Gary c Tesser

In the discussion thread "Counselor", by Guest Abc123, URL http://robertsrules.forumflash.com/index.php?/topic/29485-counselor

   , fairly regular poster Guest Who's, &c, asks:  "I believe Mr. Huynh alludes to the possibility that this committee is under the authority of the society and not the board. In that case, does its rejection of the motion it was empowered to decide put the proposal beyond the reach of the board, in accordance with RONR (11th ed.), p. 577, ll. 23–28?"

I request more follow-up on this than what appeared there, please, viz. (or "i.e.", I forget which is which), pretty much me whining and George bleating.

On 2/15/2017 at 9:56 PM, Attajb said:

The board has no funds and the money spent is put in as a donation by board 

members so it is not asking for the Board to expend funds

So the board members are just spending their own personally donated money.

Huh.

On 2/15/2017 at 9:08 PM, Attajb said:

we have sent around an email to all board members for consent to do the fundraising

-- Which means,  your board members write to each other and say, ~"Heh, let's all chip in for this."~

Huh.

And Dinner Guest [brilliant, RB, BTW] points out:

On 2/15/2017 at 9:32 PM, Guest Who's Coming to Dinner said:

but anything you agree to by email must be ratified at a later meeting to become an official act of the board. In the meanwhile, members are acting on their own initiative and if things go wrong, they may be held personally responsible.

So is it that no one is refusing the board members' donations, but some assert that the solicitation, by e-mail, as purported official communication of the organization, is invalid?

Huh.

And we want to know what to make of this, as far as RONR is concerned?

Huh.

Most likely a robot, like the one selling carborundum or gneiss ten years ago.  (Ghod that makes me look old.)

2 hours ago, Shmuel Gerber said:

The thing to apologize for, and which Kim K did apologize for, is posting a new question into an old topic. The forum instructions clearly say not to do that. Next time how about graciously accepting apologies instead of making people feel bad for apologizing.:-)

Point well taken.  I apologize.

19 hours ago, Bruce Lages said:

normally the members (not just the chairman) of any standing committees serve for a term corresponding to that of the officers,

... and:

19 hours ago, Gary Novosielski said:

Standing committee membership (not just the chairmanship) ends when new officers are elected.

... but:

19 hours ago, Bruce Lages said:

if this committee was formed by the general membership, changes in the board would have no effect on the committee membership.

I don't quite follow how these two statements dovetail (and possibly I never have).  Would someone refresh me please (and OP Guest D Barber might be watching too)?

48 minutes ago, Guest Kim K said:

My apologies.

Nothing to apologize for, Mr Brown loves saying that once or twice a week.

On 2/13/2017 at 11:50 PM, Kim Goldsworthy said:

damaged organizational property; embezzled money; physically assaulted guests; or involved themselves in a criminal enterprise?

You left out cannibalism, again.

On 2/12/2017 at 1:53 PM, Guest sue w. said:

Perhaps a new bylaw could help out in this very unique circumstance.

Assuming that the motion was on the agenda (all notified) and the person was signed in as an attendee of the meeting - then left, due to job related emergency - he/she could be offered the ability to cast a vote by proxy (assigned or written) or electronic vote.

sue w., indulge me, please, in an at best tangential question, and I'm sure the moderator is going to like this one.  I'm interested in how people write, and I noticed that if I were to have written your post here, I wouldn't have made a new paragraph for the second sentence, just continued the first paragraph, consisting of the first sentence.  It's an intriguing stylistic choice:  I see that the effect is different, but I can't put my finger on it.  I'm reminded of the Nero Wolfe story where he said something like, choice in paragraphing is as unique as fingerprints (I think it was the story where he solved the case by the way a writer used the expression "not for nothing."  If you don't remember it, read it again; it is such a hoot.  I can look it up for you if you want. -- That offer is open to everybody).  So (hey, should this start a new paragraph??), sue w., what went into your choice to start a second paragraph?

Your fan,

Gary c Tesser (aspiring parliamentarian)

Oh, and this inquiry is open to everybody who is interested in how writing works.  Me and Nero Wolfe can't be the only ones.

9 hours ago, Gary Novosielski said:

Still, this is the RONR forum.

The closest rule in RONR would tell you that for any ballot that is deemed questionable by the tellers, the question of its validity should be put to the assembly, by majority vote.  That gets everyone off the hook, when you can't identify a rule that clearly applies.

Adroitly done.

On 2/13/2017 at 11:32 PM, Kim Goldsworthy said:

when no timely Point of Order is raised at any time during the meeting?

But Kim, remember, it'll be a timely point of order, forever.

5 hours ago, Shmuel Gerber said:

Why all this interruption? :-)

Brooklyn people have difficulty with foreign dialects, like Canadian.

On 2/12/2017 at 1:53 PM, Guest sue w. said:

Perhaps a new bylaw could help out in this very unique circumstance.

Assuming that the motion was on the agenda (all notified) and the person was signed in as an attendee of the meeting - then left, due to job related emergency - he/she could be offered the ability to cast a vote by proxy (assigned or written) or electronic vote.

 

 

(??!?)

I think this is a good idea.  (It's not perfect:  the distressed VP wants his point of view heard as much as he wants to vote.   Probably more, since the vote was unanimous without his, but his voice might have had an effect.)  For that matter, perhaps an extra-parliamentary device might do the trick:  he phones the meeting (safely, since he's driving a car), and the recipient holds his phone to the microphone, so everybody hears what the VP has to say, which satisfies him (with or without a proxy or electronic vote), and that's that.

On 2/12/2017 at 6:25 PM, Guest Who's Coming to Dinner said:

I believe Mr. Huynh alludes to the possibility that this committee is under the authority of the society and not the board. In that case, does its rejection of the motion it was empowered to decide put the proposal beyond the reach of the board, in accordance with RONR (11th ed.), p. 577, ll. 23–28?

This question intrigues me, and I'm unsure of the answer. I'd guess yes, but I'd like a more specific citation to back me up (or shoot me down).  I hesitate to continue the discussion here, because it would conflate two distinct but possibly confusingly related issues in one discussion thread, and I've had quite enough of that for one month (I'll be wincing any time I hear or read the word "interim," maybe till July).

On 2/8/2017 at 10:23 AM, fixter said:

This particular time two members were gone longer then the rest because they rode with the patient to the hospital.

Fixter, I know this isn't an agony column,  but I gotta ask:  how did it go with the patient?

7 hours ago, mjhmjh said:

Could you point to the part of RONR that defines prior notice?

mj (if I may presume to be so intimate), RONR's index is astonishingly comprehensive and spectacularly useful.  I may tell you an illustrative story if I feel like typing later.

Just now, Gary c Tesser said:

Angourie Rice

(I have no idea why the computer poked the name of that sweet lovely Australian child Angourie Rice into my post, but I don't regret it, she deserves whatever show she gets.)

14 hours ago, Bookish said:

An argument FOR the late fee assessment is that since these people are not members until they pay a reinstatement fee, we are able to do this without a provision in our bylaws.  Your thoughts

OK, I tell you what.  We can fob this off on the paint-by-numbers flick-of-the-wrist that this, the world's premier Internet parliamentary forum, is perforce constrained from interpreting the bylaws of specific organizations, but you know what, the supervisors are probably asleep here on the East Coast of the Western Hemisphere, and also here east of Flatbush Avenue, so maybe we can get away for a few hours.  Look, this:

Angourie Rice

14 hours ago, Bookish said:

since these people are not members until they pay a reinstatement fee

-- presupposes that these people are not members during the grace period.  Sure that's debatable, and a question of interpreting the bylaws; but isn't it implied that they are still members, and that their membership -- not challenged, not disputed -- is in abeyance, somewhat suspended, in limbo -- is still the default presumption; and that we can niggle about it ad nauseam ... but for the love of Heaven, don't you people realize you have a finite life-span?  -- Is this the way you want to spend the rest of it?

7 hours ago, Gary Novosielski said:

Reprehensible.

nonsense won't do?

wups. (I had first writ "nonsense"; that might be what GPN's "reprehensible" was  a follow-up to. I don't want to impute intellection on Gary P. Novosiileski's part in parallel to either of my hypositories, he and I are probably in agreement on this, provided there's such a word as "hypositories," and maybe if there isn't. )

12 hours ago, Bookish said:

An argument FOR the late fee assessment is that since these people are not members until they pay a reinstatement fee, we are able to do this without a provision in our bylaws.  Your thoughts

Flummery (as Nero Wolfe would say).

5 hours ago, Kim Goldsworthy said:

Let me do a spell check on this sentence.

>> IF IT TAKES [TWO] NAMES TO SIGN A CHECK, CAN IT [BE] [BROTHERS]? BOTH [BROTHERS] ARE OFFICERS.

Q. Is that the question intended?

 

Kim, please put a sock on this.

6 minutes ago, D_K said:

Thank you. Is there any page in RONR I can cite to for support of that argument? I'd like to be prepared.

I'm pretty sure there aren't any, except for the principles of interpretation on p. 588 - 591, which essentially say, be stupid as infrequently as possible for human beings:  for example, when your bylaws say conduct elections in January and, woops, it's February, you don't need to explode the galaxy with your Death Star, you don't even have to dissolve your organization or even plunge it into paralysis until next January when you can maybe conduct your elections in the right month, just conduct them as soon as possible, as perhaps Richard Brown would have advised you had he not been plunged into the depths of despair in contemplation of your existential constitutional crisis.

19 hours ago, Godelfan said:

It seems to me that it is properly neglected.  RONR is intended to be the rules for a deliberative body, not an executory body.

Uh huh.  And the first hundred pages, with nary a rule in view, doesn't count.  Most of fundamental Section 56, almost completely descriptive,  doesn't count.  Last four words on p. 299 are just rules. &c &c.

I put it to you that RONR is -- perhaps sub rosa -- is not purely a rule book, but a work designed to help organizations get their work done; structured on the rules based on which we get things done, but not nearly only.  (Otherwise, to be consistent, you should complain that those instructions to the Treasurer and Secretary are a waste of space, and duly eliminated, so as to reduce the page-count of the next edition?)

I'm not saying it should be lit up in neon, I'm just saying it's so fundamental to the whole process that it shouldn't be relegated to fine print, and the point made only incidentally regarding something else.

Come to think of it (and I just now am, so it demands some more thought), there are places in the book where it says, sometimes explicitly -- in contrast to the instructions the chair gives on p. 121, ~"OK, motion adopted, what's next is..."~ .  Which doesn't give much space for getting the job done.

as it has been for what, forty years, I guess since you Godelfan were maybe only a little kid

12 hours ago, Richard Brown said:

Seems to me it's primarily the job of the president to see that the orders of the society are executed unless the bylaws or the adopted motion provide otherwise.

And your RONR citation for this is where (mindful that the bottom of p.456 is nowhere specific enough)?

To make it clear, my original topic title was "Bluntly: incivility towards illiterates."  I decided to change it, so as not to insult the people described; but in changing to "very bad typists," which I intended to be flagrantly a euphemism, I should have, in parallel, removed "Bluntly," because the title was no longer blunt.  But apparently bluntness on this subject is overdue.

On 12/13/2016 at 9:41 PM, Shmuel Gerber said:

In any event, is it really so bad if guests are made to know that we like our nonsense to be posted [in good English] ... ?

That is so, so, so, not the point; it is so ... perfectly ... oblivious to the point.