Amend Agenda

[Lebomom]

My PTA does not specify an order of business in bylaws or standing rules. RONR is our parliamentary authority, thus will use the order of business as specified in RONR.

The PTA does not approve the agenda at the beginning of the meeting. I have been on other boards that do actually make a motion to approve the agenda.

The first question is "since we don't approve the agenda is it considered approved if nobody objects to the proposed agenda?"

The second and third questions are "can a member make a motion to suspend the rule of order in order to move an item from Old Business or Unfinished Business to occur earlier in the meeting? Can an item of Old Business be moved to occur for example prior to the Reports of Officers?"

I will give you a specific example:

Election of Officers is currently placed in Old Business. The officer and committee reports can sometimes be lengthy. There is a contested election this year and attendance is expected to be heavier than usual. Can a member make a motion as follows:

I move to suspend the rule of order of business to move the election from Old Business to immediately precede the Officer reports.

When would the member make this motion?

Also - here is the reply I received from someone else in PTA. Can you please clarify if any of what is said is correct?

· you can only motion to suspend the rules. The key word here is "rules". Remember that bylaws nor Robert's Rules of Order can not be suspended. Standing Rules can be, but as the e-mail indicates, there is NO rule on the order of business r/t the election of officers. Now the only thing that could be done would be to "amend the agenda" to move the order of the unfinished business so that the election would be 1st under unfinished business rather than last of unfinished business. It cannot ask it to be moved under a different area of the agenda. NOW...this can ONLY be done if the agenda was motioned to be adopted as presented! If the agenda is not adopted, then it cannot be amended...except by general consent, but even 1 objections would stop that.

Thanks!

[George Mervosh]

See RONR (p. 353), and you'll see there is no such thing as "old busines". Your group has probably used the term "old business" by custom. Since you don't adopt an agenda, you are bound by the Standard Order of Businesss (don't call it the s.o.b. around here, people get huffy) on p. 353 if you meet more often than a quarterly time interval.

See RONR, p. 357, lines 27-31, which says election of officers can be regarded as Special Orders, which moves it further up the line.

It is in order to move to suspend the rules by a 2/3 vote and take it up even earlier, if need be and a prime time for you to do it IF you are interested is to make it right after the approval of the minutes.......that will get the election over with early in the meeting.

(edit. - heck I edited it several times, but no more)

[Lebomom]

Thanks George. I appreciate the quick reply and "Go Steelers!"