Martin Peverley

I think this could get complicated, or at least lengthy, depending on how many articles need to change and how many places those are referenced within your bylaws. An alternative may be to offer a renumbered set of bylaws as a substitute, see RONR (12th ed.) 57:4, but this may fall under a Revision and that would open them up to other changes.

I'm looking for guidance on the correct procedure, if there is one, for the following situation. We have a regularly scheduled meeting in December at which we (volunteer fire department), in the past, vote on a motion to "set aside the bylaws" in order to skip the reading of the minutes and all committee reports. We then conduct the annual elections and then adjourn. Thanks to this fine forum, I am now aware that we can not "set aside the bylaws" but I'm looking for a way to still accomplish what we have done in the past. I think we could use Postpone to a Certain Time to dispense with reading the minutes until the January meeting based on a post in another thread. I welcome all your wisdom on this matter, thank you.

RONR (12th ed) 4:11 says "A second merely implies that the seconder agrees that the motion should come before the meeting..." If the motion is not seconded then the members have signalled that they do not wish this matter to come before the meeting, and it "dies for lack of a second". Yes, generally speaking, this is the proper sequence.

RONR (12th ed.) 46:46 covers Time at Which an Election Takes Effect I'm not able to find anything similar for appointments.

Look at 45:18 "... On a ballot vote in an election or other vote involving multiple possible choices, members are able to write in or fill in a vote for any eligible person or choice and are not confined to voting for or against candidates that appear on the ballot." and also 45:25. You have four nominees for three positions, so the names of your nominees will be on the ballot and a voter can select only three of those names. If the voter doesn't want any of the nominees they need to be able to enter a write-in, and again there are only three positions, hence three blank lines.

You vote for a replacement and in the event of a tie you vote again. Repeat as necessary. No, you can not ask someone to abstain. Do your bylaws give the secretary the rights to vote as an ex-officio member? Or what do your bylaws say about the secretary being an ex-officio member?

Per Mr. Honemann's request: If Member C quotes from Member B's post but the quoted text was a quote from a post by Member A, the new post by Member C will show the quote incorrectly attributed to Member B instead of it's original source, Member A. Dr. Kapur's phrasing in the original topic was more succinct: "I'm not certain he can correct the incorrect mention of you as the source of the quote. He apparently quoted from your quote of @Wright Stuff in your post, rather than from WS's original post, and the software used here assigns that to you. "

While doing some searching last week I did find some examples of these*, in some cases PDFs of presentations. I need to go find them again so that I can try and put something together for the fire department. The search term I used was this: Robert's Rules of Order 12th edition PDF *cheat sheets

Done, sir, and included Mr. Gerber as well.

Yes, already reached out to Mr. Honemann via private message.

A quick search of the internet reveals at least one site where the 12th edition is freely available to download. I don't expect that's condoned by the publishers or authors.

by about 5 years! Me either!

It would also be a continuation of the November meeting, correct? That would obviously affect the order of business, I'd assume they can't approve the minutes from the first part of the November meeting, and that an updated Treasurers report, for example, would be out of order. I don't know that it satisfies anything other than the ability to meet on the 2nd Tuesday. I agree that the regularly scheduled December meeting would still go ahead but that could be handled by two members showing up and take any of the steps that can be done without a quorum, such as adjourn.

At the regularly scheduled November meeting could they Fix the Time to Which to Adjourn and set that time to the 2nd Tuesday in December?

If I understand this correctly, the complainant and the Board member are only required to absent themselves from the vote, it doesn't say they need to leave for any discussion prior to the vote.