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Tabled Items Timeline for action


Guest Douglas Kelsey

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Guest Douglas Kelsey

Four months ago our building and grounds committee recommended that our board not accept a building because of the cost of remodeling would be to high. When this recommendation was brought to the board other board members asked that the recommendation be "TABLED" until additional information could be gathered.

Due to illnesses both personally and family, the key member gathering the information did not get the additional information for (Four Meetings or four months). As chairman of the board I was recently criticized for not acting on the tabled motion at the first meeting following it being tabled. I was told that this motion had to be acted upon at the next meeting following it being tabled and by not doing so I violated Roberts Rules.

What is the time line for handling tabled motions and how should they be acted upon in subsequent meetings?

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... other board members asked that the recommendation be "TABLED" until additional information could be gathered.

Everything is wrong with that sentence.

1. How do you table a recommendation? The subsidiary motion "Lay on the Table" is applied to motions.

2. You can't Lay on the Table anything for a specified amount of time.

3. A motion is made by one member, not "members."

4. A member doesn't "ask" for something to be Laid on the Table. He "makes a motion" to Lay on the Table.

I hope that sounded more helpful than snooty. I'm a little sleepy. [sleepy face not found]

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This was all wrong starting from the "TABLED until...".

The motion to Lay on the Table is used to suspend consideration of pending motions so that a matter of some urgency can be taken up. It is not used:

  • to defer consideration of a motion until later in the meeting
  • to defer consideration of a motion until a future meeting
  • to wait until you get more information
  • to ask someone to get more information
  • to get rid of a motion that may be inopportune or where resolving it either in the positive or the negative might be undesirable
  • and so on, and so forth

The motions to Postpone Indefinitely, Postpone to a Certain Time, and to Commit would serve the above purposes; a motion to refer the Buildings and Grounds committee's report back to that committee (or some other committee) with instructions to gather the required information would have been the most desirable result.

As others have noted, whatever it was that you tabled has now died because it was not taken from the table by the end of the next session. But it can be renewed at any future meeting with minimal fuss.

I am ambivalent as to whether the chair should call a meeting's attention to a matter that is on the table and about to die if the meeting is going to adjourn.

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