What happened, of course, was that First Vice President Joan Christianson was interrupted by Mincheff, twice.  Christianson became upset, and eventually left the meeting.

It started because Mincheff was seeking to amend minutes of a previous meeting.  She wanted them to include her reason for not submitting minutes of an even earlier Common Council meeting.  Her reason, she has said, is that she was protesting RIRA President Patrick Stewart's accepting a Governor's appointment to the RIOC Board, rather than insisting on a RIOC Board seat on an ex officio basis – that is, because he is President of the Resident's Association.

An aside:   That's an interesting issue, in itself.  By accepting the Governor's appointment rather than insisting on a seat by virtue of his RIRA Presidency, Stewart may have undermined the RIRA Constitution's claim that the RIRA President should have a seat on the Board.  It may also raise a question as to his allegiance – to the Governor or to the Island residents who elected him President of the Residents Association.  Further, of course, he gets to serve on the RIOC Board past the end of his term as RIRA President – something that doesn't sit well with those (including Mincheff) who have now concluded Stewart is not really serving Island residents, or RIRA, in some of his recent actions or inactions.

But leaving that matter alone for the moment, the verbal melee that crashed around Mincheff's head started because Christianson was attempting to comment on whether or not Stewart should have accepted such a position.

Stewart was allowing her to do it.  It may be a fine point, but what was up for consideration at that moment was the content of the minutes being approved – not the right or wrong of Stewart's acceptance of the Board seat, and not the quality of Mincheff's reasoning.  As tempting as it must have been to allow Christianson to defend him, Stewart could have resolved the whole matter quickly by letting Mincheff present her request for a change in the minutes, discussing it briefly, and letting the Council vote the change up or down. Whatever the outcome of the vote, the Council would not have been passing on the correctness of Stewart's action, nor on the correctness of Mincheff's protest – only on whether to change the minutes.

A vote would have ended it.

By allowing Christianson to delve into the reasoning behind the motives Mincheff wanted included in the minutes, Stewart contributed to the fight that followed.

Another aside:   There is a claim that Mincheff was attempting to amend the minutes of the previous meeting to include words that she never spoke at that meeting.  In terms of the altercation between Christianson and Mincheff, that had no effect.  Mincheff's request for a change in the minutes still could have been voted up or down, and that would have brought a simple end to the matter.

Dealing with this matter wouldn't be complete, of course, without addressing the question of whether Mincheff, when serving as the Common Council's secretary, was right or wrong in withholding minutes of a meeting as a protest against something Stewart did.  There are probably very few who would endorse that action, because withholding the minutes of a RIRA Common Council meeting hinders all of RIRA's business.  Not only that, but it's a terribly ineffective way to protest anything.

So in this, all the principals were wrong:

• Christianson was wrong to use consideration of the minutes to defend Stewart's acceptance of the Governor's appointment.  That matter wasn't under consideration.
• Stewart was wrong for allowing that diversion.
• Mincheff was wrong for failure to perform her duties as secretary, protest or not.
• Mincheff was also wrong for interrupting Christianson.
• Christianson shouldn't have walked out of the meeting. By doing so, she made far more of an issue of two relatively minor and brief interruptions than was necessary.
• Stewart was wrong for not using simple parliamentary procedure to end the matter quickly.
• Finally, a handful of Common Council members were wrong for wasting nearly an hour of Council meeting time on Mincheff's two relatively minor interruptions, when what they really wanted to deal with is her overall attitude and style – a matter that was not Council business on the September 13 agenda.

Wrong on all counts, all the way around.

DL