Bruce Lages

Based on what you have provided, my own opinion - which must be understood as worth only what you are paying for it - is that such an amendment would be outside the scope of notice requirement of RONR, and therefore not in order. Your current situation is that each section votes for only its own board member, and the noticed amendment is to alter that to allow one particular section to participate in the voting for its own board member plus the board member from one other section. Amending the noticed proposal to now allow two other sections to participate in the voting for one section's board member seems clearly to go beyond what was in the original notice. For what it's worth, I think you could have done the reverse, i.e., if the noticed amendment had allowed for the participation of the other two sections in the voting by one section, you could have offered an subsequent amendment to reduce that to participation by only one other section. That amendment would have fallen within the scope of the original notice. I mention this only to show how the concept of scope of notice applies in your situation.

Mr. Brown's last sentence really gave me quite a charge.

The only things that don't carry over to the new board are items of business that have been taken up, but not disposed of at the time when the membership changes, and which have not been referred to a committee (p. 488,l.22 - p.489, l.16). This section also outlines the impact of a total or partial board membership replacement on board-elected officers and committee chairs.

Sounds like that should have been question no. 1 when debate was in order after the motion was made and seconded.

Do your rules not allow for other nominations in addition to the ones made by the chair? Can you tell us what, specifically, your rules say about the nominations and election procedures? Yes/No voting is not appropriate for elections and particularly if there is only one candidate. If these offices are defined in your rules, then you have an obligation to fill them. A majority 'No' vote on the only candidate leaves you with an unfilled office that still must be filled. According to RONR, the only way to vote against a particular candidate is to vote for another candidate. Similarly, if you don't want a particular nominee to be elected, you have to nominate someone else. I'd be surprised if your rule don't allow for that in some way.

Yes, and the motion can be brought up at additional (subsequent) meetings if it continues to be defeated.

The proper motion in the scenario you've described is to refer the motion to a committee charged with gathering the information needed, possibly with instructions to report back to the assembly within a given time period. But, your organization is going to have to decide how such referral impacts your '3 consecutive meetings' rule. The most logical conclusion would seem to be that further consideration of the motion would be suspended until the committee reports back, but that's up to you.

Non-members may attend a board meeting only if the board grants permission - by a majority vote - or if the organization's rules, or applicable law, stipulate that such attendance is permitted. If the board grants permission to attend, it may also rescind that permission for any or all non-members at any time. Permission to attend does not automatically include permission to speak at these meetings.

I think Dr. Stackpole has answered your question. If the board's intent is to just continue the assessment at its current amount, then no notice is required and a majority vote will suffice. (Again, whether any motion is required to continue the current assessment depends on the wording of the original motion.) If a change is to made to the current assessment, and that change amounts to amending something previously adopted, then previous notice will serve to reduce the voting threshold from 2/3 to a majority. In my opinion, the statement in the original motion that the assessment is to be reviewed annually does not constitute proper notice for subsequent motions to change the assessment. You said you meet four times a year - proper notice would have to specify at which of those meetings an adjustment is to be considered.

Granted that assemblies can order just about anything they want, but I think there is some murky ground here. The first part of this sentence - which we are all in agreement with - makes the term 'draft board minutes' something of an oxymoron. I could see the assembly directing the secretary to, at the same time he submits his draft to the board, 'publish' it to the membership. I do not see that the assembly has any right to the secretary's notes - which I think we have said previously are the property of the secretary - before that draft is presented.

Let's just be clear that what the membership can order to be published are approved board minutes. The secretary's draft is not yet the minutes until it has been approved by the board.

I can think of one 'extra thing' that the president would still have to do - probably at both board meetings and general membership meetings: he should be expected to give his officer's report on the administrative work he has done under his bylaw-mandated responsibilities to "supervise, direct, and control of all of the business of the association..." Perhaps more so at board meetings since these administrative duties are "subject to the control of the board".

No it is not. Purposely not giving notice to any member would make any business carried out at the meeting null and void.

You might want to consider amending your own bylaws to include a process for nominations and elections in order to address such issues in the future. There are sample bylaws in Roberts Rules of Order Newly Revised, 11th edition (which should be your parliamentary authority). If you are comfortable with the nomination and election procedures in those sample bylaws you could incorporate those into your own bylaws. You are also free to modify those procedures to fit your own situation. Even if you don't add nomination and election procedures to your bylaws, RONR spells out in some detail the recommended method for handling nominations and elections in the absence of bylaw-mandated provisions. I am always somewhat disheartened when I hear of adults taking over youth activities. I've worked with young people in various capacities and am always impressed by their ability to adapt to unfamiliar and/or controversial situations, usually doing much better than just 'muddling through'. I hope your group and the adult group will make every effort to let you run your own meetings, dealing with the inevitable mistakes that will be made and learning from them. Your advisors should consider their role to be a very narrow one, strictly advisory only. If one of them happens to be familiar with RONR, that would be an appropriate application of their advisory - and strictly advisory only - capacity. Look in RONR to see how it defines the role of a parliamentarian, and use that as a guide.

It always helps to know whether you're using 'table' to actually mean the motion to postpone to a certain time or the motion to lay on the table, but in both of those cases the main motion as well as any pending amendments are affected equally, i.e., postponed or laid on the table. In other words, you can't 'table' an amendment and then proceed to deal with the main motion.

As noted, RONR does not recommend approving reports - except for the auditors report. But to compound the situation, why would your organization want to approve reports that haven't been read? Have these reports at least been circulated to the membership prior to the meeting so that members can see what's included in them?

Can you please explain what you mean by a "preliminary main motion"?

You posted these proposals with as-yet-to-be-determined Article numbers - are you sure these will not be bylaw amendments?

Under the rules in RONR most motions are subject to amendment before they are voted on. For bylaw amendments in particular, the ability to amend the original proposal may be limited however, particularly if, as in many cases (and in RONR), prior notice of the amendment is required. If notice of this amendment, including either its exact wording or a specific description of its intent, has been given to the board before the meeting at which it is to be voted on, then any amendments proposed at the meeting must not exceed the scope of this notice - meaning that the effects of the proposal cannot be made greater or lesser than what was stated in the notice and what your bylaws currently provide. As an example, if your bylaws currently set the dues at $100, and the proposal is to raise them to $200, then no amendment is in order that would change the proposal to be less than $100 or more than $200. Anything in between is OK. But be sure to check the procedure specified in your current bylaws for their amendment - it is possible they may provide for something differing from RONR's prescription.

Even as a special rule of order, it still yields to the rule in your bylaws. Any exception to your 5% quorum requirement calling for a higher quorum number for certain items of business would have to be in your bylaws as well.

Please make that "the official roll of voting members of the convention".

I think you'll find both methods in use here by different respondents. If the words from RONR are quoted directly in the response you'll usually see the inclusive line numbers referenced. In other cases, some of us will use the beginning line number followed by 'ff' for 'and following lines'.

Guest Paul - Please start a new topic for your question, which is not really related to this thread. See the shaded box labeled "Start New Topic" on the top right of the general discussion page.

I'm not sure that this situation is in any way analogous to nominations by the chair as described in RONR. It seems to me that what you are doing is, in essence, hiring an employee. Since you have decided to appoint a search committee, which certainly is desirable for such an important decision, I think your approach should be to listen to their report and then decide whether to accept their recommendation or not. I don't see any basis in RONR that would prevent your congregation from nominating someone else when the committee offers its recommendation, but it seems very unlikely that you would have the benefit of your search committee's due diligence for any such nomination. Since you gave this committee the responsibility of researching the qualifications of candidates (rightly so in my opinion), it might be better, if there is not strong support for their choice, to vote that choice down and refer the search back to the same committee, or even change some or all of the committee members, and ask them to report back with recommendations for one or more different candidates.

Just to be clear, were you a member of this standing committee when the improper notice of a reorganzational meeting was issued?