May 2014.
- Each board seat is numbered, and future elections will be in odd/even numbered years in May of every year. Positions #1, #3, #5, #7, #9, and #11 would be up for election in 2015, 2017, and 2019. Positions #2, #4, #6, #8, and #10 will be up for election in 2016, 2018, and 2020.
- You must declare in-person, in our December 10th, February, or March meetings. You need to announce which position you want. By March 15th you must provide a photo and written statement up to 500 words, both for our website.
- Normally January would be available for this, but our January 2014 meeting will instead be our special transportation event with guests.
- Elections are in May 2014’s general meeting, by secret ballots.
- To vote, you must be a member and must have “signed in” at at least one general meeting/major event in the preceding year before that May. For the May 2014 elections, this means the October 2013 meeting, November 2013, December 2013, January 2014, February 2014, March 2014, or April 2014.
- Our current Interim Board serves until June 1st, 2014.
- The new incoming permanent Coalition Board takes over June 1st, 2014.
- Between May 2014’s election and June’s general meeting, the new Board will elect it’s officers by secret ballot.
- All Board members must serve actively on at least one committee (but does not need to chair a committee).
If you are interested in joining the West Seattle Transportation Coalition as a regular volunteer, you can check our volunteer page here.
If you are interested in serving on the WSTC Board, please review the by-laws, and we hope to see you in a general meeting (here is our general meeting schedule) by March 2014 so that you can declare! Remember that our January 2014 general meeting has a completely full agenda with a special event, so you have until February 2014 or March 2014’s meeting to decide.
