The Metro Arts Board of Commissioners held a special call meeting on October 10, 2024, at 1:45 PM CT. The meeting was convened to address unfinished business from a prior meeting where quorum was lost, specifically regarding the employment status of Executive Director Singh and quorum clarification. Commissioners voted unanimously to accept a settlement agreement for Director Singh's resignation and extended his administrative leave. Public comment was received, and the interim director provided a first-week update.
Okay. Sorry. Okay, good afternoon, everyone. I'm going to call the special call meeting of the Metro Arts Board of Commissioners to order. It is 101. I like to get started on time to respect your times because this is we are going into a holiday weekend, and also this was not originally on our calendars. If you recall from our last meeting, this meeting is called because we did have some unfinished business that we needed to vote on. We ended up losing quorum last week, and we do have quorum this week, so we can go ahead and make some decisions and some action items. One reason that I call it this meeting is because on May the 30th, we will essentially have two people doing the same role. And we need to figure out how we address that because we can't have that. And so we are going to that was the reason I would call this meeting, and so we will follow the agenda as printed and as posted on our website. But first I would like to turn it over to I don't see Vivian here. Do we so we can do public comment? We have some public comment. Yeah, yeah. Okay, yes. Oh, yes. Um let me find um are you gonna do the okay perfect. Okay. Lady, come on, yeah. Okay, go ahead. Okay. I want to address language about Thrive and local artists. In an email sent to this body with extremely misogynistic language from a white commissioner, Nephlin wrote, Your solutions addressing me are selfish and short-sighted. It's interesting that Thrive recipients, significantly more BIPOC than general operating, are characterized as selfish. But the Symphony going bankrupt multiple times and demanding taxpayer money is not, or TPAC getting 200 million from the state last year and then demanding their full six-figure sum from Metro Arts is not selfish. Or that the opera crying over a decrease in funds is not selfish. But when I asked for 20,000 to fund four different projects and six different artists total, the most Metro Arts has ever funded the Arabic speaking community. And when I myself have not had the energy to practice my own art, I am a selfish person. Nephlin, you should be ashamed of yourself and this commission should be ashamed that no one reached out after seeing such violent language from a white commissioner who was out of line. His logic is like Republicans who disparage welfare moms, uh sucking up government money and being lazy and no good, but never have such intellects thought to analyze why Walmart is a top employer with employees on food stamps because it is not due to any fault of the Walmart employees who are not lazy, but rather the depravity of Walmart management, which actively chooses not to pay a living wage and leads to this dependency on public funds to subsidize wages. Walmart calls it a business model when it's an exploitation of public funds. Corporate greed, in other words, is not selfishness according to people like Nephlin. It's a bona fide business model. And according to people like Nephlin, calling that out and exposing it is the problem. The more y'all allow violent language on this commission, the more harm you will commit as a commission. Thank you. And that was the last public comment. Okay. And so I do want to acknowledge we did receive an email from um Miss Janine Cristiano. Um all the commissioners received that. I do want to acknowledge that because she did email that um email her comment to us. So the next thing on the agenda is our staff and communications update. And so we do again need to address um director C's employment status and also the interim director um update. And right now, because there's a a lot has been going on, there's been a lot of conversation about how we address this, what we do, and I do want to we do have um Director Dietz here today, and I would love to turn it over to him just to give us a little background on where we are, how we got here, and just any updates that you have for us. Thank you, Madam Chair, and hello, Commissioners. Um prior correspondence from attorney Jamie Holland, who represents director saying that um Mr. Holland and I had settlement negotiations two to three months ago that um did not result in a settlement. I'm not going to go into the reasons why, but we were not able to come to agreement. Over the weekend, Mr.