I think this member of the Fort Wayne-Allen County Airport Authority should be gracious and leave the board so that someone with more time and/or interest can be appointed:
Sports agent Eugene Parker has attended less than a third of the meetings of the Fort Wayne-Allen County Airport Authority, on which he serves, in the last year. Even so, he continues to have the support of Mayor Graham Richard, who appointed the Roanoke-based lawyer to the board in July 2004.
During the last two years, Parker has a better attendance record, getting to more than half of the 26 meetings. But he has missed 10 of the last 14 and seven of the last eight.
I've been on enough boards to know that the adage is true: 20 percent of the people do 80 percent of the work. One of the reasons it is true is that there are too many people join boards just to have the membership on their resume, and too many are asked to join because of who they are, not how committed they are to the organization or how hard they might work. And the people who make the appointments seem to never learn. Mayor Richard should be embarrassed to have said this, he really should:
“I think Eugene has the community's interest at heart and has the business background and community background that I look for when I make appointments to the board,” Richard said. “I think everybody sets their own particular standard as to what is important, and how they are going to conduct themselves as far as attendance at meetings.”
Richard said Parker's background, business connections, frequent travel and local upbringing make him a valuable part of the board. As an African-American, Parker brings “an added sense of diversity” to the board, Richard said.
There it is -- diversity, which apparently trumps everything. Sorry, mayor, if Parker doesn't show up, he isn't valuable. On the boards I've served, some of us (yeah, the 20 percent) would not have cared if every single new member had been one-eyed lesbian vegetarians or tobacco-spitting Republican truck drivers, as long as they came ready to work.
