Meeting – Monday 29th April 2024 – Riverside (+Online)
Present: Rob Nichols, Kul Peacock, Caroline Walker, Jill Atkinson, Tom Green, John Brunger.
Online: Michelle Coleman, Chris Woods, Jeff Collins
Apologies: Owen Swift, John Donovan, Paddy Cronesberry, Ifshaan Mahmoud
Thanks to MFC for the use of the room.
Updates to MSF Constitution
Constitution last updated in April 2023. Some points needed further updating and clarification. Members discussed each paragraph of the constitution in turn.
- Agreed to remove Paragraph 2 – names of founder groups.
- Discussed adding and removing some groups from the list of current groups in Paragraph 3. RN to contact MSS re their continued membership of MSS after the resignation of their representative. CW to put out a Tweet asking if there are any other Supporter Groups who may wish to join MSF. Opportunities for other groups to join MSF are wider now, particularly as meetings are hybrid or online. The “Join us” section of the Boro.Support website will be updated. The post of Media Officer was added to the list of group members.
- A sentence was added to Paragraph 9 to confirm that a representative from MFC would be invited to MSF meetings when relevant.
The Organisation of the Constitution
- Paragraph 1 lists the officers. Discussion around the posts required resulted in a decision to continue to have a Chair and Vice Chair. Owing to the small size of the group, the Secretary/Treasurer post would be a combined role, undertaken by one member. It was decided not to vary the length of time each elected officer would spend in post and to keep it at 24 months.
- It was decided that additional members can continue to be co-opted onto MSF as already stated in Paragraph 2, but only with the agreement of the other members.
- There was lots of discussion around Paragraph 3 about voting and the wording was changed for clarification. It was changed to ensure each member group and the Media Officer has one vote only.
- It was felt that there needed to be some flexibility in the timing of the sending out of the agenda for a meeting. Paragraph 4 was reworded so that the Chair can aim to send out the agenda within 48 hours of a meeting.
- Paragraph 7 was extended to clarify that a maximum of 2 members from each group may attend MSF meetings, but when voting takes place, there would be only one vote per group.
- On Paragraph 9, about finance, there was a discussion about money put into MSF by the original members. It was decided to remove the statement about current and future members topping up MSF funds in future, as the Bank Account was healthy. Details were added to give examples of how the money was/is spent.
- A new paragraph was added- Paragraph 10. KP raised a point about gifts or hospitality being received by MSF members. If an issue was to arise in the future, Paragraph 10 now states that any MSF member receiving gifts and hospitality as a result of their membership of MSF should declare it to the Secretary.
Election of Officers
Further to the clarification of the voting procedures within MSF, namely there being one vote per member group, it was decided to rerun the elections for officers. The voting will be staggered, starting immediately with the nomination and election of a new Chair. The appointment of a Vice Chair and Secretary/Treasurer will then be made in turn. All officers will be in post by July 1st. RN to set up voting using Survey Monkey, as it was felt that voting should be anonymous.
The group wished to put on record their thanks to KP for setting up the survey monkey and coordinating the original voting process last month.
AOB
MSF Bank Account – once the new officers are in post, a new bank account will be opened with the officers as signatories. Money will be transferred from the old account, which will then be closed.
Boro BAME Army are considering leaving MSF. KP will let MSF know once a decision has been made.
A new representative from Boro Breakdown, TG, attended his first meeting and was welcomed to the Forum.
A meeting about the cleaning and cataloguing of the Boro Bricks (by The Ayresome Park Gates) will take place on 9/5/24. RN to attend. CW to contact the former Chair of MSF to request the spreadsheet containing details of bricks that have been catalogued so far. JA to request help from BoroSC2020 members to clean and catalogue the remaining bricks.
Meeting closed at 7.50pm.
