The Board have not provided the minutes from the last THREE Board meetings. They claim that this was due to lack of a Secretary and that it will be presented at the next board meeting scheduled for Sept 3, 2025.

1. Leadership Transition Email sent out on May 12, 2025 at 7:42 am PST
   Where are the Board meeting minutes and agendas from 2024 and 2025?

We acknowledge that meeting minutes and agendas from recent years have not been consistently posted. The Board is currently reviewing internal records and is working to post all eligible documents to the RID website. A timeline for this update will be provided by our next Board meeting, Wednesday, June 4, 2025. We are committed to restoring timely public access to these meeting minutes. The agenda and minutes from the open sessions of the Board will be made available.

2. Where can I find the Board meeting minutes about the CEO transition?

Only agenda and minutes from open sessions of the Board will be made available, as a matter of legal compliance.

Members may request Board records in accordance with California law by contacting info@rid.org (mailto:info@rid.org?subject=&body=).  Summaries of Board meeting minutes are also available on the RID.org website.  

The meeting minutes from the March 5, 2025, Board meeting are in the draft as they must be officially approved at our next Board meeting on June 4, 2025. This meeting was captioned, and an unedited transcript from the captioning provider can be made available for your review upon request.

This is critical for a few reasons - others can come up with even more reasons probably:

• RID is currently delinquent in the state of California so we are not allowed to operate at all as of November 2024. The reason was the failure to submit an independent audit and IRS 990 form.
  So why haven't we completed an independent audit?

• RID Board terminated Star Grieser, hired Past President Ritchie Bryant as the Interim CEO who then suddenly left before end of his 8-weeks term, and now the Board is bringing Bucky in as our next Interim CEO. A RID CEO Search Committee Chair is also in process of being selected right now. There's a lot of information missing and legitimate questions.

• RID sold its HQ building yet it has to borrow $400,000 from CASLI. Why?

Usually, we can look at the minutes for some of those answers. Wait, there are no minutes. There is no transparency without minutes. The Board has declined thus so far to publish even draft of their minutes even though they assert in June to me directly that this is very doable.

The June 4th Board meeting held the Public Comments to the very end of the meeting. The Zoom setup did not allow members to say anything before.

I was very last person during the Public Comments and used my time to attempt to convert this to a Special Membership Meeting.

The Board blocked it on technicalities. I responded asking that it need not be a motion from the members and this is actually something the Board can themselves call without the need for a petition. 

The Board claimed then that they would be more than happy to schedule one as they share the same common goal to support RID. They asked that I email them the exact motion which I did so that night and gave them 10 business days to announce it. This email was acknowledged.

Since then, the Board has been evasive about not deciding whether to call for the meeting. This evasiveness continued during the June 25th Community Forum #2 with comments directly about this at end of the forum.

This is important because 2-3 Board members verbally agreed to it stating that it wouldn't be no problem at all and they WANT more conversations. This is a promise broken.

Why break this promise???

A Special Membership Meeting is the only opportunity other than the Biennial Meeting for members to directly make, debate, and pass motions. The 2025 RID Conference (July 31th-Aug 4th) does not have the Biennial Meeting planned (unlike in the past conferences) due to what was claimed to be a operational mistake and is now scheduled for January 2026.

Given the issues we are facing (see other issues on this page & the board's silence), I strongly advocate that we need to have a meeting scheduled earlier. 

According to the bylaws, this special membership meeting can happen in two different ways:

• Members forces a meeting to be scheduled by petition 10% of 14,000+ members (1,400 minimum). I want to note that 15% (2,100) is recommended because some signers might not be members themselves and get disqualified. This will require resources from the Board, HQ, and the active members.

• Or, the Board just schedule this meeting in good faith.

Whichever way this happens, the Bylaws requires that the members is notified of this meeting 60-90 days in advance.

There has been three open letters:

1. SCRID: See three letters between May and June 2nd involving Dr. Webb, the Board, and Southern California RID Affiliate Chapter leadership. The third letter is most relevant but I included all three for context.

2. Deaf Caucus: Original letter sent on May 24th. Board responded on June 14th to request a meeting (after my meeting with them).

3. Special Membership Meeting Request: Jesus (President) and Kate (Treasurer) met with me, Rupert, on June 14th. I explained to them the following:

• I don't speak for anybody and only made my motion for a special membership meeting so that conversations can happen. 

• Explained the 8 motions I had ready:
  a. Record all future meetings with draft minutes published within 5 days (easy)
  b. Switch from Robert's Rules of Order (RRO) to Martha's Rules (hard, requires bylaws change)
  c. Conversion from Board to Special Membership Meeting (possible if Board does not block it)
  d. Make the CEO an Ex-Officio officer (no vote) but invited to all Board meetings
  e. Provide Deaf Caucus formal advisory authority to review and provide input on all board affairs
  f. Limit Closed Sessions (30 minutes maximum, document in minutes the reason)
  g. Resolve all conflicts of interest within 48 hours (Shonna, VP, to choose either operations or board member role)

• Declined to serve as the Chair for the upcoming Governance Task Force.

• Emphasized the need to communicate and improve transparency with members.

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