Meeting Guidelines
Elkhorn Slough Early Mitigation Project (ESEMP)
1. Each person recognizes this is a collaborative process and agrees to participate in good faith, including listening carefully and searching for opportunities to meet others’ interests.
2. Each person recognizes the importance of attending meetings and agrees to make every effort to attend each meeting. A participant may name an alternate to participate in meetings which the member is unable to attend, and if an alternate is named, that alternate accepts the responsibility of assuring continuity in participation. Each person has the responsibility to keep his or her alternate informed. Alternates will make every effort to attend meetings. In the absence of the member for whom the alternate is named, the alternate may act in all matters on the member’s behalf.
3. No one or two people will dominate the discussion.
4. Each person agrees not to withhold relevant information from other members.
5. Each person agrees that discussion will be limited to agenda items, except insofar as time allows after the agenda has been covered for discussion on another topic.
6. Each person will turn cell phones and other electronic communication devices off or to vibrate during meetings.
7. Meetings will be managed by a neutral facilitator from UC Davis. The facilitator will honor and implement the schedule of meetings and the ground rules and other agreements adopted and will guide discussion so that meetings are as productive as possible. The facilitator and UC Davis participants will neither agree nor disagree with positions taken or proposals advocated. The facilitator may intervene to keep discussions on track and on time.
8. UC Davis agrees to provide a secure web site to facilitate communication among the participants.
9. Draft agendas will be prepared by the facilitator in consultation with participants.
10. Summary minutes of meetings will be kept and circulated for review by all participants. Minutes will reflect issues and concerns as well as the status of the group’s work.
11. The preferred method of decision-making for this series of meetings will be by consensus. Consensus decisions shall be defined as decisions that all the meeting participants can live with, with no meeting participant adamantly opposed. Each person at meetings agrees to make every reasonable effort to hear and accommodate the concerns of those not in agreement.
12. The consensus process of decision-making does not apply when a particular agency decides whether or not to permit a transportation project.
13. Each person agrees that to the extent that the participants do not reach consensus on all points, the group may indicate the issues on which agreement was reached and those on which agreement was not reached and move on.
14. Participants may discuss freely and with sensitivity the work of the ESEMP. Any publications utilizing information produced by this group will require consent of the participants prior to publication.
15. These ground rules apply to meeting and listserve participants.
16. It is the joint responsibility of the group and the facilitator to ensure that these ground rules are observed.
17. Discussions regarding actual land parcels are confidential. Names and locations will be removed from meeting minutes and sites will be referenced generically.
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