Dear Austin Tamil Community,
This email is coming from the undersigned past board members of ATS who served the Tamil community in Austin.
We have been getting a lot of inquiries about the recent issues at ATS. We gathered the following information to explain what happened and how the issues are being resolved:
- There were some internal issues at the ATS board in July and a moderators committee was brought in to resolve the issues through an arbitration process.
- All board members graciously agreed to step down when the moderators committee suggested dissolving the board.
- Moderation committee formed the transition team with an additional member. This transition team then called for new nominations for the board on 8/5/18.
- After an extensive interview process, the transition team announced a brand new board on 8/17/2018, with all of them serving for the first time on the ATS board. The team that was selected as per the official communication are:
- Board of Directors: Balaji Krishnan, Chidambaram Vairavan, Praveen Bhattar, Sakthivel Sabapathy, Shanmuga Sundaram
- Executive Committee: President: Kaliaperumal Arumugam, Vice President: Sunder Ponnurangam, Secretary: Karthikeyan Annapillai, Treasurer: Hari Iyer
- This team took oath on 8/19/2018
- The transition team then presented a binding agreement with over 15 terms to the selected candidates.
- The team did not agree with one of the terms in the agreement about the permanency and power of “permanent advisory council” and this caused issues between the newly selected team and the transition team.
- The transition team announced another team in a communication on 8/29/2018
As the past board members of ATS who have served you all, we would like all issues to be resolved and ATS to be united and functional again.
- We thank the transition team for reinstating the members of BoD and EC selected on 8/19/2018. Our congratulations to the members of BoD and EC. We fully support this team.
- We recommend that there should be no permanent councils and all roles should have defined term limits.
- We request that all ATS Sponsors, ATS Patrons, and ATS Volunteers to welcome and support this team in a united way so that they can start working towards the betterment of the community.
- We request that all members of the new team announced on 8/29 to put community first once again, show your generosity, and support this team.
Thank you
2017-2018 Board Members
Mani Rathnavelu (President)
Selva Ekambaram (Treasurer)
Murali Dhandapani (Secretary)
Sankar Muthusamy
Vilvakumar Sundaramoorthy
2016-2017 Board Members
Saravanabavan Vaitheeswaran (President)
Arulnambi Raju (Vice President)
Vijay Balasundaram (Treasurer)
Vaishnavi Ramanujam (Secretary)
Chinna Natesan (Advisory Board Member)
Krishna Sankar (Advisory Board Member)
2014-2016 Board Members
Anbu Krishnaswamy (President)
Shankar Chidhambaram (Vice President)
Bala Beddhannan (Treasurer)
Suganthi Govind (Secretary)
PG Ramachandran
Jey Iyempandi
Sam Kumar (Advisory Board Member)
Gankeyan Kanthasamy (Advisory Board Member)
2012-2014 Board Members
Mahendran Nagarajan (President)
Dhinakar Karuppuchamy (Treasurer)
Ignatius Cruz (Secretary)
2010-2012 Board Members
Shankar Palaniyandi (President)
Before 2010 Board Members
Basu Vaidyanathan (President)
Sridhar Adapalli (Vice President)
Gankeyan Kanthasamy (President)
