Second PEC CLC meeting doesn’t even happen

I’m back from the PEC CLC meeting, which I was late to and so missed the fireworks.

A bit of background to begin.  The Terms of Reference which we worked so hard on specifically stated that the PEC was to be represented on the Community Liaison Committee (CLC) by a senior management official.  So one of the many disapppointments we had during the first CLC meeting was that PEC was represented by their favourite spokesperson, Ted Gruetzner of Public Relations, who has no authority and just shrugs his shoulders at everything.  We demanded that this be rectified for future meetings, and that much was agreed to.

For this second CLC meeting, we were asked to prepare a dispute resolution proposal a week ahead of the meeting.  We did.  PEC responded that the proposal (which was neither long nor unusual) required a great deal of thought and that therefore the second meeting would have to be postponed.  There was general agreement among the community members of the CLC that this was not acceptable, as many of us had set aside the time for this meeting.

Well, I was late.  By the time I arrived, Ted Gruetzner, apparently disheveled and babbling only semi-coherently (like I said, I wasn’t there — this is how rumours start), had declared that we had some issues that we should resolve with the consulting firm that is mediating discussions, and left abruptly before the meeting had even begun.

Having thus defeated the quorum required by the Terms of Reference, PEC had torpedoed this meeting.  So now we’re up to 2 completely unproductive meetings, or 4 if you count the first 2 which were called to create the CLC.  Everything is behind, PEC is throwing up barriers and the building just keeps moving ahead.

The community is holding strong.  Now we just have to figure out what we do next.