The Hyack Festival Association is in shambles following a meeting on Tuesday night that went ahead even though Hyack president Gavin Palmer had called off just two hours before it was slated to start.
Palmer cancelled the meeting because five Hyack directors had resigned that day, but it went forward anyway. Roughly 25 members turned up and voted to remove Palmer, vice-president Alan Wardle and treasurer Gloria Munro.
"Gavin is not longer president. Gloria is no longer treasurer, and Alan Wardle is no longer vice-president," said Ron Unger, one of the Hyack directors who resigned Tuesday, but still turned up to the meeting.
The members voted "overwhelming " in favour of the removal of the three Hyack executives, but it leaves the board without enough directors to function, Unger said.
"We have a lump of a board because the five of us have resigned, and so we have less than seven board members remaining," Unger said. "It is a problem. We don't have seven board members, and our constitution requires any motion of the board pass with a quorum of seven. "It's really tragic because Gavin had no right to do what he did last night," Unger said, referring to Palmer's decision to cancel the meeting, "and yet he went ahead and did it, but his actions are consistent with what he did in the summer - act without regard to due process and rules, and it just creates a big mess."
Palmer said he cancelled the meeting as a result of the resignation letter from Unger and his fellow directors: Patti Goss, Bill Radbourne, Stephen Loyd, Ron Unger and Mariane Kazemir.
Palmer could not be reached to comment at press time after Tuesday's meeting.
The association has been dealing with an internal dust-up between those who support the former executive director and those who wanted him fired.
In their letter, the five directors said they "fervently fear" that if Palmer, Wardle and Munro, along with a group of past presidents, continue to control the direction of the organization they will destroy Hyack.
They criticized the Palmer camp's management of Hyack, which hosts the city's largest and most popular annual parade and related events.
The decision to fire former executive director Douglas Smith cost the association and was done without board approval, says the resignation letter submitted by the five former directors. The Hyack brouhaha began when Smith was fired on July 31 and later reinstated. He then left the organization when Palmer and his fellow executive members did not resign.
