Pastor Tim

At the recent Annual meeting of our church, we had one delegate who chose to speak on nearly every item of business, and on nearly every proposed amendment to the issue. He often offered amendments for our body to consider.

Everything about this person's engagement with conference business was in order. The "problem" was the frequency with which he asked to be recognized. In my 25 years of participation at this Conference (including a year as chair), I've never witnessed anyone speak so often and on so many of the items of business. His persistence tried people's patience, and did somewhat bog down business (a subjective opinion, to be sure). 

Is there anything within Roberts' Rules that might help address such matters?

Would it be appropriate for the chair to speak to this delegate privately and gently suggest that they are speaking too much?

On 7/11/2023 at 11:34 AM, Josh Martin said:

What exactly do the conference rules say on this matter?

"It has become our standard practice that Standing Committee may determine that adoption of items of major consequence for the life of the church will require a two-thirds vote."

What this means is that once our committee determines the item requires 2/3, then that settles the issue for voting--by custom and by 'standard practice.' I can't recall anyone ever questioning a decision of our 2/3 committee either way.

The Conference rule is a nod to the highly relational nature of our church relationships, and the difficulties of living into realities when resolutions are passed on razor-thin margins (even if might make Gen. Robert spin in his grave.) Sometimes, the best one can do is make sausage, I suppose.

No one, to my knowledge, has ever attempted to work the system backwards, as this year's motion intended to do. Frankly, those of us who know the person who made the motion recognized it as a backdoor attempt to defeat the item of business.

(And please kindly overlook that we have a standing committee named "Standing Committee.")  😀

One of the (perhaps) oddities about my denomination's annual meeting is that a standing committee reviews all of the proposed business items prior to the conference and makes a recommendation to our delegate body. The delegates then vote on that recommendation, which can be amended, etc. etc.  We've done this for close to 200 years.

One of this standing committee's responsibilities is to determine which items of business will require a 2/3 majority vote. For polity changes, this is obvious. But if this standing committee deems an item to be "highly controversial" (our internal lingo) they can also recommend that the item will require a 2/3 vote to be adopted. This, too, is long-established by our own conference rules.

At our conference this year, an item came to the delegate body that required a simple majority vote for passage. One delegate rose to speak and attempted to amend the recommendation to require a 2/3 vote, on the basis that this was (in his opinion) a highly controversial matter. The chair ruled the motion out of order, on the grounds that our "2/3rds Committee" had reviewed it and had recommended a simple majority passage.

My question is this: could the delegate body have voted to make this particular item require a 2/3 vote? That seems to set up the oddity of voting by simple majority to make an item require a 2/3 vote to pass. 

On 7/7/2023 at 9:42 AM, Gary Novosielski said:

Well, that's not true if the rules in RONR apply.

We have a conference rule that allows for this.

A recent meeting of our group included one item of business where delegates spent an excessively long time wordsmithing a document. Everything was in order, but I've been part of this group to recognize when we get to a point where no amendments of this wordsmithing sort will pass. Delegates were visibly frustrated and ready to vote on the matter and move on to the next item of the agenda, even as some were still waiting to be recognized to offer an amendment.

Eventually, a delegate was properly recognized to speak and said, "I call for the question."  Her intent (which seemed obvious,  and which I later confirmed) was to "move the previous question."  But she didn't say that. The Moderator thanked her, and recognized the next speaker.

Because the Moderator can call for the vote at his/her discretion, would the Moderator have been wise to either a) recognize her intent and help her phrase things properly, or b) recognize her intent and simply call for the vote? Or was he correct to simply move on to the next speaker in line?

Sure:

The District Moderator, Moderator-elect, Treasurer, Financial Secretary, District Executive Minister, Camp Director, Standing Committee Delegates, and any Church of the Brethren Mission and Ministry Board members residing within the District shall be ex-officio members without vote.

(***And because I've been asked about this before on this forum, we do have a national committee called "Standing Committee." 😀)

Our Board of Directors contains 34 elected members and 9 members who are ex-officio without vote.

If our Board were to go into Executive Session, should that include the ex-officio members?  

Our organization's annual meeting is this weekend. One item of business will be to approve the 2023 Budget.

Included in that budget is the salary/benefits package for our Executive Director.  From time to time, someone wants to amend the budget line item for the Executive's salary.  The difficulty is that the benefits are calculated as a percentage of the salary, so amending the salary line item has a ripple effect into other line items. Those would need to be recalculated before the entire budget could be approved--never minding the fact that the Executive and Board have negotiated the contract in the first place.

Some would like to say that because the Executive's salary/benefits package is negotiated with the Board of Directors, that it should be unamendable--basically let the Board negotiate the contract, then have our meeting approve it as a single item.

Short of amending the bylaws to say this officially, is there a way to accomplish this?

Our church's annual meeting is coming up in a few weeks; one of our tasks is to approve the 2023 budget.

A challenge is that due to financial constraints, we have had to propose some significant cuts, which may prove unpopular, however necessary they might be. 

I recognize that any member can make a motion along the lines of "I move we increase line item 100 by $500" etc. etc.  But I also know that if we start down that road, our meeting is likely to become very confusing and unproductive.  Good folks, but we don't do well with a large group tinkering with things like that.  

If the congregation has significant concern with the budget, I believe it would be much more productive for them to vote the proposed budget down, then send the whole matter back to the Board with some instructions on what they'd be willing to approve.  We'd then need a called meeting to try again.

What would be the motion to make that happen?

Our Conference elects officers by a) having a nominating committee prepare a ballot in advance of the conference and b) receiving nominations from the floor at the time of the conference.

A question has arisen of whether or not we have to vote to "approve" the ballot once nominations from the floor have been received.  Robert's Rules does not seem to require this. I wonder if this is one of those things we started doing at some point that is simply unnecessary.

Is it necessary to "approve the ballot" prior to voting?  Or is it sufficient for the chair to simply indicate something like "nominations from the floor have been received and are now close.  You may now vote."

One of the tasks of the annual meeting of our association of churches is to approve the annual budget.  Included in the budget are the salary and benefits of our Executive Minister.

This year, someone wanted to amend the budget to raise the Executive's salary, as there is general agreement that his salary should be higher.  But there are legitimate constraints on how much we can pay him; there is a finite amount of money to work with, and other ministry areas are also important.  So our Executive Board brought a budget that takes all these priorities into consideration (as they do each year), with the explanation that they continue to look for ways to increase the salary and benefits package.

In the discussion on the floor, some objected to the motion to raise the Executive's salary on the grounds that because the benefit package was negotiated with the Executive Board, it should be considered an unamendable portion of the budget.  This line of thinking is consistent with our custom in local congregations of when we hire pastors: the salary package is negotiated with the pastoral candidate and then voted either up or down by the congregation.  We recognize that hammering out the fine details of a salary and benefits package (or a large, complicated budget) is a tough task for open session of a meeting, where many people may be uninformed over the fine details, or may have some kind of ax to grind with staff and may seek to punish a staff member by voting to cut their salary out of the budget.

All this begs both a specific and a general question:

• First (specifically): is there any way to make the salary and benefits portion of the budget unamendable?  Could we pass a conference rule, or add something to our bylaws, to do this?
• Second (generally): because budgets have to consider some very real bottom line considerations, what would we do with a motion that, for example, said "I move to raise the Executive's salary by $500 by taking $500 from the Utilities portion of the budget."  Or, "I vote to raise the Executive's salary by $5,000" with no consideration of where the money would come from?

It's been a few weeks since I posted this.  But...

With the proposed amendments to the Constitution, including some we will leave to the Secretary to make (in accordance with RONR), would it be correct to say that an amendment (for example) to change the size of the Board of Directors would fall outside the permission given to the Secretary to make "technical and conforming changes" and have to come to the full body for approval?

The Constitution for our District of churches includes a provision on how they may be amended:  2/3 vote of delegates present at a regularly called meeting, with 30 days notice of the proposed changes.

There is a proposal to amend this to include giving our board authorization to make "grammatical and other changes in compliance with District Conference actions without having the conference vote on such matters."  These changes would then be reported at the next conference.
 

Is an amendment like this in order, even if the motion were to be approved? 

I am often asked to serve as parliamentarian at church meetings.  Occasionally, I see the meeting leader make a mistake or commit a violation of Robert's Rules.  These are almost always minor--like finishing the business early before an Order of the Day, and then proceeding to that Order early a few minutes early.  

My question is this, "What is my role as parliamentarian when I see something like this happen?"  Call it to the leader's attention?  Or should I just keep silent until called upon for advice?