As many Sustainable Tompkins subscribers know, TCLocal is a group of area citizens working to plan for a future Tompkins County in which much less energy is available to fuel our cars, grow our food, and heat our homes. Every month or two we publish an article addressing some aspect of local "energy descent" planning on our web site, tclocal.org.
To provide for orderly management of the collective work created by the group, TCLocal functions in a rather formal manner governed by its members, who meet once a month in Ithaca to determine ongoing policy for the organization. This is why we don't invite everyone in the area to attend the meetings. The advantage of this way of working is that the group conducts business in an orderly way and gets a lot done. The disadvantage is that many people who might be interested in the work of TCLocal simply don't have the time to consistently engage in policy-making. In the two and a half years since TCLocal was started, several people have asked whether it was possible to contribute articles to the work in progress without committing to the policy-setting end of the operation. The group has now changed its formal Terms of Reference to accommodate these requests by distinguising between Contributors and Voting Members. To put it simply, Contributors are people who commit to making a specific contribution to the work of TCLocal, whereas Voting Members are Contributors who also commit to attend meetings on a regular basis and help to set policy for the group. We hope that the effect of this change will be to make possible contributions from more people in the local sustainability community. It may also expand use of the members-only TCLocal mailing list, which is now open to Contributors as well. If you have an interest in some aspect of local energy descent planning, are willing to commit to researching and writing a preliminary plan for how Tompkins County can begin to deal with that aspect, and agree to the conditions set forth in the TCLocal Terms of Reference (http://ibiblio.org/tcrp/process/terms.htm), please contact the current TCLocal chair, Simon St.Laurent ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) to join TCLocal as a Contributor. Jon Bosak Editor, TCLocal _______________________________________________ For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please visit: http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/ RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: [email protected] http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
