Does RR's require Special Committee Meetings to be open to membership

[BVKO]

Aloha, 

I'm hoping to find a "protocol" that might be available in a link or forward that would provide a newly appointed Special Committee Chair that was appointed by the chair that would give me a reference for: 

Required notice of scheduled committee meetings

Records needing to retained from the committee ( are mailed notices, agendas, minutes of meetings and committee reports ) all required to be maintained and then turned over the Secretary of the Association?

Is a special committee required to allow members to attend the committee meetings, participate, etc? 

Our past special committee meetings have been named by the Chair without a motion or vote and the chair of the committee and it's members were appointed at the same time. 

All committee meetings we private with the 3 members and no members (of a membership of 247) were notified of meetings, invited to attend, and not provided any info other than the committee report. There is a criticism that this is nothing other than a discussion of Board business with the potential of a specific outcome and that the deliberative process and intent of the Committee is to remove the membership from participation and discussion. 

It's looks like a special committee is required to be open to the membership, notices sent, etc with a less formal and restricted forum than a Regular Board meeting and the primary function is to enable open discussion by all members desiring with the Committee members then charged with the duty to recluse only for the preparation and the committees recommendation as noticed by a sole vote of the Committee Members. 

Excerpt  from 52 RR ~ "

It is the duty of the chairman to call the committee together, but, if he is absent, or neglects or declines to call a meeting of the committee? it is the duty of the committee to meet on the call of any two of its members. In small special committees the chairman usually acts as secretary, but in large ones and in all standing committees, it is customary to elect a secretary, who keeps a brief memorandum of what is done, for the use of the committee. Members of the society have a right to appear at the committee meetings and present their views on the subject before it at such reasonable times as, upon request, the committee may appoint. But during the deliberations of the committee no one has a right to be present, except members of the committee.

Thank you very much 

[Gary Novosielski]

20 minutes ago, BVKO said:

Aloha, 

I'm hoping to find a "protocol" that might be available in a link or forward that would provide a newly appointed Special Committee Chair that was appointed by the chair that would give me a reference for: 

Required notice of scheduled committee meetings

Records needing to retained from the committee ( are mailed notices, agendas, minutes of meetings and committee reports ) all required to be maintained and then turned over the Secretary of the Association?

Is a special committee required to allow members to attend the committee meetings, participate, etc? 

Our past special committee meetings have been named by the Chair without a motion or vote and the chair of the committee and it's members were appointed at the same time. 

All committee meetings we private with the 3 members and no members (of a membership of 247) were notified of meetings, invited to attend, and not provided any info other than the committee report. There is a criticism that this is nothing other than a discussion of Board business with the potential of a specific outcome and that the deliberative process and intent of the Committee is to remove the membership from participation and discussion. 

It's looks like a special committee is required to be open to the membership, notices sent, etc with a less formal and restricted forum than a Regular Board meeting and the primary function is to enable open discussion by all members desiring with the Committee members then charged with the duty to recluse only for the preparation and the committees recommendation as noticed by a sole vote of the Committee Members. 

Excerpt  from 52 RR ~ "

It is the duty of the chairman to call the committee together, but, if he is absent, or neglects or declines to call a meeting of the committee? it is the duty of the committee to meet on the call of any two of its members. In small special committees the chairman usually acts as secretary, but in large ones and in all standing committees, it is customary to elect a secretary, who keeps a brief memorandum of what is done, for the use of the committee. Members of the society have a right to appear at the committee meetings and present their views on the subject before it at such reasonable times as, upon request, the committee may appoint. But during the deliberations of the committee no one has a right to be present, except members of the committee.

Thank you very much 

The excerpt you quoted is not from the 11th Edition of RONR, but rather from the century old version.  There are substantial differences.

• RONR 11th ed provides that "reasonable notice" of committee meetings must be given to all committee members.  No notice is required for non-members.  The quorum for conduct of business is a majority of the members of the committee.
• Committees do not typically keep minutes as such, but may keep notes or memoranda for their own use. There is no requirement that they be distributed outside the committee.  The only document that must be provided to the parent body is the committee's report, which is given to the parent body and filed by the secretary. 
• When a special committee is charged with considering important matters, it will typically find it useful to hold hearings at which members of the society are given the opportunity to attend and offer their views.  Except at such hearings, scheduled by the committee, non-members of the committee do not have a right to attend, except by invitation.
• Any or all of the above may be superseded by rules contained in the bylaws or special rules of order adopted by the society.

 

[BVKO]

That is very helpful and I appreciate the updated info. 

Mahalo

[Gary Novosielski]

15 hours ago, BVKO said:

Mahalo

You're welcome.

[Richard Brown]

BVKO, as Mr. Novosielski pointed out, the version of Robert's Rules you quoted from is the 100+ year old 4th edition, which is available online.  I imagine that's where you found it.  We are currently in the 11th edition.  It is not available online, nor is any other edition subsequent to the 4th edition.  Get yourself a copy of the 11th edition.  It is much enlarged and approved over the 4th edition and is only $12 plus change at Amazon.   It's 716 pages plus 50 or so pages of introductory material and tables.  The 1915 4th edition is only around 320 pages.

Edited February 12, 2018 at 11:24 PM by Richard Brown

[jstackpo]

And

RONRIB:

"Roberts Rules of Order Newly Revised In Brief", Updated Second Edition (Da Capo Press, Perseus Books Group, 2011). It is a splendid summary of all the rules you will ever need in all but the most exceptional situations. And only $7.50! You can read it in an evening. Get both RONRIB and RONR (scroll down) at this link:

http://www.robertsrules.com/inbrief.html

weighs in at exactly the same number of pages as the original first edition of Robert's Rules -- no coincidence there, methinks.

[Benjamin Geiger]

Tangentially: Are there any plans to release RONR 12th ed. (or even 11th ed.) in any sort of electronic format (ePub, Kindle, etc)? I know it'd be a lot more convenient if I were able to pull up the book on my tablet instead of carrying around dead trees.

[Richard Brown]

You do know that the 11th edition is available on CD - ROM , right? 

[Richard Brown]

 http://robertsrules.com/default.html

Edited February 13, 2018 at 06:34 PM by Richard Brown

[Benjamin Geiger]

I had heard about that, but as it's only available for Windows, it only helps me when I'm at home sitting in front of my Windows PC, and not when I'm away from home and using my (five-year-old) Mac laptop, or at a meeting on my (year-old off-brand) Android tablet. Plus the price is prohibitive; I'm currently unemployed so I can't afford $75 for another copy of RONR.

Edited February 13, 2018 at 06:46 PM by Benjamin Geiger

[Gary Novosielski]

4 hours ago, Benjamin Geiger said:

I had heard about that, but as it's only available for Windows, it only helps me when I'm at home sitting in front of my Windows PC, and not when I'm away from home and using my (five-year-old) Mac laptop, or at a meeting on my (year-old off-brand) Android tablet. Plus the price is prohibitive; I'm currently unemployed so I can't afford $75 for another copy of RONR.

The 11th edition was, for a little while, available in Kindle form, and then later, including now, was no longer for sale.  The same applied to RONRIB.  One of the major drawbacks to the Kindle edition is that it does not preserve the original page and line numbers, making citations problematic.  Instead it used "kindle locations" which were not indexed or translatable to page numbers.

Since that time, Kindle has reportedly solved the problem of page numbers in reference works, but I have no information about whether the 12th edition, whenever it comes out, will be available on Kindle, which would be way more affordable than the CD version.  I can hope, but the authorship team has been perfectly sphinxlike on the issue.  If I had to guess, I would not put money on it.

[jstackpo]

4 minutes ago, Gary Novosielski said:

The 11th edition was, for a little while, available in Kindle form, and then later, including now, was no longer for sale.  The same applied to RONRIB.  One of the major drawbacks to the Kindle edition is that it does not preserve the original page and line numbers, making citations problematic.  Instead it used "kindle locations" which were not indexed or translatable to page numbers.

FWIMBW, the index in the Kindle version of RONR uses the (real) physical page numbers as the clickable links to the text.  So a little detective work (and a copy of the book) lets you make reasonably good page references.

[Richard Brown]

Aren't there conversion programs available that let the CD-ROM version be used on Apple devices?  Are they viable?

[Benjamin Geiger]

I mean, I could boot the whole thing into WIndows if I wanted to set aside 100+ GB of my 500GB drive for it, or I could run a virtual machine (which would still require a sizable investment of drive space). And that doesn't help with the tablet.

PDFs keep the original page layout, so that's an option that doesn't risk having references go awry.

Edited February 14, 2018 at 12:40 AM by Benjamin Geiger

[BVKO]

On ‎2‎/‎12‎/‎2018 at 1:21 PM, Richard Brown said:

BVKO, as Mr. Novosielski pointed out, the version of Robert's Rules you quoted from is the 100+ year old 4th edition, which is available online.  I imagine that's where you found it.  We are currently in the 11th edition.  It is not available online, nor is any other edition subsequent to the 4th edition.  Get yourself a copy of the 11th edition.  It is much enlarged and approved over the 4th edition and is only $12 plus change at Amazon.   It's 716 pages plus 50 or so pages of introductory material and tables.  The 1915 4th edition is only around 320 pages.

Thank You again. I thought I was just stuck in the Sixty's