Resigning secretary.

[Guest Kris Green]

The current secretary for our group is resigning after one year in this position. This is normally a 2 year position. He had been a board member (past president, serves for 5 years), but when he took the position of secretary he vacated his board position. You can't hold 2 board positions. He is now under the impression that he can return to his board position. The board elected someone to fill his board position when he vacated it to take up the secretary position. Our general understanding is he does not have a board position to return to seeing as how he vacated it and it was filled by another person. Does he have a position to return to?

[Mr. J!]

Does he have a position to return to?

The answer depends on a careful and complete reading of your bylaws.

[hmtcastle]

The current secretary for our group is resigning after one year in this position. This is normally a 2 year position. He had been a board member (past president, serves for 5 years), but when he took the position of secretary he vacated his board position. You can't hold 2 board positions. He is now under the impression that he can return to his board position. The board elected someone to fill his board position when he vacated it to take up the secretary position. Our general understanding is he does not have a board position to return to seeing as how he vacated it and it was filled by another person. Does he have a position to return to?

No one on this forum has a good thing to say about formalizing the position of immediate past president and the situation you describe is just more evidence.

One could argue that, since he can't stop being the immediate past president, he can't stop being an ex-officio member of the board. More recently, others have argued, persuasively I think, that he can resign from the board even though he can't stop being the immediate past president (until the current president leaves office).

But it's not clear that you can fill his vacancy on the board since that seat belongs to the immediate past president. Or maybe you can.

In any case, I'm inclined to say that his resignation is final. Especially as he's resigning from his second position in one year.

[Guest Kris Green]

The answer depends on a careful and complete reading of your bylaws.

Our bylaws do not specify this.

[David A Foulkes]

One could argue that, since he can't stop being the immediate past president, he can't stop being an ex-officio member of the board.

I'm not sure Kris is talking about "immediate past president" as the position the soon-to-be ex-secretary held. And although he didn't employ the phrase "immediate past president" in reference to this "past president", if in fact that is the position he was filling on the board prior to the secretarial role, I can't see how that position could be validly filled after he resigned to be secretary, as you so astutely put it "he can't stop being the immediate past president."

Kris - I might be inclined to ask this fellow to offer some sort of support for his argument of being able to re-take his old board position. And that too will need to be found in the bylaws, I suspect.

[Guest Kris Green]

Allow me to be a little more specific.

The board is made up of the following:

President

Vice-President

Secretary

Treasurer

3 immediate past presidents (who will each serve 5 consecutive years on the board)

This person was a board member as a past president. He was president in 2007-2008.

[hmtcastle]

Allow me to be a little more specific.

The board is made up of the following:

President

Vice-President

Secretary

Treasurer

3 immediate past presidents (who will each serve 5 consecutive years on the board)

This person was a board member as a past president. He was president in 2007-2008.

I'd say you couldn't fill the past president seat with anyone else and you can re-appoint the resigned past president but his return to the board is not automatic,

But it's ultimately up to your members to interpret your bylaws. No one here has read them in their entirety.

[Guest Victor]

I'd say you couldn't fill the past president seat with anyone else and you can re-appoint the resigned past president but his return to the board is not automatic,

But it's ultimately up to your members to interpret your bylaws. No one here has read them in their entirety.

WOW! How do you fill the position of past president?

My guess is there would need to be a temporary rule to allow an unseated member to serve if the intnet is to keep an imbalance of votes. The past president and the secrretary as one person should only have been permitted one vote, thus the necessity of filling the vacant seat. Can you resolve this by making the new member the Secretary, keep the chairs filled and not rearrange the Board?

[Kim Goldsworthy]

The board is made up of the following:

. . .

3 immediate past presidents (who will each serve 5 consecutive years on the board)

Impossible.

• You can have an infinite number of past presidents.

• But you cannot have more than one immediate past president.

(I assume you don't have co-presidents; if you did have co-presidents, then you'd have two immediate past presidents every election cycle.)

This person was a board member as a past president. He was president in 2007-2008.

Ah-ha!

Then this person is not an immediate past president.

He is a past president.

The guy who was president in 2010, or 2009 (depending on when your elections were held) is the immediate past president.

[David A Foulkes]

Allow me to be a little more specific.

The board is made up of the following:

President

Vice-President

Secretary

Treasurer

3 immediate past presidents (who will each serve 5 consecutive years on the board)

This person was a board member as a past president. He was president in 2007-2008.

These 3 IPPs -- is there any language that asserts they must be the three most recent IPPs? If not, and you apparently had at least 4 at the time of the secretary's switch in office, then I'd venture he's out of luck here. If language does contain 3 "most recent" (or similar phrasing) immediate past presidents, then I don't see how his vacancy could have been filled.

[Guest Kris Green]

Allow me to rephrase again.

3 consecutive past presidents.

[David A Foulkes]

Allow me to rephrase again.

3 consecutive past presidents.

If he was one of these 3 consecutive past presidents, and by that calculation still is, I think you've got a problem. Whoever filled his vacancy was not in that group (I'm guessing) and just because he took the office of secretary does not negate his past (consecutive) presidency. You can't undo that. IMHO.

[Mr. J!]

Allow me to rephrase again.

3 consecutive past presidents.

And there you have a problem, if one of the consecutive past presidents dies, or moves away and drops his membership, or "resigns" to become secretary.

The solution depends on a close and careful reading of these bylaw provisions in context. All else is speculation.

[Guest guest]

There's another consideration: If the Secretary is absent, will the resigning secretary refuse to take minutes at a meeting?

While there is a designation and there are duties that are the responsibility of a postion, those duties can be delegated to another. The Chair can appoint a Secretary for the meeting....

I'm on a board with two secretaries with a division of duties. Yet, we delegate our responsibilities to each other. I'm not web-page savvy, the other is--I remain responsible for the content. The other lives 30 miles away and can't pick up the mail. I'm two blocks from the Post Office. I open the mail and scan the pertinent documentsthat need to be dealt with immediately.

Perhaps the resigning secretary con be convinced to delgate his duties.