Committees

Last updated: August 30, 2022

VMICC is a Washington organization dedicated to the community of Vashon
Island. Volunteers are essential to keeping the organization running and healthy. There
are multiple ways in which you can volunteer. One of the best is to join a committee. If you are interested in other ways to help, please contact Diane Emerson at dianeemerson@yahoo.com 

Currently Active Committees

 Communications Committee

The Communications Committee has been designing and publishing this website,
writing about and promoting upcoming meetings in the print, radio, and social media,
plus designing and putting up posters in the community, in both English and Spanish (when we can find someone to do the translating for us). 
The Communications Committee is composed of two teams: the Website Team and the
Outreach Team. The Website team designs and updates the website. The Outreach
team promotes our meetings on many different social media platforms, the newspaper,
radio, e-mail, community calendars, and posters. There are current openings for
someone to help with 1. Instagram 2. Twitter 3. Facebook 4. Posters

Diane Emerson and Michaella Olavarri, both of whom are board members, are the co-
chairs of the communications committee. They work together with the Secretary, Gavin Kovite, on the wording for announcements, and then the common message is sent out to committee members for
posting on the website and all the other outreach methods. Diane leads the Website
team, and Michaella leads the Outreach team. To attend either team meeting, or to see minutes of the meetings, please contact Diane Emerson at dianeemerson@yahoo.com or michaella@vmicc.net

Aviation Noise Committee

This committee is formed now. David Goebel has agreed to chair the committee.
Interested people can contact David through his website: https://vifs.org/

Click here to view the Aviation Noise Committee September meeting minutes. 

David Vogel is the board liaison for this committee.

Affordable Housing Committee

The Chair of this important committee is Morgan Brown.  The meetings are usually held on the 2nd Monday of the month, between 7pm and 8:30 pm.  Please confirm with Morgan, and contact him to get a link to request attendance at a meeting or join the committee’s mailing list: morgan@wholewater.com

Here are the minutes for the Affordable Housing Committee:

Equity, Social Justice, and Inclusion Committee

Chaired by Kevin Jones

Meetings are held the first Wednesday of each month, at 6pm. To attend, please contact Kevin Jones at kevinjonvash@gmail.com, or 206-463-1766

 

Forming Committees

Here is the procedure for forming a committee when an issue arises and there is enough interest from the community to work on it. 

  1. Ask the board if the issue warrants forming a committee of the Community Council. If the answer is ‘Yes’, then the person who wants to see a committee formed needs to recruit interested people to participate in the committee.
  2. The Community Council President appoints an interim chair
  3. The interim chair review the requirements for committees in the VMICC Bylaws and Policies and Procedures
  4. The interim chair arranges a first meeting and informs the VMICC board and the community at large about it.
  5. At the first meeting, a chairperson and a regular meeting time are determined.

Inactive Committees

Active Transportation Committee

This committee is looking at traffic safety, and focusing on making things safer for people who are using active transportation: walking and bicycling.  This committee is seeking leadership. Interested? Contact Diane Emerson, dianeemerson@yahoo.com
 
Nick Simmons is the Board liaison for this committee.

Vashon Childcare Committee

 Board Liaison Gavin Kovite. For the minutes of the first two meetings of the committee, click here.

This committee is seeking leadership. Interested? Contact: 206-755-7041, gavin@vmicc.net

 

Dog Park Committee – Now ‘Vashon Unleashed’

The Dog Park Committee is reforming as an independent nonprofit organization, Vashon
Unleashed. For more information, contact Michael Shomsky, mtshomsky@vmicc.net

Bylaws Committee

The Bylaws committee met several times to work out the details of VMICC’s bylaws, which were approved by the community at the June 15 2020 meeting.

Governance Committee

The Governance committee worked to draft the Policies and Procedures, and worked to make sure they matched up with the Bylaws. The Policies and Procedures were also approved at the June 15 2020 VMICC meeting of the full community.

Nominations Committee

The Nominating Committee for our first elections in November 2020 functioned more like a recruitment committee. Rather than vetting and selecting candidates for the Board, the committee members used Island-wide media and their personal contacts to encourage all residents to consider self-nominating. The goal of the Nominating Committee was to recruit as many candidates as possible. They recruited 14 nominees for the board election held in the fall of 2020.

Elections Committee

In 2020, because of COVID-19, elections were conducted electronically with help from Opavote, https://www.opavote.com/about.  The Elections Committee members studied Opavote’s system, and the concept of a single transferable vote: https://www.opavote.com/methods/single-transferable-vote. This is the type of ranked choice voting used in our type of election, where we elected a group of people, and not an individual. 

The Elections Committee worked with the Communications Committee to promote the election, and encouraged people to sign up to vote. 270 people voted in the November 2020 board election.  If you would like to see a summary of the ranked choice voting process and how it all worked for our election, please contact Diane Emerson at diane@vmicc.net