Gary Novosielski

3 hours ago, Godelfan said:

I'm not sure about 3.

It may be a stretch.  What if the chair instructed the secretary to read it?

In any case, I think it's safe to say that if the member wishes to assert her right to participate in debate, the only foolproof way is to show up at meetings.

4 hours ago, Guest Katie said:

Our bylaws simply state that we follow Robert's Rules of Order, so there is no specific bylaw on attendance by phone.  In the past, we have allowed members to call in and participate over speaker phone, but not to vote if not physically present.  Are there specific rules within Robert's Rules on this issue?

Yes.  It's prohibited.   You'd need rules in your bylaws to allow for electronic  "attendance"

On 12/8/2016 at 3:27 PM, Guest Sharon said:

I approached our office manager (we are a small park) with a question of a board member abstaining from voting during a meeting. (the person did not want to be seen as objecting to a family member) The office manages said that abstaining is in fact voting in the positive (or in the yea) for whatever the vote was. Is this in fact true????

No, that's nonsense.   When you abstain, voting is what you're abstaining from.  You have no effect on the outcome, one way or the other.  

16 hours ago, Dave123 said:

Can a married couple serve as President & Fire Chief of a volunteer fire department? Would this pose some sort of conflict of interest and is there anything to warrant against it? 

There's no rule against it in RONR.  But of course if it makes members uncomfortable they can easily avoid the problem by electing only one (or neither) of them.

On 12/8/2016 at 0:33 AM, Guest Ronnieadair@cox.net said:

If an officer announces that they will not be running again, a new person is running unapossed for that office.  The secret vote is conducted and 109 eligible voters vote and 51 people write in the retiring officer, 49 vote for the new nominee and the balance of the votes goes to others.   The retiring officer clearly again states they will not accept the position.   In this case would not the new nominee be the new board member?

The retiring officer need not have bothered to clearly state anything, since he was not elected.  None of the candidates received a majority, so you need to hold a second and possibly subsequent ballots until someone is elected.   If the person elected declines, you keep on voting. 

17 hours ago, ARYOUNG said:

What if the only time the county commission chairman is supposed to vote is to break a tie, but chooses to abstain because he needs more "verbiage"?

If the chair may vote only in the event of a tie (which is not the rule in RONR, by the way), yet chooses to abstain instead, that's fine.  

However, a tie vote simply defeats the motion then and there.  It does not hang around in limbo waiting for "verbiage" to emerge.  So the chair, either by voting No or by abstaining, has effectively decided to defeat the motion.

And no, you can't censure someone for exercising a basic right.  At least not if you expect to be taken seriously.

7 hours ago, Guest Tim Schieck said:

Recently at a meeting, our organization took a vote by ballot. Because of time constraints, the Chairman said the results would be announced at a later date. Written communication was sent to the members informing them of the results the day after. And now there is debate how it should be recorded in the minutes. One person is arguing that the results should be retroactively recorded in the minutes before the secretary submits them. Is this the proper way to handle this situation?

No.  The minutes should reflect only what was actually done at that meeting prior to adjournment.  

Written communication to the members is fine, but it does not replace the requirement that the tellers report must be read, and repeated by the chair, and the result announced by the chair at a properly called meeting.  I concur with Mr. H.

5 hours ago, 1stChurch said:

I have encountered several times among church folk the notion that the society can vote to suspend the bylaws in their entirety, do what they need to do, then vote to reinstate them. Perhaps this is what the OP had in mind.

"No" seems to cover it.  :-)

 

A quaint notion, but No does cover it.

4 hours ago, Dave Bennett said:

If the society has adopted RONR (11th ed.) as its parliamentary authority, I don't think a standing rule would be applicable, especially as it relates to a majority vote with previous notice.  RONR (11th ed.) p. 18, ll. 16-19 states "A standing rule can be adopted by a majority vote without previous notice, provided that it does not conflict with or amend any existing rule or act of the society."  I would think RONR would be considered a rule of the society.

That's true, but there is no rule in RONR prohibiting non-members from attending a meeting.  It says that they have no right to attend, but the decision of who may and who may not attend is left up to the assembly.

There is a rule preventing them from speaking in debate, and that rule could not be superseded by a standing rule, but it could be suspended by a 2/3 vote, and it could be superseded by a special rule of order.

I was about to feel his forehead.

2 hours ago, ssj1203 said:

In order to get an issue on the Agenda by the membership at a regularly scheduled meeting, is there a need for a 10 day advance notice?  If not, what amount of time is required.

There is no advance notice requirement in RONR for getting anything on the agenda.

But then again, there is no requirement in RONR for even having an agenda in the first place--especially for regularly scheduled meetings with a frequency of at least quarterly, where the Standard Order of Business in RONR is almost always sufficient.

You may have special rules on this in your organization, of which we would have no knowledge

Ultimately, the way this (and similar matters of bylaws interpretation) are decided is that someone who believes (or maintains, arguendo) that the person is not rightly a member raises a Point of Order that the membership should not be considered as valid.  The chair rules on the matter, subject to Appeal, in which case the matter is settled by a vote of the assembly.  The chair may also place the matter directly before the assembly for a decision. 

9 hours ago, Daniel H. Honemann said:

Yeah, Mr. Martin got it right. 

In other news, water is wet.  

On 11/28/2016 at 10:35 PM, Rev Ed said:

Thanks.  It nice to get something right once and awhile.

Er, ironically enough, that's "once in a while"

It seems unlikely to me that the requirements in the bylaws for holding office would be written so as to allow anyone in the state except that one individual to be eligible.

Well, explicit or not, the 2/3 vote is necessary because by the rules in RONR, non-members may not speak in debate.  Allowing them to speak is a motion to Suspend the Rules that interfere with their participation.

The rule that non-members may not vote may not be suspended--not even with a unanimous vote.

That's probably in line with the 1915 version, though not in so many words.

Well, it does raise a possible issue.  In order to comply with the rules on RONR, an "electronic" system would have to allow for write-in votes, unless there's something to the contrary in the bylaws.

19 hours ago, Rev Ed said:

I agree with this.  Using the example of painting the clubhouse, I may be in favour of painting the clubhouse, but not with regards to the colour, or when we should be doing the work, then I would have to vote against the motion as it does not allow me to debate the motion or offer an amendment to the motion. 

Yes, if that's how the motion was presented, i.e., Suspend and Agree, you would have to vote against it if you didn't like the color as would anyone else who didn't like any particular detail of the motion.  That's the nature of Suspend the Rules.

But as Dan pointed out, defeating the motion to Suspend the Rules does not count as a defeat of the underlying motion, so you could move it in the usual amendable form even at the same session, with the color of your choice (subject to amendment). 

20 hours ago, Guest Cole Maim said:

 I was elected as an office from the floor for a two-year term. Prior treasurer resigned early, I replaced her, assume this begins a new term? Officially elected during an annual meeting unlike usual board with majority of all membership was present. 

Unknowingly This was a strongly divided group. Former president (head of the nominating committee) did not like me as I was Referred by members she disliked.

She took it upon herself at year end to present it to the board As if I had simply finished the past treasures term- but this was never stated. I was elected off the floor... Then by surprise they replaced me as if I had finished my term. I did a very good job and It hurt my feelings to be ungreatfully discharged from my position with no understanding of it to happen this way. 

Can anyone help me understand how or why they did this with no authority?? 

 

Your original assumption was probably incorrect, unless you have an unusual rule in your bylaws. 

The far more common interpretation when a term is vacated is that the ending date of the term does not change, and the person elected or appointed to fill the vacancy does so only for the unexpired remainder of the term.  So you would have to stand for election at the normal completion of the term and might win, or might lose.

2 minutes ago, Kim Goldsworthy said:

Review the context:

   • This was an annual meeting.

   • The motion, to adjourn the annual meeting, was adopted.

What does this imply?

It probably implies that the original poster was speaking on a topic which the majority of the members present thought was of less value than "going home."

It probably implies that the portion of the meeting was in the "good of the order / general welfaire" kind of business. -- All talk. No motions.

***

If you interrupt a speaker when there is no motion on the floor, that interruption is probably a minor violation, and not a major violation.

Robert's Rules of Order does allow a speaker to be interrupted, for a subset of motions. -- See tinted page 40, for a list of ten such motions.

So the "interruption" isn't an act to be accorded the level of egregious violation, when there are ten legitimate opportunities to do exactly that.

It's no "fundamental principle."

If it is not a fundamental principle, then it must be something else.

I think it is indeed "something else."

I await details from the original poster to suggest that the violation was something more.

I think that the fact that there are ten, or twelve, or twenty legitimate opportunities to interrupt are hardly persuasive when the subject situation is not one of them.

17 hours ago, Godelfan said:

I have been to many meetings where people did not know how to raise points of order.  It is like the Passover Seder - some sons must be taught even if they do not know what to ask.

Why is this night different--subject to Appeal?

5 hours ago, Daniel H. Honemann said:

If there is such a thing as presumptive "nesting", wouldn't a rule such as the one which says that a motion to Suspend the Rules requires a second be rather meaningless, since it should be presumed that one of the rules sought to be suspended is the rule that a second is required?

Yes, but nothing is suspended unless the motion is carried, by which time it would presumably have been seconded.  

The presumptive nesting is a little different,  It conceptually consists of an "outer" motion, i.e. one seeking to suspend the outer set of rules that prevent the making of the "inner" motion, which is a motion to agree without debate or amendment, and then having suspended the outer rules, agreeing to passage.

If there were a rule preventing in certain circumstances the use of Suspend and Agree, that would not prevent the outer motion from being considered, and if passed, suspending all interfering rules.

If that's just too convoluted a procedure for anyone to be comfortable with, there is always a fall-back position of two motions:

• To Suspend the rules that prevent the use of Suspend and Agree on a given motion; and then, if passed,
• To Suspend and Agree to the given motion.

This is admittedly moot, since I haven't seen anyone contending that such a rule is actually in force in the 11th ed.

3 hours ago, Daniel H. Honemann said:

 

Will someone please explain to me what all this business about "nesting" and "intermediate steps" has got to do with the question as to whether or not a motion to suspend the rules can be used to secure the adoption, without debate or amendment, of a proposal not previously introduced as well as one which has already been introduced?

I think we've come to the conclusion that it doesn't have anything to do with it.  That is, the motion must be allowed for both.

The "nesting" referred to the hypothetical situation where there did exist a rule that said the motion could be used only for resolutions previously introduced.  In that case, to use it on a resolution that had not been, it would have been necessary to suspend that rule as well.  

But since a single motion to Suspend is presumed to apply to all suspendible rules that might otherwise interfere, none of that is necessary.

29 minutes ago, Bruce Lages said:

Can one really nest multiple suspend the rules statements within each other in the same motion?

I'm inferring that was what Shmuel meant when he said:

On 11/25/2016 at 1:46 PM, Shmuel Gerber said:

You just have to know how to properly read those dots in "to suspend the rules and agree to [that is, to adopt without debate or amendment] the resolution . . ."

But I doubt it would be necessary.  

After all, Suspend-the-Rules-and-<do something> motions (which, it is worth noting, say rules in the plural), are intended to suspend all rules that would otherwise interfere with the doing of that something.   So it seems to me that a motion to Suspend the Rules and Agree to.... would automatically have the effect of suspending as a group all (suspendible) rules that would otherwise prevent its use in the instant parliamentary situation.  

Nesting would seem unnecessary.

28 minutes ago, Guest Tom said:

The V-Pnasked the assembly and the comments was since the 2 who filled the positions were nominated and ran unopposed to let the election stand.  However there was no motion made.  The V-P stated to table the matter for research and to be brought up at the next meeting 

 

As far as the board chair.  Our by-laws state for elections that after the reading of the meeting minute, the President or Vice-President who is chairing the meeting will suspend the meeting and relinquish the chair to the board of trustees to conduct the elections.  Normally it has been the chairman of the board, but it doesn't specify that it has to be the chairman.  But in this case the board of trustees waived it to the V-P to conduct the election   

 

The point of order being raised here is that the election was not conducted after the reading of the meeting minutes but rather after new business and that the board of trustees can't waive to have the V-P conduct the election.  2 of our members are ruling the election not valid and null and void as both violated the bylaws.

 

Our bylaws does lay out the order and agenda of the meeting and where in the meeting elections are meeting elections are to be held and who conducts the elections  

 

Being that the election was not held in the proper order and agenda of the meeting (after new business versus after reading of meeting minutes) and being that it was conducted by the V-P as the Board waived to him the V-P conducted the elections. Would either of these be grounds to declare the election not valid and I'll and void 

 

 

No, none of those would be sufficient.