AFS1970

I used to be in an organization that said members could arrive and be counted as in attendance up until the minutes were read. After that they were not counted on the attendance roll and thus not as part of the quorum. I wonder if this means that a late arriving member may sign in and acknowledge the minutes to become a late addition to the quorum.

In an election where members need to meet certain requirements for office, what is the status of a ballot that has a write in name for someone who is not eligible? Is this a vote, in which case it effects the total. or an abstention in which case it doesn't? I would think on the one hand it is a vote, as the member clearly did not intend to not vote but I can also see it not counting as the candidate would not have been allowed to pass the normal nomination process.

How is membership defined? I know PTO stands for Parent Teacher Organization, but are administrators and other faculty also considered members? I know in my part of CT it is common to have PFO's which are Parent Faculty Organizations. Because who the members are will of course effect who can vote, but also may essentially allow for parties or voting blocks to form, even unofficially.

Since these bylaws definitely say 3/4 as opposed to a majority or 2/3, it seems pretty clear based on the idea that nothing is there without a purpose that they wanted the higher number. I suspect that this is because termination of membership is the most serious punishment that an association can give out. It is like a parliamentary death penalty, you cease to be part of the assembly. Thinking of these fractions in terms of percentages is what helps me understand what I think was the intent. Most motions require 51% to pass, some important motions require 66.6% (effectively 67%) to pass, this one motion is very important so requires 75% to pass. Not being a member, I can't say for certain that my interpretation is any better than anyone else's, but it seems logical. I used to be in an association that had several classes of membership. Not only were some classified as active apart from the others, but the active members had some requirements to meet over the year in order to vote the next year, so you could be in an active class but ineligible to vote. Very cumbersome but it did work for the specific organization. So I can see a similar situation here where defining who can vote on this very important issue may be critical. This is a very interesting debate, I do learn quite a lot reading these forums. I will throw my decidedly amateur opinion into the non-ambiguous side with J.J. as to me the plain meaning seems clear.

Interesting thread, especially as it applies to modern communications methods. I would however think that Written must be by physical writing. All other methods, be it fax, text, email, ect are the same, a way to take something written convert it to a transmission and decode it back to written again. Thus if one is considered written then it seems to me they all would. A text message is essentially a modern day version of Morse Code in that regard. This is very close to the various threads on video conferencing as a form of meeting. Technology moves faster than we do in recognizing such movement. As an aside, my condo association bylaws allow for telegram to be used as the method of notifying board members of meetings. I have often toyed with the idea that I should list that as my desired form of communications. To be fair, I am not even sure how one could send or receive a telegram nowadays.

Trying to see if there is a way to accomplish something without venturing out of parliamentary procedure and into the realm of legal action. Last month a member requested funds for a specific project, which is not unusual. The request was in the form of a motion and was passed. The Treasurer wrote the check and the member took the check to the vendor. Now one of the circumstances that made the project seem appropriate has changed. It is possible that had this information be known in advance that the motion to fund this project would not have passed. From what I have determined, As the meeting was adjourned normally, a motion to reconsider would not be possible. As the bill was already paid, a motion to rescind would not be possible either. We have no bylaw provision allowing for the member to be finned. Short of legal action, which would probably not be worth the expense, is there a way to get the member to pay back all or part of the money that was authorized to be spent? Or is this just going to be a case of we got taken and have learned our lesson?

I think the voter who dies is clearly different from the voter who resigns. The Voter who dies gave no indication they would not have stayed a member if it were up to them. The voter who resigns has indicated that they no longer want to be part of the organization. That being said, if the voting is actually conducted in a secret manner, I am not sure how one can tell who cast any specific ballot. As for the dead voting in public elections, my state had an interesting case of that (sort of) where the courts said they could not rule on the issue that it was a matter for the legislature. Our state legislature has so far failed to address the issue.

Thank You, I had not thought about the committee being in place until the work is finished. I did find one other line in the bylaws but it may not come into play as this committee remains in place, our bylaws say that the president appoints all committees subject to membership approval. To the bet of my knowledge no member has ever brought up removing or changing any committee members, but theoretically this could happen.

I have found myself in an odd position. I was nominated for and am running for President of my volunteer fire company. I currently serve on our Bylaws committee which is almost done with a large revision. If I win, I will have to appoint a new committee. This is an ad hoc committee that was appointed by the current president a little over a year ago. If elected I plan on leaving the committee in tact by reappointing all the current members if they are willing to serve. However as President will I be able to serve on a committee? I would normally think no, but as we are finishing up a large task, I would like to be a part of finishing the work I was a part of starting. Our bylaws say nothing on who can serve on committees, We have other officers that serve on various committees, although none of them have appointing authority. This being an ad hoc committee there are no written rules as to how many members can or must serve on it. I just want to avoid the appearance of impropriety or any actual impropriety.

Building on another thread here, which has to do with my organization, we have a section in our bylaws that requires members to be current in all fines in order to serve in office. However we have no other mention of fines that I can find in the bylaws. They are not mentioned under discipline, where I would have expected to find them. There are a couple of places where it mentions charging members deposits for organizational property they are given, with those fines returned when they resign and return the property. However I see nothing where there is any mention of levying fines or authority granted to either the organization as a whole (membership) or any specific officers, boards or committees to levy fines. I suspect this is a remnant left over from a previous revision of the bylaws, but we don't have archival copies of very may previous versions. It is likely impossible to determine the will of the assembly when passing such a bylaw. I have only been a member for a few years but have never seen someone fined. I am of the opinion that we need to remove this requirement for office unless we decide to add some authority into the bylaws which I have mixed feelings about. From what I have read elsewhere without a bylaw saying we can fine members we can't do so. Since we do lust RONR as parliamentary authority is there any blanket authority to levy fines in there?

While this might be the more time consuming method, I offer the suggestion that in order to fix this by way of amendment the Annual Meeting being a regularly scheduled and called meeting is where such amendment should take place. There may well be other regular meetings throughout the year but apparently amendments can only be voted on at one of them. At least that is my decidedly uneducated and novice opinion of this.

All of our committees are appointed by the President. There is no language as to how they are disbanded or replaced. Our custom is that the President appoints new committees at the start of his 2 year term. The problem is twofold. We have a couple of committees that due to various reasons just do nothing. We have had several presidents who have done nothing about this, either by way of orders or replacement. The other problem is a current president who indicated, after a meeting, that he was not going to implement a motion. Although we won't know if he really plans on doing this until a few months from now and there is an election in between, so it may be a moot point. While we are in the process of a bylaws revision, the idea of adding this duty came up, both to give some teeth to enforce committee work but also to give a clear charge should the president try and block the motion implementation.

I am thinking about what the action is called after a meeting. We are considering adding a duty to the president that he/she be responsible for ensuring matters from the meetings are carried out. Suppose the motion is to buy a new computer. The committee that was directed to do so does not do so. While the president generally has oversight of committees we are considering making it more clear that the president has to enforce the will of the assembly. I saw some similar language in another thread here, that seemed to call these matters orders, but I wasn't sure that was the right word.

Trying to figure out of I am using the right wording for something. If someone makes a motion at a meeting that directs someone to do something, it is seconded, debated and voted on. The motion passes. Is the matter at hand still called a motion? I have also heard it called an order or a ruling. What is the best (and least confusing) term to use?

In our case we had some sections that were bullet points and some that were paragraphs. We had to pick one format or the other.

Not quite a table or diagram, but in the bylaws revision I am a part of, we are formatting several areas as a list of bullet points instead of a paragraph. It will make the total document a few more pages but hopefully make them easier to reference.

The specific powers will be listed, as will be the way an emergency is declared. One thing that was interesting was that many of the empowering legislations allowed for a very broad interpretation of emergency. I think I have come up with one that keeps the historical spirit of the existing section and still allow for some measure of control to keep the boards from running rampant. This has been a fairly hard project to research. Mostly because of the ongoing political debate over presidential emergency powers so that clutters up the google search results. Then most link lead me to state statutes, including my own state, which empower companies to enact emergency rules. However finding example of powers like this is rare. We are lucky in that we know what we want to allow and what we want to limit. I am suggesting that we make this its own article both for clarity and as you suggested to make it easy to find. I am now at the point of putting together the wording then trying to make it as simple as possible. There are a couple of items that could be combined into single sections but could also stay separate. So I think I will bring both ideas to the committee.

Our fire department has two sets of officers, an executive board which runs the corporate affairs and a service board which runs the fire & EMS operations. There has been much discussion on emergency powers during the pandemic. The problem is that we have an existing bylaw section under the powers of the service board that gives them one specific power. As we are nearing the end of a bylaws revision process this is the best time to address such things. However I have a question on where to include them as some duties would fall under the executive board. After much searching online, I have come up with two options but am not sure which one is better. Option 1 would be to leave the service board section where it is, possibly with some expansion and add an additional section under the executive board that includes their powers. Option 2 would be to create a new article for all emergency powers and include sections for both boards, moving the service board section into this new article. I know this is not specifically a RONR question, but as this forum deals with such issues, I value to advice of the members here.

I was being partially facetious with saying neither, but also considering that If it only applied to one than it didn't apply to the other but which was which could be up to interpretation. Neither was a bit much of an exaggeration. These are all things being considered, this is why I asked here. in the last two years we have had 3 attempts at changing various provisions in the officer requirements all but one of which failed. The one that passed was introduced by the committee to fix some problems just before last years election and we were able to get it passed. Mostly because of the absence of some of our more troublesome members. However that revision while it fixed a couple of earlier problems, created a new problem which we are trying to fix in this revision. As for the suspension part, we definitely need to work on that a bit more, but I think that will be the easy part. I have been a member almost 4 years and have never heard before being on this committee anyone seriously talk about suspending the rules. I would like to think so, but I can tell you based on current and past officers and elections, I doubt anything that is clear will remain so for very long.

Unambiguous or not, I had never considered that interpretation of the unanimous requirement, so thanks for giving me more food for thought. I looked up the section on the requirements for the officers in question and may have found some more ambiguity. I remember from past threads the difference between a requirement to serve and a requirement to be elected. However out bylaws for all 7 of these positions say "in order to be eligible for the position of" which seems to me could be interpreted to be either both election and service or neither, or one or the other. Now I don't mind if our current president has to squirm a bit in making a ruling, but as I plan on running against him, I don't relish this task all that much. Here I thought I was asking such a simple question.

Thanks for the quick reply. I did find my copy of the bylaws so I can post the article in question. I think that the situation may not be as bad as I thought due to a provision I forgot was in there. However there may be some other questions. So the good news as I see it is that we are restricted to two specific times that we can suspend the rules and those require unanimous consent. So no matter of the wording about which rules or how many of them are actually suspended by this section, it seems to me this is a very rare occurrence at best. As for the in case of emergency, which is not defined or explained, I can see someone suggesting that a lack of candidates is an emergency. I would dispute that because an emergency is generally unforeseen and knowing we passed a By-Law that most member can't meet seems to be something we foresaw. Now the new problem I saw is the phrase "vote to the members" which I think should be vote of the members. We have found some other similar strange word choices during the revision process, so I assume this to be another one of them that we will need to correct. As for the officer requirements, the officers in question have little to no function in the meeting, apart from collectively being a board that makes a report. Their main function is the supervision of members outside of the meeting. So anything to do with how they are elected and serve seems to me to extend well beyond the meeting.

Sorry in advance for the paraphrasing, I don't have one of the proposed amendments that I am mentioning in this question. Our existing bylaws have a section that allow for the rules to be suspended, and require that the suspension is over as soon as the immediate business is transacted. However this section brings up two questions. First I have heard that a rule can only be suspended if it provides for it's own suspension, but is a section that allows for the bylaws to be suspended sufficient? Second does invoking this section actually suspend the entirety of the bylaws since it is a catch all and not included in any specific rule? I think that could potentially be a disaster waiting to happen. Now as we are about to wrap up our revision process, the committee has proposed changing the catch all section to say that any section or part of the bylaws may be suspended, thus presumably protecting the rest of the rules for however brief a time this is invoked. I wonder if this again is too broad since it is an independent article and not part of any specific rule. Lastly, and I think I have found this answer already. The whole reason this section was brought up is because the committee envisions needing to suspend a rule that is not a rule of order and extends primarily outside of the meeting, the eligibility requirements for officers. This is because we changed those last year, made them stricter and have now realized they did not leave us with very many qualified candidates. I am trying to make a good presentation to the committee that these rules can't be suspended so need to be carefully studied and revised if needed as part of our larger revision proposal.

As with many organizations we have missed several meetings due to social distancing orders by our state. Our Bylaws are silent on this. We have just announced that we will resume having meetings in July. Two of the missing meetings were our nomination meeting (May) and our annual meeting (June) where we hold elections. Our officers serve until their replacements are elected so at least that black hole has been avoided. I have heard that the President plans on holding a regular meeting, nothing fancy. I asked the person who told me this what would make a meeting fancy and was told that would be nominations. Informally there have been two ideas put forth in discussions among members, one that we start the July meeting as if nothing happened except missing elections and hold nominations in July then Elections in August. The other idea was that we start with the first missing meeting that would have been march. That would then postpone elections until December. I am not sure who if anyone has the authority to decide these issues. We also have another issue in that for some reason our bylaws have different voting rules for our annual meeting than other meetings. Since the bylaws say the annual meeting is in June, and due to the pandemic we can't hold it before August, which set of voting rules would apply?

What would the end result be of debating a nomination? Since a nomination does not require a second, isn't it permanent the minute it is made? Member A nominates Member B for office. Member C rises in debate to oppose the nomination. Member A speaks in favor of the nomination. No matter how persuasive Member C is, it seems to me that the nomination of Member B is still in place at the end of the debate. Am I missing something else here?

We have several groups of members, some called boards and some called committees. The boards are mostly ex-officio, in that they are made up of those who are elected to various offices. The committees are mostly appointed and may or may not include officers. There are a couple of committees that are made up of the members of certain boards, and one board has both officers and three members elected as board members. Do boards and committees essentially function the same? We had a board member request funding for a project that is under their authority. This is usually done with a motion. The chair asked for a second but was "reminded" by someone else that committees making motions do not need a second. Since this group is called a board, do they still fall under such a committee rule?