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I want to follow up on Justin's heartfelt message of yesterday afternoon. I too did not sleep well over the events of Wednesday evening and I am honestly still feeling emotionally torn about it today.
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First our organizational by-laws are legal binding document filed with the State of California and the Federal Government. To maintain our status as a nonprofit 501(c)(3) we are required to act in accordance with those by-laws. It is therefore important that each of us be familiar with those by-laws. I raise this as according to Article VI paragraph 6.03 (c) of the By-Laws <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><em>"the terms of office shall be considered to begin on July 1 and end two years later on June 30th."</em></span>. As of now, we are all just Board members "elect" and not officially board members yet. Our terms do not begin until July 1. Consequently, we did not have the legal authority to accept Robert's resignation on behalf of the Association.
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Hear me out on this. I think this whole ordeal should be great learning experience for all of us. The lesson is to not act upon issues when emotions are running high. Tabling an issue can allow for more rational thought and analysis. In retrospect, we should tabled Robert's resignation and let it sit for a few days until everyone's emotions had calmed. If we hadn't acted right away Robert might have wished to rescind his resignation and/or attempted to amelorate this situation on his own.
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While we will never know for sure, I am one for giving people second chances. I think an opportunity exists for us to reach out to Robert and try to reel him back in as the Association's President. This is a position that he ran unopposed for and our members elected him to barely a month ago.
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Again, I have had no communication with Robert, have not attempted to contact him and I don't know him at all. However, reflecting back over the last year of the association, from my perspective Robert had to have been extremely frustrated. The existing board was nonfunctional, wasn't even having board meetings in violation of the by-laws. Robert was running the meetings as Jennifer Berry was the President but was largely absent for most of the last year. He didn't have a board to support him and he pretty much ran the show by himself. Jim was really the only person helping him at all. I remember at several of the meetings when people raised issues, he commented that Jennifer said she is going to take care of that and that he was waiting for her response. Consequently, he probably came into this presidency thinking he was going to have to be a very strong leader and that he would need to provide a lot of guidance and direction to the new board members. Obviously, that expectation did not mesh well with our expectations as we were all ready to hit the ground with our feet running. As we all know, once you have been running the show it is very hard to step aside.
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I would like to propose that we consider extending an invitation to Robert asking him if he would like to reconsider his resignation. This would tentatively entail having him meet with the elected board and for us to share our expectations of the president and see if there is room for reaching a common ground. If not, we are no worse than we are today. Again, I have no idea if Robert would even be amenable to such a request. The bridges may have already been burned but it seems to be the right thing to do, especially for someone who has been a twenty year member.
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Call me an optimist (which I am) but I think we have to potential to make lemonade out of lemons here. To my knowledge only those on this message are aware of the situation, as our members have not been informed. I am willing to be the bearer of the olive branch if the group wishes to pursue this matter. but I cannot predict how Robert might react. Obviously, I will stand by and support the majority decision of this group. This gets to the core of trust and treating each other with integrity even where there might not be unanimous board member consent to an issue. I am unsure if we need a call to discuss this further or a simple yea or nay will suffice?
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Please share your thoughts. If anyone wants to discuss individually with me, I am open to that too.
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For the bees,
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Gary Denison
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415-272-6245
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---------- Original Message ----------
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From: Justin Strom <westnovatohoney@gmail.com>
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To: Dana Pepp <danapepp@gmail.com>
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Cc: Jim Lawson <communications@marinbees.org>, board@marinbeekeepers.org
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Date: 06/25/2026 2:22 PM PDT
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Subject: Re: [board] Robert/president email
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Thank you everyone. I am very upset and emotional right now. I didn’t sleep well last night. I am so sorry 🥺
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