Our blog has written about the turmoil at Fairchild Garden in Coral Gables. At the end of last year, I joined a group of members whose efforts to introduce term limits to the By-Laws of the organization are being stiffly opposed by long-time trustees.
The group of members had coalesced around the firing of the head of education at the Garden, Caroline Lewis. Ms. Lewis was dismissed without cause by Bruce Greer, the president of the Garden. Greer worked around a chain of command to remove her for reasons that do not add up. The contortions that ensued to protect Garden management from criticism have wrapped up the Garden board, demoralized staff and volunteers, and shaken a Miami institution.
After Ms. Lewis was fired (she had innovated and built an environmental education program called the Fairchild Challenge that served, last year, more than 50,000 students in Miami-Dade and provided a model for an important national purpose. She was fired on a pretext-- see our archive for more), the members tried to organize a Special Meeting, provided by the institution's By-Laws, to support Ms. Lewis and to recommend term limits for directors. A protest demonstration was held outside the Garden walls. The board, shocked that opposition had developed for the first time and that members would actually resort to requiring compliance with the Garden's By-Laws, rejected the members' request. Protests continued, including a banner plane flying, "Term Limits for Fairchild". The members also proposed to introduce term limits to the organization at a forthcoming annual meeting. The board refused this request, too, rescheduling the annual meeting. At a board meeting last week, the Fairchild trustees passed a hastily organized, paranoid response: they voted to change the By-Laws to require that any further amendment (ie. term limits) must be approved by a supermajority vote of the board.
In its reaction to criticism, the Garden's politburo-style management-- defending a $20 million endowment-- proves the point of the term limit proposal. The more Garden management papers over divisions it alone created, the more clearly it makes the case itself for change. But Garden managers, with access and use of Garden financial resources, are gambling that the opposition will dissipate over time; to that end, the Garden refused to provide access to the membership mailing list by members as also provided by By-Laws.
Fairchild leadership is convinced that they deserve nothing but praise for dedicated service to the garden and the community. These contortions have been described more fully in the blog, "Term Limits for Fairchild".
10 comments:
If the board can vote to change the
By-Laws after the membership has invoked it's right to amend an article then what good are By-Laws? You might as well not even have them and make up the rules as you go along. I say you guys try this board in the court of public opinion. I bet ya' Carl Hiassen or Dave Barry would have a field day with this one!
Pardon me Carl, I noticed I mispelled your name, Hiaasen, after my post.
There are a number of good people on Fairchild's board, but whether due to lack of involvement, lack of information, manipulation by the board officers, or the desire to avoid major confrontation, they are ultimately failing in their responsibilities. They have failed the Garden membership and the local community. This is an embarrassment that they need to deal with. Even if they approve of Bruce Greer policies, they should do the reasonable thing and allow the membership a voice in determining the future of the memberships' Garden. The Board doesn't own the Garden. At this time, they are demonstrating that they only seek to further their personal agendas. If they are too uncomfortable in taking Bruce on and dealing with his mismanagement and detrimental organizational change, then I say throw all the bums out. SHAME ON FAIRCHILD'S BOARD. ALL OF THEM!
I checked out the Garden attorney, Gene Stearns', letters to the term limits group on their website and can't believe the arrogance!! Of course his daughter is on the Fairchild board, and happens to be up for re-election this year!! Not that the board ever recognizes a conflict of interest when they see it. Has the Garden's endowment been transferred to Bank of America yet? And isn't that the bank that board member Vincent Tria works for?? Yes, shame on the whole bunch. They are puppets of Bruce Greer, who go along with everything he says and does. We wouldn't want to create any awkward moments at the annual gala would we?
So instead of a members' meeting we now get a color mailer, costing thousands of dollars,with a proxy ballot. What a joke...How do we know how many of these were actually mailed out? But what does it matter since we know who in the end who will count the votes. The events over the last few weeks surely show the extent to which the rich and powerful will go to keep the members without a voice and keep themselves running their own private country club. The mailer had to have been farmed out as I have not received a garden publication in quite a long time that did not have adverts for events that had already happened. Not even a mention of the by-laws being changed either!!How could our beautiful public garden have turned into this mess!!! All the trustees should go, NOW!!
Having followed this whole fiasco since November, I have learned that human resource departments are necessary(?), but do not have to be used. By laws are necessary (?) but can be changed at any time. Policies, such as the requesting a list of members, are subject to change at any time. As a newcomer to Miami and a fairly new volunteer at the garden, I am appalled at the tactics being used by the "trustees" of a "public" garden to discredit individuals and change rules to basically keep themselves in power. What gives?
I'll tell ya what gives. Outcry from anybody who cares. Members, volunteers, teachers, students and anybody else that can take the time to voice their concerns. The garden needs to be inundated by a letter writing campagain of unhappy people. People should also be writing the media. Members should be demanding fair treatment and that their rights be restored. Fairchild is a public garden not a private club.
And yet, somehow, life goes on. Fairchild is still awesome.
Fairchild is, has always been and will forever be, awesome. It's the management that is screwed up. Unless they start spaying herbicide and declare the garden dead so they can build more homes the garden will probably survive, but it's reputation is now forever tarnished.
so now it seems that the first batch of proxy ballots sent out did not include the date for the annual members meeting. I guess the garden leaders were expecting those folks to use the proxy and not show up for the meeting. Or was it just another mailing screw up by the COO Zapata? The newest mailing contains a card setting March 22 for the meeting. A Monday not a weekend, to again make it difficult for the regular working folk to attend. So they haven't really duly notified all of the membership of the annual meeting have they? Just another bylaw to change now eh?? Another Bruce Greer political production. This whole scene just gets more and more unbelievable.
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