Ardant

For Mr. Brown: re "...majority of fifty one percent (51%)..." that is direct text snip from our bylaws in the quotations. The rest of the sentence is paraphrased language from me. The reason I did not quote in total from our bylaws is because although our governing documents are distributed to all unit owners/occupants and in my opinion are in the public domain some questions may exist as to their public document status. I didn't want to add to my troubles about that so I just did a mimimal quote from the bylaws. Apologies for the confusion. Thank you for your assistance.

Getting there...the bylaws actually state that the bylaws may be amended by a vote of a majority "...fifty-one percent (51%)..." from the pool of actual (qualified) voter participants (my language). My revised take (after Mr. Martin post): Since it is not expressly stipulated in our bylaws granting the board to make permanent changes to our parliamentary rules (RONR) the board can only Limit Debate for the current meeting involved or a portion of that meeting thereof. In order for the Limit Debate motion to be approved 2/3 approval of the voting members present or who participated in the actual vote (exception: abstention or absent) is required. I understand if 2/3 of our 7 board members participated in the special rule of order vote the approval threshold is 5. If less than 7 participated in the vote the 2/3 approval threshold would be relevant to the number of board members participating in the vote. Once the current meeting affected by the approved (if obtained) Limit Debate has ended the Limit Debate approval is no longer in effect. It is specific to that board meeting only. The subsequent board meeting(s) will require its own Limit Debate motion and approval vote and is unique to that specific meeting.

Yes. The president of the board wants to make the change of Limit of Debate to 5 minutes a permanent rule. The majority under the president is suppressing the minority. Additionally, some of our subjects demand more than 5-minutes mainly, because, speaking for myself, I bring supporting documents for the minority's position and display them to the association members who attend the board meeting as well as providing documents to the board. I checked our bylaws again (and will check again) and I do not see anywhere in them that grants the board the authority to change anything with regards to our parliamentary authority (RONR which is specified in statute and our bylaws). So in my mind after reading so much thought provoking comments and guidance here, in order for a permanent change to occur (from RONR 10 minutes to this proposed 5-minute restriction) the 7-member board must use the Special Rules of Order provision (suspending from association just confuses me) and 2/3 of the board must be in the affirmative. 4.67 is 2/3 of 7. Therefore to reach/exceed that threshold, 5 of the 7 board members must vote in the affirmative. I think from reading all this that the whole association could vote on this and a majority (51% per our bylaws) affirmative is required but the president and their majority will not open up our bylaws for any updates. Hope I'm in the ballpark here. Thank you all again.