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I’m looking to have my thinking validated or corrected based on a situation that occurred recently with our local government. Since our local law establishes Robert’s Rules of Order as the authority on all matters not written into our code, I’m seeking some guidance. A City Councilor made a motion to suspend the rules to consider an order not filed with the clerk by the legal deadline. Motion seconded and passed 7-2. City Council is governed by local law outlined in Chapter 9 of city code. Chapter 9 is broken into 3 Articles: I: Rules and Ordinances II: Meetings III: Ordinances Under Chapter 9, Article I, it lays out the rules for conducting City Council meetings. Per §9-16, “In all cases where the parliamentary proceedings are not herein determined, Robert's Rules of Order shall be taken as authority to decide the course of the proceedings.” Under Chapter 9, Article III, §9-24, the local law lays out the following deadline for orders to be considered in order: “No proposed ordinance, order or resolve shall be in order at any meeting of the City Council unless said ordinance, order or resolve shall have been filed with the City Clerk on or before 4:00 p.m. of the fourth secular day prior to said meeting of the City Council, and, previous to the time for calling such meeting to order, each member of the City Council shall be furnished with a list of such ordinances, orders and resolves giving descriptive titles of the same and the name of the member by whom such ordinance, order or resolve is introduced.” RONR (12th Ed.) 25:7 states that rules written in the by-laws or constitution (which I assume also applies to local law) cannot be suspended unless there is a remedy written in the by-laws for doing so. The only remedy for suspending rules is Chapter 9, Article I, §9-15 which states: “The foregoing rules shall not be dispensed with except by a two-thirds vote of the members of the City Council, nor shall any rule or order be amended or repealed without notice, in writing, at the preceding meeting, nor unless a majority of the Council votes for the amendment or repeal.” The keyword there is “foregoing”, which I read to mean the rules laid out in §9-1 to §9-14. And they’re all aptly located in the Article titled “Rules and Orders”. On the other hand, §9-24, the rule they intended to suspend, is written later in the chapter in Article III: Ordinances. If that was a rule that was intended to be allowed to be suspended, they would have included it in Article I, in my opinion. Therefore, I believe §9-24 is not included in the remedy provided by §9-15 and therefore cannot be suspended per RONR (12th Ed.) 25:7. I believe the order they introduced with the suspension was therefore out of order and should not have been considered. Is this correct, or is there something else I should be considering here?

I checked on this site 3 or 4 years ago and found it much easier to navigate. I'm not finding the information I found then in regard to adjourning a meeting. Has it changed? At the time, I found something along these lines: "When a body has completed the scheduled order of business at a meeting and there is no further business for the assembly to consider at that time, the chair may simply declare the meeting adjourned without a motion having been made. " I've been doing it this way since. Is this still true? I still get people who insist a motion must be made and seconded to adjourn the meeting. Thanks