Gary Novosielski

I have known some, and had some.

You have reached some different conclusions from the OP than I did. In the situation as you describe it, the motion is offered as a main motion and then referred to a rules committee. In that case, you would be correct that the original maker's "ownership" of the motion is of historical interest only. However it is still the case that unless the rules committee has expanded powers, it can do nothing more than report a recommendation back to the parent body. It can't, on its own, change the motion that will be brought back before the parent body, or delay it beyond its designated reporting date. But I was working on a different assumption. My answer referred to a situation, which is fairly common, where rule changes, especially special rules of order or bylaws amendments of a similar nature must be submitted directly to a committee charged with reviewing all such proposals before they are brought to the floor. In some societies, these proposals are reviewed and reported to the assembly with recommendations. In other societies the committee has the power to substantially alter, revise, delay, or even kill the proposal before it sees the light of day. But it still boils down to the same answer. Committees have only such power as the rules allow them.

Yeah, that was what the other copies were for.

I think the analogy is pretty thin. Actually making a motion and having it placed before the assembly is very different from having a committee change it or delay it. Many societies do give such powers to a rules committee, and if they do, then the committee can do whatever its rules allow. But @Josh Martin is right that this only occurs if such rules actually exist.

With apologies to Crocodile Dundee, "Dash? - That's not a dash ⸻ that's a dash.

You can't very well claim that it would not work if you have not tried it. The only way a chair can ignore the will of a 42‑ member board is if 21 of those members agree with him. Read the chapters on Point of Order and Appeal, and be ready to put a plan into action at the next meeting. By the way, do your bylaws give the chair the power to cancel meetings? That would be a rare provision. If it does not, then meet anyway.

Why is a committee of the board doing this rather than a committee of the membership? That might have had something to do with the membership rejecting the result.

The format is fair. The idea is poor. Since the membership elects the board, the membership should be the body that removes or replaces members of the board. If I were a general member, I'd certainly vote against a bylaws amendment that robbed the membership of an important power. But since I'm not a member my opinion is of little consequence.

Don't you have a vice president? If so, that's who becomes president, not the past president. And when you say "he" quit, it's not clear whom you mean. Did the past president actually quit? I thought he became president. And yes, the recently current president did quit, and at that time (actually when his resignation was accepted) he became the immediate past president. If your bylaws say he gets an automatic seat on the board, then he gets an automatic seat on the board. You may think that since he resigned he shouldn't get that seat, but apparently the members who voted to adopt those bylaws thought otherwise. Or maybe they didn't think it through. But this is why most of us here advise against this practice, since its risks and rewards can sometimes lean in the wrong direction.

Well, that nomenclature isn't going to quibble over itself, you know.

I'm not sure that's true; I use them all the time. My advice on interpreting a semicolon is that the meaning would not change appreciably if the semicolon were replaced by a period, and the next word capitalized as a new sentence, unless they are truly being used like a comma in order to separate phrases that themselves contain commas.

They would have been well advised to adopt Robert's Rules of Order Revised (ROR), 4th edition, ©1915, as their parliamentary authority

I don't know if zoning boards can form special committees, but that would be the natural way to delay consideration until the prerequisite conditions exist. The committee would be responsible for monitoring the required information sources, and so long as they were considering the question, they'd need not fear the frumious¹ quarterly interval. __________ ¹ of or pertaining to the bandersnatch

Surely it could be engineered to present "a substantially different question."

It's a valid concern, but in that context other factors arise, such as the likelihood that a zoning board has fixed terms and a given fraction of the membership subject to change at interval. In that case, it may not be possible to postpone a question past that point of reorganization. I'm not familiar enough with zoning boards to know whether their unfinished business falls to the ground at those times, or whether there is some other way to put an application 'on ice' for extended periods. It may be best to simply reject an application that is unworkable because it is "before its time", and suggest that it be resubmitted at a later date. (But keep the application fee, of course. ☺️)

The phrase voice without vote is not defined in RONR, and the only reason it appears in your bylaws is that somebody saw it somewhere in someone else's bylaws (where it was similarly ill-defined) and thought it sounded cool. I agree with Mr. Katz when he says:

Lay your hands on one or more copies of Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised in Brief ¹ (3rd ed.). It contains advice valuable to those newly involved with deliberative assemblies, and has citations to the more nuanced rules in Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised ² (12th ed.) where more detailed explanation is required. ____________ ¹ Known as RONRIB ² Known as RONR

RONR mercifully does not contain a chapter entitled I Told You So.

I understand your unwillingness to pronounce it dead--but if not dead, then surely moribund. I agree that the intent of the motion may have been to Postpone Definitely but I'm less certain than you are that a chair may simply rule this is what occurred, when the assembly actually voted on a different motion. I understand the reasoning, but I'm uncomfortable with the conclusion. If anything, I believe that a motion to "table for a year" is more nearly equivalent to Postpone Indefinitely than to postpone to the next meeting. As a procedural convenience, assuming the motion's death, while perhaps premature at this stage, seems the easiest way to proceed at this point, since no permanent harm is done, and it can be freely renewed whenever it seems appropriate.

There is no way such a motion would be in order. The motion to Lay on the Table can never specify a time period. The question lies on the table until a motion to Take From the Table is adopted. If this is not done by the end of the following regular meeting, the question dies. A motion to Postpone Definitely can specify a time to which the question is postponed, but this cannot be beyond the following session either. Such a postponed question becomes an order of business at the next meeting without needing a motion to bring it back. In neither case can any question remain in either status for more than a quarterly interval. So the motion at this point is dead, and can be renewed (made again) whenever it appears that the necessary conditions to consider it have been achieved.

Are you sure you didn't mean completed (finished) when you said commenced (started)? That would seem to make more sense. If so, assuming this suspension was properly done in the first place (which I have no way of knowing) then once the fixed term of the suspension is completed, restoration of rights would be automatic.

Amending the bylaws requires following the process for bylaws amendment usually contained in the bylaws themselves. The change of so much as a single comma can be a substantive change, so there is only one amendment process for all changes.

I'm not sure what you mean. If the revision is still under development, deleting that provision could be done before bringing the revision to the general assembly. If it's completed and tied up in nice ribbons already, that provision can be deleted by an amendment offered while the revision is pending before the assembly. Either way would work.

It seems so, but that would probably be the case anyway. If I lived there I would vote against those council members when up for reëlection. It is evidence of extremely poor judgment. 😏

No rule in RONR requires either of these.