The Bend Chamber of Commerce board of directors will meet in a special session Monday morning to reexamine the organization’s position on a gay-rights ordinance before the city council.

Chamber Board Chairman Dana Bratton said the 18-member board will meet at 7 a.m. Monday at the Pepsi Cola Bottling Company office in Bend to discuss the proposed anti-discrimination ordinance.

The meeting is not open to the public.

Bratton said the board will consider whether it wants to submit additional comments to the city before the deadline for additional remarks at 5 p.m. on Monday.

”We’ve moved our meeting up three days so that we might be able to provide additional public comment, if the board chooses to,” said Bratton, a local real estate appraiser.

The decision to move up the meeting came Thursday afternoon after the board’s executive committee convened to discuss the issue.

The executive committee is a six-person subcommittee of the board or directors.

The Chamber has drawn fire from some members of the business community and praise from others for its opposition to the proposed ordinance that would make it illegal to discriminate against a person in Bend based on sexual orientation.

The proposed law, which has already received a public hearing and could be adopted at the city council’s April 21 meeting, covers the areas of employment, housing and public accommodations, such as a restaurant.

Last week, Chamber CEO Gary Peters told The Bulletin that the 1,500-plus member Bend chamber staked out its position after polling members, who, he said, opposed the new law by a margin of 7 to 3. The results of that survey, said Peters, were presented to board members who voted to oppose the ordinance over concerns that its language opened up area businesses to baseless lawsuits.

On Wednesday, Peters told The Bulletin that board members never actually convened in a meeting to vote on the organization’s position. Rather, Peters said he contacted board members by e-mail to inform them that the chamber was going to publicly oppose the proposed law.

Peters said the e-mail went out over three days – March 29, 30 and 31 – prior to the March 31 public hearing.

A majority of board members wrote back in support of the position, with several people not responding. Peters said he interpreted the nonresponses as either neutral or in favor of the chamber position.

”One-hundred percent of board members received e-mail,” he said. ”I got responses back and got positive responses back.”

Peters said he relied on e-mail because there wasn’t enough time to call a board meeting to decide the issue as the final draft of the ordinance wasn’t posted until March 25.

Instead, Peters said the chamber called a special meeting of the board’s executive committee, of which Peters is a member.

That meeting, he said, was conducted over e-mail.

Peters said it is the first time during his roughly seven-year tenure that the chamber has called a special meeting of the executive committee, electronically or otherwise, to consider a special board vote.

Board member Jade Mayer said Thursday afternoon that he was pleased the board would have a chance to re-examine the proposed ordinance. ”I welcome that opportunity,” said Mayer, the chief financial officer at Brooks Resources, a real estate and development company in Bend and one of the area’s major employers.

”I think the chamber is a good organization when you look at it as a whole,” he said.

”I honestly believe it works hard for small businesses and that (the board’s) position was not communicated as clearly as it could have been.”

Other board members contacted by The Bulletin about the chamber’s decision-making process either did not return phone calls, declined to comment or referred calls to Board Chairman Bratton.

Bratton informed The Bulletin of Monday’s chamber meeting in a telephone voice message Thursday afternoon. He could not be reached for further comment Thursday.

On Wednesday, Peters said board members had ample time to respond to the e-mail if they had concerns about the chamber position.

”They read exactly what I read to the city council,” he said. ”If they had said, ‘I don’t support this,’ I would have gone directly back to my executive committee and said … we are not going to give testimony (to the city council).”

But that is not what happened, Peters said.

The board supported his position, he said.

If board members feel otherwise, he said, it’s not because they didn’t have a chance to comment on the chamber’s position before he testified at last week’s public hearing.

”The heat that some people are taking has them looking in a different light at this,” Peters said.

While there were several chamber board members who didn’t respond to the call for comments, Peters said the onus was on them to contact the chamber staff if they had concerns.

”There was plenty of time for a phone call, an e-mail, a letter, a personal visit,” he said.

Eric Flowers can be reached at 541-383-0323 or eflowers@bendbulletin.com.