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Vote on agenda v new business later


Guest toni

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In the Call to the Annual Meeting - our group always asks for new business to be sent 7 days in advance of the meeting (although we will typically accept items until the last minute). As I understand it, at an annual membership meeting, the agenda is proposed by the chair, and voted on by the members. If all new business is on the agenda when the agenda is voted on and approved at the beginning of the meeting, and after people have had notice and an opporutniy to add items, can we prohibit members from adding new, new business under the new business part of the meeting?

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In the Call to the Annual Meeting - our group always asks for new business to be sent 7 days in advance of the meeting (although we will typically accept items until the last minute). As I understand it, at an annual membership meeting, the agenda is proposed by the chair, and voted on by the members. If all new business is on the agenda when the agenda is voted on and approved at the beginning of the meeting, and after people have had notice and an opporutniy to add items, can we prohibit members from adding new, new business under the new business part of the meeting?

Yes, by adopting an agenda, the assembly can limit what will be introduced at the meeting.

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In conventions, it is sometimes necessary to adopt a parliamentary standing rule that limits members' ability to introduce original main motions from the floor without first suspending the rules. This is not generally the practice, however, in annual meetings of local units of ordinary societies.

The effect of adopting an agenda is to establish an order of business and, perhaps, to make some orders of the day. Nothing about adopting an agenda, per se, limits members from introducing new topics after the orders of the day have been gone through.

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Aren't both JJ and RE slightly neglecting to make a clear distinction between "Order of Business" and "Agenda"?

The latter is no more that a list of specific business items to be brought up under (presumably) the proper places in an already established (via RONR, usually) "Order of Business (OoB)". Adopting an agenda per se doesn't alter the order of business in any way, nor preclude bringing up other (new) business at the appropriate time in the OoB.

If one wishes to explicitly add another piece of business to an adopted agenda, that would require a 2/3 (or MEM) R/ASPA motion, but the proponent of the new item could equally well wait until "New Business", after the agenda was exhausted, to bring up his item (hoping that the meeting doesn't adjourn "too soon").

Toni's organization may have a special rule in place that requires that ALL business items be "pre-announced" but that is a rule of theirs, not RONR's rule. 2/3 could suspend that anyway.

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Aren't both JJ and RE slightly neglecting to make a clear distinction between "Order of Business" and "Agenda"?

No, because of two factors.

First, this an "annual membership meeting," might indicate that the society meets annually.

Second, even in the cases of meeting held at least quarterly, the rules could be suspended to permit some alternative to the order of business.

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