Jump to content
The Official RONR Q & A Forums

minutes


Guest milesc

Recommended Posts

As secretary of an organization am I out of order to state"There were no corrections or additions and the minutes were approved as read":?

Generally, the minutes would report that the minutes of the previous meeting were "approved as read" or "approved as corrected." There's no need to include in the minutes things that didn't happen.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

thank you for the information. I was told -by the president.- that I was not in compliance to roberts rules, as I stated this in the minutes of the meeting.(small group) .

Well, you should ask the president to show where in RONR it is shown how you were not in compliance, and how you should record that in the minutes to be compliant. While you included more than was called for, I don't think what you wrote was so egregiously wrong that you should have been called out of order. At least it was factual (assuming there were no corrections of course :)).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

thank you for the information. I was told -by the president.- that I was not in compliance to roberts rules, as I stated this in the minutes of the meeting.(small group) .

Well, the President is correct on this point - the wording in RONR is a bit briefer. See RONR, 11th ed., pg. 469, lines 1-8; pg. 472, lines 8-9. If the minutes are "approved as read," it is redundant to note that there are no corrections or additions - if there were, you would write that the minutes were "approved as corrected." I think it was a bit harsh to rule this out of order, however, especially if he actually said that you were out of order. It would have been preferable for the President to have simply made this as a correction to the minutes, or better yet, as a friendly comment prior to the meeting.

While you included more than was called for, I don't think what you wrote was so egregiously wrong that you should have been called out of order.

I concur. The situation is even worse if the President actually said the member was out of order, and worse still if he addressed the member in the second person while doing so. The President should take a look at RONR, 11th ed., pg. 39, lines 21-30.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hmmmm........

RONR says special meetings don't approve minutes. Is that a general rule that can be superseded by the specific rule that what is listed in the call is to be transacted, thus allowing a special meeting to be called specifically to approve minutes?

I think that the last time this question popped up, we all agreed:

The rule is, special meetings do not approve minutes automatically -- it must be included in the call-to-meeting, since it is business of the organization, and special meetings only transact the business listed in the call-to-meeting.

It would logically incoherent to argue that, "Even if included in the call-to-meeting of a special meeting, no minutes are allowed to be approved, because of RONR's prohibition, viz., special meetings do not approve minutes."

I agree.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hmmm back at you....The whole purpose of having Special Meetings is to "deal with matters...that require action before the next regular meeting"

Since when are minutes all that important?

Are there are any other explicit unqualified declarative sentences in the book that clearly express a rule that you think can be abrogated by the mere announcement that you intend to do so?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Responding to Edgar...

The rule - p. 473 - doesn't include the word "typically"; that is your interpretation.

"A special meeting does not approve minutes" is about as explicit as a rule could be.

I'm not saying that a special meeting is always and forever forbidden to approve minutes, just that planning or proposing to do so needs to be noticed, AND the (explicit) rule forbidding such must be suspended first, at the meeting. Or all of a piece: "I move to suspend the rules and approve the minutes of the [date] meeting". 2/3 will adopt that. So that should keep Trina happy, too, (although she seems perfectly happy without my help).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"A special meeting does not approve minutes" is about as explicit as a rule could be.

I don't think so. It would be significantly more explicit if it said that a special meeting may not approve minutes. Instead it is simply saying that, although meetings usually begin with the approval of the minutes of the previous meeting, this is not (with the rare exception that is the subject of this discussion) the case with special meetings. In other words, the normal order of business doesn't apply.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...