Five members of the Social Development Commission are raising concerns about the anti-poverty agency’s governance procedures after calling a virtual emergency meeting Tuesday, May 19.
No action was taken at the meeting because there were not enough SDC commissioners present.
“We don’t get a notice, nor do the items that we request get placed on the agenda,” said SDC Commissioner Walter Lanier.
Lanier said he emailed a meeting agenda to board members on Tuesday that stated he and fellow commissioners Dessie Levy, Pam Fendt, Richard Diaz and Jackie Q. Carter called an emergency meeting to elect board officers and discuss securing property/liability insurance for the SDC building located at 6850 N. Teutonia Ave.
Emergency meetings may be called by at least five board members, according to SDC’s bylaws.
Interim CEO and board chair responds
Jorge Franco, interim CEO and board chair of SDC, said the meeting was invalid because the items on the agenda were ordinary board business and not urgent issues and the board has a regularly scheduled meeting set for Thursday, May 21.
The anti-poverty agency’s board has continued to meet regularly since SDC halted its normal operations in April 2024. The agency’s programs over the years included weatherization, lead abatement, tax assistance and job training.
In recent years, the organization has faced challenges, including board turnover, losing community action grant funding, lawsuits and ongoing debt.
SDC is insolvent and currently working to address its debt and other responsibilities with only one paid staff person, Franco said.
“SDC remains fully compliant with its SDC bylaws, including the regulatory compliance fact that its first fiduciary duty is to creditors and those others to whom SDC owes monies,” he said.
He said once the agency is appropriately funded and has the staff to capture meeting minutes and run public elections, those items will be prioritized.
“We’ve been told, ‘you’re worrying about formal stuff when we’re in an emergency,’ and I think the five of us who called the meeting today just reject that,” Fendt said Tuesday. “We don’t throw out all the rules and guiding principles of this important organization just because we’re in hard times.”
Lanier and other commissioners previously attempted to call a disputed emergency meeting in November that did not proceed with an agenda.
The commissioners present on Tuesday continued to have open discussion and asked questions to Fashika N. Willis, a professional registered parliamentarian, about state, county and city ordinances and the agency’s bylaws.
Commissioner attendance questioned
During the discussion, Levy said she had received an email from Franco on Monday, May 18 notifying her that she was removed from the board after exceeding the allowed number of unexcused absences.
“As I expressed to him in my response back, there has been no minutes, no motions or anything that causes, that warrants for me to accept [Franco] solely saying that I’m no longer a member of the SDC commission,” she said.
Levy was appointed to the SDC board by the Greater Milwaukee Committee last year.
Franco said he was following the SDC bylaws, which state that a commissioner shall be removed from office if he or she is absent without being excused from three consecutive meetings of the commission or is absent without being excused from five meetings of the commission in any 12-month-period.
“Not at my nor any other commissioner nor staff member’s discretions by any means, but because it is required by the SDC bylaws, the notice to Dr. Levy had to be sent,” Franco said.
Franco said Levy participated in Tuesday’s meeting after being removed as a commissioner.
Diane Robinson, SDC’s executive director and chief operating officer, is responsible for the roll call at each SDC board meeting and thoroughly reviewed the role call record with him, he said.
‘I am staying on’
He also shared legal analysis with the board to justify the action, he said.
Willis told the five commissioners that her professional opinion is that the bylaws do not have a method for unilaterally removing a commissioner without a vote.
Levy said she was not given onboarding training and is not the only board member who has missed meetings.
The board approved a meeting schedule at the end of last year. Date and time details have often changed on the day of the meeting, and board members have to check the website for information to appear, Diaz said.
Levy plans to attend the board meeting on Thursday and fight the removal.
“I am staying on,” she said.
What’s next
SDC has a regular in-person meeting scheduled for 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, May 21 at the Milwaukee Public Schools Central Services Building, 5225 W. Vliet St.
The agenda includes a closed session and public comment.
Meredith Melland is the neighborhoods reporter for the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and a corps member of Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities. Report for America plays no role in editorial decisions in the NNS newsroom.
