by Charles S.P. Hodge
When President Gray called the conference call meeting of the ACB board of directors to order at 9 p.m. on March 4, all board members except for Paul Edwards, and directors Alan Beatty and Billie Jean Keith, were present. Shortly after the meeting commenced, Edwards and Keith were able to join the call. Charlie Crawford and Jim Olsen were also in attendance. Gray began by asking ACB first vice president Steve Speicher to report on an ongoing matter.
Speicher explained that he had been searching for ways to harness the considerable energy which had been engendered in many segments of the organization when the ACB board recommended against ACB's signing onto the GDUI Department of Justice complaint on behalf of Stephanie Dohmen. Speicher said that he had proposed to both GDUI and the Iowa state affiliate that a positive outcome might be achieved if they were to jointly contribute to fund a broadly based research project to investigate the extent of discriminatory practices against guide dog teams by rehabilitation agencies serving people who are blind across the country.
Mitch Pomerantz reported for GDUI that that organization's board has discussed the proposal and declines at this time to participate. Pomerantz said that GDUI might be willing to participate in such a research project if ACB were to ask all ACB affiliates to contribute and participate. Gray told the board that he has asked Pomerantz to head a task force which will be reaching out to identify guide dog handlers who may have faced discriminatory treatment by rehabilitation agencies. For example, Gray continued, ACB has good reason to believe that agencies in both Texas and New Mexico may be engaging in discriminatory practices like those of the Iowa Department for the Blind, against guide dog users who seek rehabilitation training in those states.
The board then turned its attention to the matter of proposed changes to ACB's reasonable accommodation guidelines for attendees at ACB-sponsored functions. After considerable discussion and debate, the revised policy was adopted with several clarifications. The policy departs from earlier guidelines in these important ways:
- ACB volunteers will not be responsible for or be expected to administer, dispense or identify medications for convention attendees.
- ACB is not obligated to intervene on behalf of or with any attendee in any financial matter other than the attendee's payment of convention pre-registration or on-site registration fees. Therefore, ACB's chief financial officer is free to determine, on a case-by-case basis, whether to cash personal or affiliate subsidy checks for convention attendees.
- Designated responsible ACB officials may, in extraordinary cases, bar a convention attendee from further convention functions where such an attendee has purposefully placed another attendee, companion(s) or service animal at risk.
The board then turned its attention to a major item which had been deferred to this meeting at the conclusion of the mid-year board meeting, namely whether to implement the budget center/cost center concept as a methodology for administering ACB's ongoing budgetary and financial affairs. After a rather lengthy discussion in which several alternative assignments for budget center control were discussed, the board agreed to designate a single employee in the Minneapolis office as the person responsible for obligating and recording encumbered funds against authorized budget line items. The budget committee will meet to firm up the details of this arrangement and report back to the board at its next conference call meeting in April. By consensus, the board tentatively agreed to hold its next telephone conference call meeting five weeks hence on Tuesday evening, April 8. In addition to considering the budget committee's revised budget center proposal, other agenda items for the next meeting may include a report from the ad hoc committee regarding attendance by ACB national organization representatives at state affiliate conventions, contracting authority and approval authorization for entering into such contracts, and presentation of a potential 2008 convention site selection proposal.
Finally, in response to a question posed by board member Dawn Christensen, Ed (Doc) Bradley explained that the intent of his mid-year motion was to remove authority to pay reimbursement requests for board per diem expense for the remainder of the budget year, but not to undo the previously agreed to one-day expense reimbursement the board had already agreed to for the mid-year meeting.
With no further business to conduct, the meeting adjourned at 10:45 p.m. Eastern time.