Bruce Lages

If RONR governs the council meetings and those meetings use the standard order of business, reports would be made during the Reports of Officers, Boards and Committees portions of the meeting agenda. Motions made be made at that time if they are based on the information and recommendations made in the reports. For committee reports, those motions are usually made by the member giving the report, but any other member could also make such a motion. For officer reports, RONR provides that a member other than the officer should make any such motion. Motions unrelated to the committee reports are not in order during this portion of the meeting, and would not be in order even if the council is using a different order of business. Unless the council rules explicitly prevent it, motions regarding items not on the agenda may be made during the New Business portion of the meeting

RONR states that only members of the body that is meeting have a right to attend meetings, and that applies to all types of bodies and meetings, i.e., the general membership, the board, and committees. However, unless the committee's parent body, in your case, the BOE, has explicit rules or instructions to the committee to the contrary, the committee, by majority vote, can invite non-committee members to attend their meetings in order to provide information that may be useful to the committee. During actual deliberations of the committee, though, only committee members have the right to be present (RONR, 12th ed. 50:27). Because you are, as a BOE, most likely a public body, you should also be aware that there may be local or state regulations and laws that address this situation. Those regulations would supercede anything provisions in RONR.

Can you quote exactly what your bylaws say regarding the president's term of office?

I see that the OP's second response refers to "our organizational document". The responses so far assume that this 'organizational document' is on the level of the corporate charter, constitution, or bylaws. If there's any chance that this organizational document is not on that level, I believe the answer to the OP's question could be different. Perhaps Guest Guest 131313 could clarify the nature of this organizational document if he or she is still with us.

I should add to the statement above that the quote from RONR applies to 'executive officers', and the text immediately above the quoted section references the president and vice president specifically. Reports from other officers are not subject to the same restrictions.

RONR, 12th ed. 48:19 says "Motions to adopt or implement any recommendations should be made from the floor by a member other than the reporting officer." (Italics in the original text). However, while the small board rules applicable to boards with no more than about a dozen members present don't address the issue specifically, I would think that the relaxation of restrictions on the chair participating in debate and making motions in those small board rules can be interpreted to mean that an officer in a small board setting is not prevented from making a motion as part of their report.

As long as it doesn't replace the minutes, or what the society wants recorded in their minutes, the secretary is certainly free to maintain such a chronological record of actions taken by the society in addition to the minutes. I agree that it may even be useful in certain instances.

Details of items such as this are wisely left to each organization to arrange as they feel is best to satisfy their specific needs. RONR only mentions certain records that would normally be expected to be maintained among the secretary's records. I do note, however, that the 3 examples you cite are things that should be recorded in the minutes of the meetings at which they were adopted.

Apparently not - Fifty percent of the 9 members present is 4.5, and adding one gives 5.5. But since members (i.e. voters) only come in whole numbers you would need 6 members voting in the affirmative to satisfy your bylaw requirement. In my opinion that voting requirement is quite unusual, and differs markedly from the RONR standard which is, in most cases, a majority vote. The '50% plus one' rule is very often mistakenly considered to be what defines a majority vote, which it clearly is not. A majority vote is simply an affirmative vote by more than half of the members present and voting. Your organization is certainly free to define your voting requirements in any manner you choose, but I can't help but wonder - is there some specific reason your organization has decided to use that particular, and somewhat unorthodox, requirement?

If your constitution sets the date, or a range of dates, for your annual meeting, and doesn't provide for suspending that requirement, then the only way to go outside that range of dates is to amend the constitution. What you can do, however, is to provide notice for a meeting on a date that satisfies the constitutional requirement, and then arrange for a small group of members to meet on that date and immediately adjourn the meeting to a more suitable date. That is one of the few actions that can be taken in the absence of a quorum - the motion is called fix the time to which to adjourn (RONR 12th ed. Section 22). You could even alert the membership ahead of time that this what you will do so that they are aware that a different date will be set for your annual meeting.

It would help if we knew what these people were ex-officio members of, i.e., what kind of assembly or organization, and why they are designated as ex-officio members.

Because Guest Bob asked whether there were two amendments or effectively no amendments, I only mentioned the US Constitution as a very clear-cut example of an amendment and its subsequent rescission comprising two separate amendments. There was no intention of drawing any comparison between the amendment processes in that case and in RONR.

I think a more accurate statement would be that the motion to rescind cancels any and all effects of the original motion going forward, not the motion itself. As Mr. Katz pointed out, the fact that the rescinded motion was made and adopted will still be found in the record provided by the organization's minutes, and rescind (or amend for that matter) something previously adopted does not affect that record in any way.

Yes, you can rescind a previously adopted bylaw amendment. You would have to treat that as any other motion to amend the bylaws, following all the requirements that your current bylaws include for their amendment. If successful, the bylaws would have been amended twice, once by the earlier, 'bad' amendment, and once again by the action that rescinded that amendment. In the US Constitution, the 18th Amendment instituted prohibition, and the 21st Amendment rescinded the 18th Amendment. Since the US Constitution's original text is never altered by subsequent amendments, it's easy to see that it was amended twice, rather than having the 21st Amendment simply erase the 18th Amendment. If your practice is to instead rewrite the text of your bylaws when they are amended, as I suspect most organizations do, they will still have been amended twice.

RONR, 12th ed. 45:2 : "An individual member's right to vote may not be transferred to another person (for example, by the use of proxies)." Also, if your bylaws say nothing about proxies, then your board does not have the authority to use proxies. Such authorization would have to be derived from a bylaw provision because of the above quote from RONR, and the fact that your bylaws will outrank the rules in RONR. I don't believe - but am not absolutely certain - that a special rule of order would be sufficient to authorize proxy voting.

On a logical basis it seems as if it should be possible to suspend the rules to allow debate on the motion itself. Section 25:1 says that suspend the rules applies unless it is in conflict with the organization's bylaws or constitution, with local, state, or national law prescribing procedural rules applicable to the organization or assembly, or with a fundamental principle of parliamentary law. Allowing debate on an undebatable motion certainly doesn't seem to fit any of those exclusions. Logic also suggests that if suspend the rules can be applied to prevent debate on a debatable motion (25:4) it should also be applicable to allowing debate on an undebatable motion.

I think there's no question that declaring the August motion adopted created a continuing breach - adopting a main motion that conflicts with a main motion previously adopted by a vote threshold that does not satisfy the requirements for Amend Something Previously Adopted. The question is what can they do about it now? Unless they have the ability to call a special meeting to raise a point of order sooner, they may have to wait until 2023 to do so, which could mean that any work done to research and find an alternate playground site from site PR1 may be wasted if the point of order is sustained.

Yes, if the donation has not been made yet. But more typically a motion lasts until the action it authorizes has been taken - in this case until a check for $500 is cut and delivered to ABC.

No - "When a vote is being taken, no interruption is permitted from the time that any member has actually voted until all have presumably voted, unless as sometimes occurs in ballot voting, other business is being transacted during voting." (RONR, 12th ed. 45:6)

If everyone has left the meeting space and gone home or elsewhere, I think it's safe to conclude that the meeting has effectively been adjourned, even without a declaration of adjournment by the chair. Any motions adopted by the assembly during the meeting became effective as soon as they were declared adopted by the chair after being voted on, unless the motion itself specified a different time for its effectiveness. So, yes, taking action on those motions is proper.

Well, yes you need a motion, which is a proposal that the assembly take some specific action, so that everyone knows exactly what action the group is being asked to take before they decide - via a vote - whether or not to take that action. If this is a small board - meaning no more than about a dozen members present - seconds are not required. In larger assemblies, seconds are used to indicate to the chair that there is more than one member who wants to consider the motion. See RONR, 12th ed. 49:21 for a description of the small board rules.

Yes, a motion can be rescinded at any time while it is still in effect. Anyone can make the motion to rescind, and it requires a 2/3 vote,or a vote of a majority of the entire membership, or a majority vote if previous notice is given of the intent to make the motion. Approval of the minutes has nothing to do with the ability to rescind a motion. See RONR, 12th ed. Section 35 for details on the motion to Rescind or Amend Something Previously Adopted.

Only if your rules allow for such an 'extension'. Otherwise, the bylaw amendment may be made anew, but all the requirements specified in your bylaws for their amendment - such as any prior notice requirements - will have to be met before the amendment can be made again.

I agree with Mr. Elsman that this appears to be a substantial abuse of the chair's authority. If this is an isolated occurrence, perhaps speaking to the chair outside of a meeting, and making available RONR and/or RONR in Brief could help improve his conduct while presiding. If, however, this incident is representative of other abusive behavior by the chair while presiding I suggest you review carefully RONR Sections 62:2-15, Remedies for Abuse of Authority by the Chair in a Meeting.

If by "the motion vote was overturned" you mean that the motion was defeated, then the motion can be made again ('renewed') at any future session. I have no idea what "the chair person then moved that the question be readjourned" means. That is not terminology used anywhere in RONR. Once a motion is voted on and defeated, it cannot be brought up again in the same session except by special means that I don't think apply to your situation here. If the motion is made again in the future, then every member present at the time the vote is taken will be able to vote on it.