Amendments and revision to bylaws to be on meeting agenda

[mikalac]

An email was just sent our by the Pres. of our Association stating that the upcoming owner meeting notice will include several bylaws amendments and my bylaws revision. The unsaid Board strategy is to head my revision off at the pass with less substantial changes to the bylaws made by other owners.

 

Would it be in order for me to send to the Secretary my amendments to the bylaws as well as my revision for inclusion in her notice? That way, my changes must be considered by the owners, one way or the other.

 

Thanks for your help again, Norm

[Dan Honemann]

Look at what is said on page 593 in RONR, 11th ed., concerning general revisions.

 

If you are going to move the adoption of a complete revision of the bylaws, the bylaws that you offer to be substituted for the current bylaws should say exactly what you want the bylaws to say. Why propose the adoption of a new set of bylaws that you think needs to be amended?

[Dan Honemann]

Because the Secretary likely will put the bylaws amendments ahead of my revision on the agenda, and when the bylaws amendments are finished with, someone will move to adjourn, which will be accepted, the owners being sufficiently tired and hungry, thereby shortcircuiting my revision.

 

PS. My amendments won't be as complete as my revision,  but half a loaf ......

 

Norm

 

I'm sorry, I had the facts wrong. I thought that you were thinking about submitting proposed amendments to your own revision, not to the existing bylaws.

 

I am not aware of any rule in RONR that would preclude you from sending to the secretary, for inclusion in the call of the meeting, individual proposed amendments to the current bylaws as well as your proposed complete revision.

 

I suggest that you also read what is said in RONR, 11th ed., beginning on page 593, line 33, about the procedure to be followed when notice has been given that a number of amendments will be proposed.

[Guest Nancy N.]

Great Steaming Cobnuts, Norm. Did you up and finally decide you're doing a revision while I was asleep? Or do you think your president's e-mail (the illiterate git spells it without a hyphen; I assume Norm a.k.a. mikalac, and some day I would like to know why, knows better)

____

N. B. Some authorities and their quoters hold that I and my minions, er, colleagues, have lost the battle over "email" (retch ptui). I reply that the battle is not to the strong, nor to the brave: It is to the winners.

I'm gonna look for a different quote.

[Edgar Guest]

Norm

 

Norm

 

Norm

 

If you'd change your display name to "Norm Mikalac" you wouldn't have to keep appending "Norm" to your posts.

[Edgar Guest]

Your quaint manner of expression is difficult for me to understand . . . 

 

Welcome to the club.

 

Good idea. Let's see if I can figure out how to do that presently.

 

Thanks.

[Guest Nancy N.]

I got so worked up I didn't finish post #4. It should have read, leaving out the parenthetical and incidental remarks (without which I'd have much less to say, such as about irrelevancies and also crocodiles), "Or do you think your president's e-mail has any legitimate standing?"

On the other hand, maybe you're concerned that the readership of his e-mail, presumably maybe the membership list, will buy it. Hmm, A legitimate concern. Remembering that the secretary is part of the board cabal and will probably take the president's lead. Unless you actually did scare her or him into toeing the line by your getting around to contacting the attorney general or the mafia or crocodiles or whoever you were scaring her or him with in the last episode, or the last episode but one, I've misplaced my copy of "The Compleat Collected Annals Of The Parliamentary Misadventures Of Norm Or mikalac Whoever That Is" to check.

So you got some hurdles, and some choices. I might actually lean towards recommending to you that you (a) go the Revision route; that you ( b ) propose that your revision be taken before other amendments (per p. 584, lines 5-7, referring to the chairman's arrangement of proposed amendments: "Such arrangement of the amendments can be altered by the assembly by a majority vote without debate"), remembering that an undebatable motion can be presented with a few words of introductory explanation, such as "This will actually save us time, it will probably cover most of the other proposals, and while it may look daunting, the bulk of it is boilerplate or house-cleaning, I forget which s which"; and there was a "©" but I forgot it by now.

[Guest Guest]

[Computer problem. This might be a mess.]

[i'm going to have to cut-and-paste. Perhaps sloppily.. Apologies.

[Norm:]

Your quaint manner of expression is difficult for me to understand, ...

[Nancy N:].

It wasn't so much quaint as incompetently incomplete, as I said in Post 11, but you and I cross-posted.

________

[Norm:]

,,, you should know that for many threads I have solicited the advice of the forum pundits on how to get my revision considered at the 9/20/14 owner meeting ,..

[Nancy N:]

I do very well do know; I have spent hours reading it all (while consulting with my dim-witted but exasperatingly imperturbably affable alter-ego) at great length. I'm pretty sure that for a while -- probably at the beginning -- you were leaning towards submitting separate amendments, and you thought you were being coerced into submitting a revision. (Try going to what is essentially the Contents Page, the General Discussion forum, and put "boring" into the word-search box and hit Enter, and see what we said. You don't think you were distinctly militating for separate amendments, distinctly not a Revision? Really?)

But this I will let go if you like, because it's probably both a minor point, and moot, unless you're interested in what I said in Post 11's third paragraph.

But you're living there. I'm not.

__________

[Norm:]

Knowing the contents of the prez's e-mail (so you'll be able to spend the remainder of today to unadulterated bliss)

[Nancy N.:]

LOL . You young people, so whimsical, now I have hope for the future.

________

[Norm:]

..., I now want to propose amendments to the bylaws ...

[Nancy N.]

Just to dot the t's and cross the i's, and not being patronizing, please, really:, you got to follow the procedure for proposing amendments to the bylaws, which should be towards the end of the bylaws themselves. Which I'm even a little embarrassed to mention, but it's those ti's and i's. You got to dot and i' them.

______

[Norm:]

. To counter this underhandedness, I now want to propose amendments to the bylaws to meet the Board's dastardly enterprise.

[Nancy N:]

Dammit, Norm, you're hurting my head!

___________

[Norm:]

. I'm looking for the forum pundits' advice on my correct procedures ....

[Nancy N.:]

I'm almost thinking this should be a separate (bifurcated, you college graduates) thread.

_________

[Norm:]

... the hands of Counsel, the Board's mouthpiece, who knows who butters his bread.

[Nancy N.:]

We have heard about "Counsel" before, but be mindful that, if you're referring to a Lawyer (or, let us genuflect, an Attorney), he is not any more particularly versed in parliamentary procedure, which is what we're specifically looking at, than is a butcher, baker, or a candlestick maker (that's a paraphrase or a quotation from about eight years ago on this website, the world's premier Internet Parliamentary forum, and I might even be able to document it, but frankly, not likely, it's a little old).

_______

[Norm:]

. I'm looking for the forum pundits' advice on my correct procedures...

[NN"]

I think I gave you some in the second half of the third paragraph of Post #11. I acknowledge we might be cross-posting; it's been a busy morning here.

[Edgar Guest]

[Computer problem. This might be a mess.]

 

It is a mess.

 

Have you no shame?

[Guest Nancy N.]

Dammit, Post 13 was me.

For that matter, Post 11 was supposed to finish Post 5, not Post 4. I rarely venture to finish Dan Honemann's sentences, especially since he does so well at it especially in contrast to how I often fail to finish my own.

O tempora, O mores.

(Which I lamely submit as a pitiful excuse.)

[Edgar Guest]

Nancy, please fix the machine so you can communicate with to us coherently. 

 

Both Mr. Mikalac and Ms. N. would be well-advised to use the "quote" feature built in to this forum. No need for different colors. No need for "Me:" and "You:".

[Josh Martin]

Me: This approach has merit, but what form does my motion take? There is no example on that page that I can see.

 

"I move that the revision be considered before all other amendments."

[Guest Nancy N.]

I need a recipe for how to use the multiple quote system. However, I might still like to put some panache into the posts.

I've never been able to figure out how to use Multiquote, myself. if I have comments on three remarks in a post, I hit Quote three times, then laboriously cut out from the first Quote everything except what I'm going to respond to first; then do the same for the second and third Quotes (I don't like using "quote" as a noun, but here it's either a proper noun, as the actual name of a function of the website, or, dare I say it, a term of art). It can take an hour, in addition to actually composing the text, made more difficult by working in the little box, which necessitates scrolling up and down and up and down ad nauseam. (I think Josh Martin once admitted he routinely goes through this grueling process, although he sounded like he didn't mind it so much, or found ameliorating shortcuts.)

But I don't understand Edgar Guest's and Norm Mikalac's difficulties with my post 13 ("mess," post 14, and not "coherently," post 16). If they, or anyone else (I'd appreciate someone else; I'd like a third, maybe bystander, opinion please) would please explain their problem with it, that would help me. After looking at post 13 a few times, I don't see how it's not completely clear: I clearly label an excerpt of Norm's, then follow with a clearly labelled reply from me. Over and over. Eight exchanges. If I were to try composing such a post with going through, over and over, hitting the Quote button eight times, spending most of the rest of the day cutting the pieces up, over and over, I'd go nuts*.

(Maybe Norm and I should ask about this in the About This Message Board sub-forum. Especially if he's maybe becoming at least a semi-regular. Maybe trying answering a few questions from other people, given his new and developing acumen. Which would be nice. Maybe then Edgar and me and Dan and Josh and stuff could maybe take a day or so off this year or maybe next year or 2018 and go fishing in West Virginia or somethin.)

______

*It's tempting, but don't. It's too easy.

[Guest Nancy N.]

"I move that the revision be considered before all other amendments."

After thinking more about owner ignorance and apathy, I realize that I have live with wherever the chair and sec'y put my list of amendments and revision on the agenda because the owners won't have the nerve to oppose their decisions; any motion of mine for a rearrangement of the agenda will fall on deaf ears.

...

Whatever the outcome, I will give notice during the meeting that I will move to revise the bylaws at the next owner meeting. Sooner or later all the amendments of my current revision will have to be considered.

For pity's sake, Norm, c'mon. Just make the motion. What can it hurt? And for pity's sake, these are your neighbors: can't you talk to some of the before, what is it, September 20?

... Y'know, I admmire taking the long view, but really. "Wait till next year" was fine for Mets fans through most of the 1960's, but not for the place you and your neighbors live. Year after year? You're not building the Pyramids, you want this job done before your grandchildren retire to Florida.

[Guest Nancy N.]

... Have you no shame?

Yeah, but usually about indecent corporeal fantasies, not typing format.

[JayW]

I've never been able to figure out how to use Multiquote, myself.

MultiQuote is for replying to several different messages at once, rather than several different parts of a single message.

if I have comments on three remarks in a post, I hit Quote three times, then laboriously cut out from the first Quote everything except what I'm going to respond to first; then do the same for the second and third Quotes

If you want to use the Quote format and don't need to link to the original post, it's much easier. If you're a visual person, you just click on the little 'word bubble' image in the reply format area (on my screen, it's seventh from the right on the bottom row, just to the left of the twitter icon). Then you insert the text between the start and end code. (Or, for even greater ease, copy and paste the text you want to quote, select it, and then click the little word bubble image.)

If you're more inclined to code and keyboard rather than mouse and image (or if the word bubble isn't clickable as it, inexplicably, is not for me in this reply), just type [ quote ] (without the spaces) at the beginning of the text you're quoting, and [ /quote ] at the end of it (again without the spaces).

If you need to credit the quote, you can type name="person's name" within the opening [ quote ] code. For example, the above quotes, which credit Nancy N. but do not link back to her original post, are coded [ quote name="Nancy N." ] without, as before, the spaces.

[Gary c Tesser]

... If you want to use the Quote format ...

Thanks very much. I'm trying it right now (by "coding"; I don't even see any word bubble, or even any bottom row. There's a vertical stack of icons on the bottom left, but Twitter is the top one, with nothing like a word bubble in view).

[Gary c Tesser]

It's OBE now, but just the same, I would like to know for the future what form the motion would take. "Just make the motion." in front of 100+ owners and, on being challenged on its orderliness, to lie or reply, "duh", is not my style....

Start with Post 19, OK?

You have the option, before or after the motion, of saying a few words of explanation, such as the sample at the end of "Nancy N's" Post 11.

... Maybe we have also to assume two scenarios, (1) Seriatim and (2) As a Whole, but I don't know how this choice matters...

2 things.

1. After the bruising here and especially Carl Guest's mishmash, I'm going to start suggesting that people say "Consideration by Paragraph" rather than "Seriatim." If only because RONR seems to prefer it And I hope everybody else does this too. Too much highfalutin' booshwah. We'll get into less trouble. Speaking of which ...

2. I have no idea what you're asking here. (Are you now thinking it's possible that your revision will be taken up??!? And if it is, what in sam hill do I do now??)

[Edited to add the second quotation, the one with "Seriatim" in it, and my reply; I had dropped it out.]

[Edgar Guest]

I'm trying it right now (by "coding"; I don't even see any word bubble, or even any bottom row. There's a vertical stack of icons on the bottom left, but Twitter is the top one, with nothing like a word bubble in view).

The row of icons with Twitter on the top (mine is horizontal so the Twiiter icon is on the left) are not the buttons you should be looking for. There should be two rows of icons immediately above the text box you're typing in. The left-most icon (it looks, to my old eyes, like a lower case "n" but that's apparently not what it is) will toggle the BBCode Mode off and on. If you turn it off you can play around with copying and pasting, then turn it back on to see what the results are.

[JayW]

The left-most icon (it looks, to my old eyes, like a lower case "n" but that's apparently not what it is) will toggle the BBCode Mode off and on.

 

 

Ah, that's why I couldn't click on the word bubble! (I think it's supposed to be a switch, actually.)

 

ETA: By "it" I meant the BBCode toggle button, not the word bubble button.

[Gary c Tesser]

"I move that the revision be considered before all other amendments."

We are not communicating, but I don't know how to make more lucid my request for the words for a motion for rearranging the agenda lists of amendments so that mine comes first. Can another pundit help?

I stepped aside, but after five hours, I'm stepping in again. You have the above sample from Mr Martin. Swapping your "amendments" for your "revision," you get:

"I move that my proposed amendments be considered before all other amendments."

(You can leave out "proposed": I like it, because it clarifies, though it's not common, and not RONR canon. But it seems I'm not doing too well in the clarification department lately anyway.)

Will that help maybe?

[Gary c Tesser]

... There should be two rows of icons immediately above the text box you're typing in. The left-most icon (it looks, to my old eyes, like a lower case "n" but that's apparently not what it is) will toggle the BBCode Mode off and on. If you turn it off you can play around with copying and pasting, then turn it back on to see what the results are.

Thanks; I accept that there should be, but there are none. (That's here on the old machine, a hand-me-up eMac from about 2002. The newer computer, the one with Ubuntu and Chromium and whatnot, decided to take a coma about four days ago. I hope to look for those two rows of icons on that machine if we ever wake it up.)

[Gary c Tesser]

That works for me. But since we are rearranging the agenda, don't we need a 2/3 vote? I'm missing something important here because on page 594, lines 5 thru 7 it states that the motion needs only a majority vote . I'm not able to distinguish between two kinds of motions and that's what I need to learn.

Mmm. To start with, I suspect we have been somewhat misusing the term "agenda." (I do often fall into that trap myself.) Please take a look at that subsection, p. 371 - 373 (the whole thing goes on to p. 375), and FAQ 14 (at www.robertsrules.com/faq.html#14). The easy answer will come if, as I suspect, your meeting doesn't formally adopt the distributed agenda at all (top of p. 373). In which case, the agenda is merely an informal guide, and not binding. So p. 594, lines 5-7, addresses not any agenda, per se, but only the chair's unilateral choice (even if he's following the "agenda" that the secretary mailed out) of ordering the amendments.

I will admit that if the agenda is adopted, and if it includes the proposed amendments, in a particular order, I'm wondering whether p. 594, lines 5-7, will apply. (Perhaps Principle of Interpretation 3, p. 591, is the key, that specific rules trump general rules.)

[Gary c Tesser]

By my definition, agenda = order of business....

Well, it's not. And particularly on the Robert's Rules Website Forum (RONR MB) you can sow confusion and trouble if you equate them.

I studied the above pages ...

Very good. Now please look particularly at p. 351, lines 16 - 224, and contrast it with p, 371, lines 17 - 19.

... and I now realize that the agenda given in the notice needs to be approved by the members at the meeting before it can be put into action. That requires a majority vote. (After that it requires a 2/3 vote to change.)

Well, ordinarily that's so, but in your organization, it is not, since your bylaws do prescribe an order of business, idiosyncratic though it be.

... but at this time let's assume that there will an additional line item (added below) on the agenda called "Bylaws" - nothing more specific.

Hey. Didn't we spend hours wrestling with the certainty that the Sept. 20 meeting notice would list all the proposed amendments, yours last (see post 3 above)? Did you change your mind? If so, when and why? If not, how come it looks like it?

I also want to make 6 motions under New Business that are unrelated to the bylaws. Is there anything that I do to get my 6 non-bylaws motions considered first (because they won't take too much time), and then my revision, and then my amendment list (it has 11 amendments on it) ahead of the other amendments so that if my revision is rejected via Commit or Post. Ind. I get my amendments considered before the other amendments?

Same as with Posts 18 and 31, no?

... h. Old Business

O for pity's sake. (Yeah, of course, this one isn't on Norm Mikalac.)

[Josh Martin]

Below are what our bylaws say about the agenda. It was cited in the notice and used in the past exactly as shown below. However, this year there will be bylaws amendments and a revision. The amendments and revision will be sent with the notice. The notice will also show the agenda as shown below, but at this time let's assume that there will an additional line item (added below) on the agenda called "Bylaws" - nothing more specific. I also want to make 6 motions under New Business that are unrelated to the bylaws. Is there anything that I do to get my 6 non-bylaws motions considered first (because they won't take too much time), and then my revision, and then my amendment list (it has 11 amendments on it) ahead of the other amendments so that if my revision is rejected via Commit or Post. Ind. I get my amendments considered before the other amendments?

 

Order of Business. The order of business at the annual meeting of the Owners or any special meeting insofar as practicable shall be:

a. Calling of the roll

b. Proof of notice of the meeting and waiver of notice

c. Reading and disposal of any unapproved minutes

d. Appointment of Judges of election, if appropriate

e. Election of Directors, if appropriate

f. Receiving reports of officers

g. Receiving reports of committees

h. Old Business

i. Bylaws

j. New Business

k. Adjournment

 

The order of business which is actually in the bylaws is binding and a motion which proposes to deviate from it will require a 2/3 vote. The agenda included in the notice is not binding. An agenda which is actually adopted by the assembly (which requires a majority vote normally, but requires a 2/3 vote if it deviates from the order of business in the bylaws) is binding, and a motion to deviate from it will require a 2/3 vote.

 

A motion to rearrange bylaw amendments if there is no order specified in the agenda will require a majority vote. If this "bylaws" item is included on the agenda, it will require a 2/3 vote to consider other motions first. If it is not, a member could simply make a motion before a member has an opportunity to make a motion for one of the bylaw amendments.