A Counterpoint
The Trust Board members have been working on a revision of the obsolete Trust Document. My concern is that it still needs revisions to take out any articles that are already in the Constitution. It is not necessary to have a pseudo-Constitution, which in my opinion, causes confusion.
Now that the Tribe has had its Federal Recognition restored, the only purpose of the Trust Document is to oversee the Distribution Plan for the social services programs in the plan. Additional, redundant, unnecessary, and confusing information will lead to the document being turned down at the polls.
Since the tribal staff and accounting department are quite adequate in carrying out the function of the Distribution Plan and since the annual budget is also prepared by the accounting department, the only job of the Trust Board members is to be an oversight committee, although the Tribe has built in checks and balances for oversight. Actually, if we continue with a Trust Board (since the Arvest Management is the actual trustee), I think we may be delaying dissolving both the Trust Document and Trust Board out of sentimentality. Both are of no further use to the operations of the Tribe.
The reasons it is no longer needed:
1. We have our Federal Recognition.
2. The Board is not the Trustee of the judgment funds.
3. The staff and accounting department do the work of the Board.
4. The Delaware Citizens serve on the programs’ committees and can chair those program committees.
Another glaring problem that exists with the Trust Board is that only three members who are currently serving are elected. Four are appointments
So, be sure to attend the Town Hall meetings this month. I would like to hear good reasons for keeping the Trust Board, since I don’t believe there are sound, long term reasons for keeping it.
Annette Ketchum
Delaware Tribe of Indians
Councilwoman
918-337-6590
aketchum@delawaretribe.org
D5 Creation