What We Lose When the Community Can't Speak

Our board has told us that its meetings are business meetings. And I want to take that seriously for a moment. Because if we're going to run this community like a business, then we should expect the things that make businesses work: accurate information, answered questions, and decisions that reflect the best available thinking in the room.

By that standard, the last board meeting was instructive.

Three things happened. And I'd like to walk you through all of them.

Incident One: The Expert Was in the Room.

During the bylaws committee's report, a board director raised a concern. The concern was this: had the bylaws workgroup been properly constituted? Did it have the authority to do the work it was doing?

A committee member - a person who could answer that question with precision, with history, with firsthand knowledge of exactly how that workgroup came to exist — was sitting in that room. They raised their hand.

They were not called on.

So the concern went unresolved. The false premise was allowed to stand. And then — because unresolved concerns have a way of doing this — it came up again. Later in the same meeting.

The board spent its time, and yours, debating a problem that did not exist. The person who could have ended that conversation in thirty seconds was never given the floor.

During the report of their own committee.

Incident Two: The Board Answered a Question Nobody Asked

A community member submitted a question to the board. It was a practical question, a reasonable question, the kind of question that makes organizations run better. The question was: Will the board define a policy so that committees know how to draft articles the board will approve for the newsletter?

Committees need guidance. - that's how you help people do their jobs.

The board motioned. The board voted. And the board managed to do all of that without answering the question that was asked. Instead, there was confusion over what question the agenda line referred to. The board voted to require that all newsletter content be reviewed and approved by the full board before publication.

A new bureaucratic step. Created in response to a question about how to reduce confusion. The original question, the one that prompted all of this, remains unanswered today.

The community member who had asked it raised their hand. The board was not answering their question. They wanted to say so.

They were not recognized.

I want to be precise here, because precision matters. This is a story about a governing body that could not correct its own course — because it had decided, in advance, that the person trying to correct it didn't get to speak.

Incident Three: What Happens When You Actually Ask

Near the end of the same meeting, the board was evaluating options for hybrid meeting equipment. A director quoted some figures. A community member in the room knew those figures were wrong and indicated as much. This time, the community member was called on.

They corrected the numbers. The director, to their credit, then asked for their opinion on which option to go with.

And here is where it gets interesting.

In the course of answering, the community member offered a suggestion that hadn't come up anywhere in the prior discussion. Not in committee. Not in the meeting. Not before that moment. The suggestion was this: buy one unit now, not two. But establish a clear, measurable threshold — a defined condition — that tells the board exactly when it needs to pull the trigger and purchase the second.

It was a better answer than anything that had been on the table. The board adopted it.

That idea did not exist at the start of the meeting. It emerged because someone was asked.

You told us these are business meetings.

In two of the three incidents I just described, you made worse decisions — or used more time — because the people with the most relevant information couldn't contribute. In the third, you made a genuinely better decision because you opened the mic.

That is your evidence. Gathered in a single meeting. By your own process.

Good businesses don't silence the people closest to the problem. They don't let false premises go unchallenged because the person who can challenge them wasn't on the approved speaker list. They don't answer questions nobody asked and call it governance.

Meaningful community comment is not a courtesy. It is not a platform for grievance. It is a quality control mechanism — and the data from your own meetings shows exactly what it costs when you don't have it.

Other hands went unrecognized on March 17th, and we have to wonder what else was lost.

You have the power to make comment meaningful in one of two ways -

Provide all information before the meeting, including the wording of motions and relevant documents, so members can correct or add clarifying questions to support your discussion.

Or re-enable real time (in discussion) community comment.

The question isn't whether community comment slows things down, or makes your job more difficult.

The question is what it cost this community the last time you decided it didn't matter.