Gary Novosielski

I 'spect so.

That's a little confusing. The presiding officer, typically the president, would turn over the chair to the vice president. If the vice president had no objection then someone else could be selected as president pro-tem. The existence of a presiding chair and an ex-officio chair is not typical. Is the relationship of these offices in any way congruent to the more usual president/vice-president or chair/vice-chair arrangement?

"Deal with problems" is hardly clear and specific, in my view.

They had one job.

Agreeing with those (one of whom is me) who need to see the language in your bylaws, I can offer two general observations: Making a motion, unless it is in writing, is usually done by "voice". Making a motion is not part of the voting procedure.

The bylaws may not be amended by an office administrator. Fonts are one thing, numbers, words and punctuation marks are another. Any change requires following the procedures (presumably) included in the bylaws, for their own amendment. Whatever the administrator did should be treated as if it never happened, unless you think disciplinary actions are needed.

RONR does not recognize a "probation" status and so has no rules regarding it. Presumably your bylaws do, however, and that would be where you'd need to look for the rules regarding the rights of members on probation. Also I'm not sure what "filing" a grievance means in your organization. There are various types of complaints that are covered in RONR, but most are procedural, and are handled by making a motion, in the context of a meeting, not by "filing" some sort of paperwork

You can help avoid problems like this by noting that abstentions should never be called for or counted. (On a roll-call vote they do get recorded, but abstentions are not votes.) The number of members voting is the sum of the yeas and nays. The vote in this case was 3 yeas and 1 nay. That would pass the threshold for a majority vote, a 2/3 vote and a 3/4 vote for that matter.

Yes, I missed that sentence in your post which preceded mine. I don't think they'd have to prove where they heard it, as it appears to be common knowledge. What's important is that the minutes are correct.

How big is this Board? RONR's small board rules provide that in boards of not more than a dozen or so members, seconds aren't even necessary.

These questions are going nowhere until we know, verbatim, what your bylaws say about this.

Does anyone think they can direct the board to fix the minutes? Edited to add: Oops, I see Mr. Brown has already suggested that they can, but I missed it.

Wait. What are conflicted members who are barred from voting on the contract doing on the negotiating committee to begin with? If there are rules on conflict of interest (which is highly likely in a public body) surely they would prohibit being involved in negotiations.

If it is a simple matter of proposing an agenda when there is not one currently pending, then yes, the mover is free to propose one. However, in this case we are told that there is already one under consideration, and someone wants to propose, in one motion, that the assembly remove one item and adopt the remaining agenda. And that is simply not how a motion is handled.

No, not even the membership can vote to suspend the bylaws. This would require a bylaws amendment, and I doubt the Executive Committee has such power.

It seems to be back now. Another change that seems to have been reverted was the disappearance of the bell icon from the top line, hiding it behind a three-line menu in the upper right corner. It is also back to normal.

Well I think you would want to do that as two motions: one to amend the proposed agenda by removing an item, and another to approve the (possibly amended) agenda. But yes, such motions are debatable.

A good deal less. The bare minimum for a meeting to be considered held is a call to order and adjournment. If a quorum was not present when the meeting was called to order, and there seemed little prospect that one could be obtained, then that might be the entire meeting in a nutshell--a small nutshell. But it still counts as a meeting, so that if your bylaws mandated that a meeting must be held on such-and-such a date, it counts. Minutes would also be recorded, and would be similarly brief. If your bylaws mandated that a meeting must be held and particular business handled at that meeting, then the lack of a quorum would be a problem. In that case the meeting could be adjourned to (meet at) a future time, when a quorum might be more easily obtained. That's one of the motions that can be made without a quorum present. The other allowable motions mostly apply to taking steps to obtain a quorum. See: RONR 12th ed. 40:7

The link at the bottom of each thread to Unread Content seems to have vanished. I presume this is yet another "enhancement"? 😒

Exactly. Edited to add: And it should be noted that the rule is considered to protect absentees, notwithstanding that it might be argued that the absentees actually knew, somehow, what the meeting was about. It needs to be in the call of the meeting, "clearly and specifically describing the subject matter of the motions or items of business to be brought up". [9:13]

Well, that suggests that your earlier claim that all language related to discipline had been removed from your bylaws was somewhat misleading. I wash my hands of this question.

Yes, of course that's right, but it just feels wrong. It's probably because I'm thinking of SDC 7 of Suspend the Rules: The spirit of that rule suggests that if this were a suspension of the rule that provides for a majority vote (rather than a special rule of order) to require an 85% vote, it would not survive in the face of 1/3 opposition. But admittedly, it is not.

And apparently they have also told you to handle this in accordance with RONR, so as Mr. Martin strongly advises, you should carefully study Chapter XX in RONR. If you do, you will find that there is no way for individual members to "prefer charges" against anyone. Charges can only be preferred by adopting the recommendation of an investigative committee, [63:11] so you may need to back up a few steps if these "charges" had some other origin.

You are, of course, free to hope. The hideous abbreviation for the Communications Committee is left as an exercise for the reader.