John Cummings

I came here with 1 question. And I thought it was a pretty simple example. Now what I'm hearing is pretty much anything goes as far as amendments. You folks here might think it acceptable to make a last minute change at a meeting which 2/3 of the ownership is not aware of, but I certainly don't. The good news is that our association has no choice but to separate the actually "ballot voting" meeting from the amendment/discussion meeting, so I really don't need to know what is legal, fair,acceptable, proper, allowed or whatever it is called. If any amendment unreasonable, the owners will vote it down when the voting ballot comes out 30-60 days later. Thanks again for the help. John

Thanks Josh, I give up. I don't think I will ever understand what is an acceptable amendment to a proposed and PROPERLY NOTICED bylaw change. I'm never going to be a Robert's Rules Scholar and neither are the owners at my association. I can assure you, as little as I know, I'm one of the RONR Scholars at my association and I know very little. If this question can't be answered in simple, laymans terms then nobody will ever understand amendment done during a meeting when the entire agenda was REQUIRED To be properly noticed, 21 days in advance of the meeting. I'm not making this notice up, it is in the NH Condo Act - RSA 356B under meetings. Thanks for all the help though. John

Oh no -lol Are we still referring to the same thing though? I will never and I mean never know all the exact words that you folks use. In layman's terms I'm simply asking how do you know if an amendment to a proposed amendment is legal or illegal? I believe it was you on another thread that brought up the word "SCOPE" and you gave me an example similar to this. If we had and article/motion, I don't care what we call it, that stated the Board was to receive $100/year then the Scope for an amendment would be $0-$100. We couldn't amend at the meeting to make this $1000/year. This is the easy example as it involves cash. My example on canopy's was more of a challege to me and I thought or at least I thought I understood after Joshua's explanation. Now I feel like I'm back to square one. John

Josh, I would disagree, you have been of tremendous assistance and I think you have already answered the question that I came here for. Unfortunately, in my situation, Robert's Rule's is just 1 piece of the puzzle, there is not a Robert's Rules only solution that will solve any of our issues. I came here simply trying to get a better understandinf of how you determine what is germane to a motion and therefore would be a LEGAL amendment. You have all helped, but I love Joshua's explanation on how to determine if something is germane. His explanation. "Would you be surprised, yes or no?" This is the layman's answer I was looking for. If our election process ran more like my town in Massacusetts ran, then our problems would be solved. My biggest complaint about amendments, right or wrong, is that the 2/3 owners NOT in attendance are not informed and they are shut out of the vote. I'm not here to debate the legalities of amendments. I think they violate the "proper notice" law in the Condo Act, but that is not relevant to my question. In my home town, we separate the deliberative session from the voting. We have our Deliberative session 2 months before the election. This session is run under RONR or something very similar that towns use. The "proposed" ballot articles are discussed here and typically we struggle to get the 100 voters out of 5000 residents to make the quorum. This meeting finalizes the ballot and then the entire town votes 60 days later. Our election process is going to have to change or we will never have enough voters to change another bylaw. The new lawyer corrected our Board and told them all bylaw changes required 2/3 vote of OWNERS, not VOTERS. That ruling might seem insignificat to you folks here, but it is a game changer, trust me. I would retire this thread as you have been more than helpfull, or if you are curious about other things, I will gladly respond to any questions. Thanks John

I don't disagree with that, but this person would also need to be an expert and NH Condo Law, our Condo instruments and RONR. I just don't know how many of these types exist. There are many moving parts to integrate here and way more than simply a stand-alone RONR issue. Plus, I thought I heard in this thread that due to the NH Condo Law regarding "proper notice" that we can't do amendments anyway or at the very least we need to speak to a lawyer. I did speak to 2 lawyers and got 2 different answers. One lawyer that I paid, told me NO amendments are allowed due to the "proper notice" law. The other lawyer that I didn't pay, I just randomly emailed a lawyer I found online, told me that amendments are allowed. I'm hoping for the reasons I stated earlier regarding the 2/3 "OWNER" requirement to pass a bylaw that this all goes away. I find this extremenly interesting, but very complicated at the same time. Thanks John

Thanks everyone! This discussion is leading me down a road that is telling me that amendments to proposed amendments while possibly legal should not be allowed for the simple reason that we just don't understand RONR. The responders are giving me answers that they could most likely give in their sleep while the person(me) that needs to apply this to a real life situation is struggling. If I'm struggling, I can't imaging how someone that hasn't done any research or studying feels. As a test of our associations knowledge of amendments. I proposed this EXACT same question on our FB page and 100% of the responses were wrong. The answer is that all my proposed amendments are illegal, but the Facebook responders to my poll said they were all legal. At least that is how I this thread went. Not really sure how to process this. Thanks John

Thank Josh, This post went into directions that I never intended. I simply wanted to know what was a legal vs illegal amendment. "scope", "germane" or what ever the tecnical word is, I think you gave me the info I needed. I agree, I have an attorney. I actually spoke with 2 NH Condo Attorney's before I came here and got 2 different answers. Thanks John

Thanks and thanks everyone. It would cost me a fortune to try to explain this in court lol. And the good news is that I probably won't have to. Due to our "new" lawyer correcting our BOD on the voting requirements for bylaw changes it is likely that our annual meeting process will have to change. I would like to see a deliberative session to discuss, debate and amend articles followed by the creation of the final election ballot and a vote 30 days later. The new lawyer instructed the BOD that any bylaw changes requires 2/3 of ALL OWNERS and that is 304 owners as we are an association of 456. We have always used 2/3 of VOTERS. We rarely have over 300 voters so we either change our process to be more inclusive or we never add/change another bylaw. We are a vacation resort and people come and go, so any change they make to the date/time would likely still have less than 304 voters. I guess they could work to get the number to perhaps 350, but that would still make it hard to change a bylaw as they would still need 86% of the vote. I guess trivial bylaws could pass and controversial ones would never pass and perhaps that is the intent. Thanks John

Perfect!! The NH Condo Act requires all proposed changes to be "noticed to all owners" 21 days prior to the annual meeting. It goes even further. The Association Secretary is required to prepare and Affidavit documenting that all owners have been noticed and the method of notice. I can't for the life of me think of any reason other than that "ALL OWNERS MUST BE NOTIFIED OF ANY CHANGE PROPOSAL". If that isn't the reason, then I'm clueless. Also, since only about 1/3 of the owners attend the annual meeting, if anything changed their then we would certainly be in violation of the "notice" requirement. Thanks John

Thanks Josh, It sounds like the more appropriate word is "germane" and not "scope", but we are talking the same thing. I will use germane in the future. John

Here is the actual "item" that was sent out on the agenda. I'm just reporting the facts. I don't know why they chose the term "item", but my guess is because it seemed to fit and nothing related to RONR. I altered the amount on my initial question, but that isn't relative as I was trying to make up an article. Item #15 Purpose: Requesting the approval of up to $28,000 from Capital Reserves to support owner’s efforts to add an additional 9 Canopies and Picnic Tables to the beach area.

I have to add a funny story here. Not related to the topic. And don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying this discussion and learning. I was a systems programmer by trade and there was 2 senior systems programmers in the group. When someone asked them a question if frequently went like this with the questioner leaving more confused than when they came. I'm not more confused. just though it was funny. Hope you get a chuckle too.

Interesting. I got that term from one of you folks in my prior thread question. Perhaps you didn't mean it literaly and I took it that way. Regardless, I think we are talking about the same issue,but calling it something different. Thanks

Thanks, No, all of our voting is done at the annual meeting and these amendments make it pure chaos because of lack of order and the rush to vote on things. We have 2 articles, yes I'm calling them articles because that is how they are defined on our agenda that were amended twice. I was so confused as were most owners that all we could do is vote no. Thanks for the clarification on the other things in this reply. Very helpful and I think we have been wrong for years. Thanks JOhn