Deferring Board Agenda Items

[Guest Ali]

During a Board Meeting can a Motion be made, seconded and approved by the majority of the Board to move an Agenda topic forward to the next Board meeting?  Board Meetings are held monthly.   

[Hieu H. Huynh]

Yes, an item of business could be postponed by the board to the next monthly board meeting.

[Richard Brown]

I agree with Mr. Huynh.  What is being done amounts simply to postponing the matter to the next meeting.

[jstackpo]

However....  isn't it proper to move the postponement only when the item (from the agenda list) is actually pending before the assembly, i.e., has actually been moved.

Not proper to just pull an item off the agenda list and say "we'll do this one next time".

And if the agenda has not been formally adopted in the first place, then there seems but no choice but to wait until the piece of business has been moved.

Or...  I suppose we could confuse everybody and make the "incidental main motion" to postpone a detailed proposal to next time  --  sort of a preemptive postponement.  (I am not always clear on those pesky IMMs, anyway.  I tend to ignore them.)

[Ann Rempel]

Postpone is one of the five subsidiary motions for which there is a corresponding incidental main motion. (p. 66). An individual item of business that is not pending can, when appropriate, be postponed by means of a main motion. (p. 184).

[jstackpo]

But... can the item be postponed (by a majority vote for the incidental main motion to do so) when the item is included on a properly adopted agenda?  Or will it require a 2/3 vote to remove the item from the agenda first?

[Dan Honemann]

9 hours ago, Ann Rempel said:

Postpone is one of the five subsidiary motions for which there is a corresponding incidental main motion. (p. 66). An individual item of business that is not pending can, when appropriate, be postponed by means of a main motion. (p. 184).

 

6 hours ago, jstackpo said:

But... can the item be postponed (by a majority vote for the incidental main motion to do so) when the item is included on a properly adopted agenda?  Or will it require a 2/3 vote to remove the item from the agenda first?

I think you've both got it right.

If the time has not as yet arrived to take up an item on an adopted agenda, it will require either unanimous consent, a two-thirds vote, or the vote of a majority of the entire membership to adopt an incidental main motion to postpone it (RONR, 11th ed., p. 373, ll. 1-8), and if the agenda has been adopted for the entire session (which I think is ordinarily the case whenever an agenda is adopted), and if the presiding officer properly performs his duty (or a timely call for the orders of the day reminds him to do so), it seems to me that it will require a suspension of the rules by a two-thirds vote simply to be able to make the incidental main motion to postpone the not yet reached agenda item (RONR, 11th ed., pp. 222-223).

I hope it's worth the effort. 

[jstackpo]

It would seem so much easier just to wait until the item was reached on the agenda, and then moved.  Then postpone it in the regular way.

[Dan Honemann]

27 minutes ago, jstackpo said:

It would seem so much easier just to wait until the item was reached on the agenda, and then moved.  Then postpone it in the regular way.

Which, of course, is what probably happened in the situation described by Guest Ali. You're the guy who started all this business about doing it ahead of time.