By David

I imagine Swimming Wellington was well pleased with the slick timing of their move to add Chris Dyhrberg’s name to the list of those attending their March Board meeting. I wonder if it ever occurred to any Wellington types to claim that his name was always on the minutes. I wonder if it ever occurred to any Swimwatch critics to speculate that the author of Swimwatch had just fabricated a litany of lies to make the Wellington Region look bad.

Well if anything like that did happen, an anonymous commenter has found the original minutes of the March meeting and sent it through. It appears as a comment on my post from yesterday. Thanks, “Quicklink” (the name the commenter left). Much appreciated! Here is the message I have just received from Jane.

“The file with 1 at the end of the file name in the URL is the modified one, the file with “2014” at the end is the original.

http://www.swimwn.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2006/07/SW-Minutes-12-March-20141.pdf – modified

http://www.swimwn.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2006/07/SW-Minutes-12-March-2014.pdf – original

Attached, in case they take either down as well.”

In other words, the original minutes are still online; Swimming Wellington just changed the URL linked to on this page to point to the file name with a “1” after “2014” and before “.pdf”. I’m sure they’ll now delete the original file, but we have saved both the file and a screenshot of it live online for posterity. Enjoy:

Original URL and minutes:

Modified URL and minutes:

Full document (original minutes).

Full document (modified minutes).

And so we have the “smoking gun”, the evidence that the approved minutes were altered without Board approval, without a motion of consent and in violation of any meeting protocols. There is a problem when organisations start doing this sort of thing. There are some nasty people out there. People who may believe that an organisation capable of making a change like this may make more serious changes in the future. Today’s addition of a Board member’s name might be the beginning of a slippery slope. Imagine if members began to fear that qualifying times were being altered, meet details were being changed or police reports were being fabricated. That’s why the rules are there of course.

And so thank you “Quicklink” the anonymous commenter for finding that and sending it through, and thank you Jane for saving the two versions. Two geeks may have just confirmed our Swimwatch story. But more importantly two geeks may have made the Wellington Region of the new Swimming New Zealand more respectful of the rules.

Altering minutes and fiddling with Board votes was the stock-in-trade of the old Swimming New Zealand. We could have done without it then and Wellington we can certainly do without it now.