is it required to read minutes in meetings?

[Guest DDSeaton]

Our membership receives the minutes from each meeting via email or mail ahead of the next meeting. Most of the membership feels it saves time to not have to read the minutes out loud, but to ask if there are additions or corrections to the minutes as received, then approve. It was pointed out that it may be in RONR to be required to be read out loud in each meeting. Can this be modified in our current age of email and still follow the rules?

[Chris Harrison]

If the minutes have been pre-distributed they don't need to be read unless a single member demands it (RONR p. 474 ll. 19-23). While I suppose a Special Rule of Order could be adopted to get rid of that rule be careful in doing that since someone's computer may be down or USPS may have lost that particular piece of mail.

[Rev Ed]

Some organizations do something like this:

When the time comes for the Minutes to be approved, the Chairman states something like "The Minutes have been distributed to the meeting. If no one objects, the Minutes will not be read but corrections are now in order. Are there any corrections to the Minutes. (pause) If not (or if there are no more corrections, the Minutes are approved."

[Gary c Tesser]

[snip]

Not bad, R. Ed.

[David A Foulkes]

Not bad, R. Ed.

Getting close to you referring to him as just Red, I imagine.

[David A Foulkes]

Some organizations do something like this:

When the time comes for the Minutes to be approved, the Chairman states something like "The Minutes have been distributed to the meeting. If no one objects, the Minutes will not be read but corrections are now in order. Are there any corrections to the Minutes. (pause) If not (or if there are no more corrections, the Minutes are approved."

I'd be happy to also see a (pause) after asking for any objections. And I recall the preferred RONR language is "the minutes are approved as read (or as corrected if appropriate). But I'm just being my picky little self there.

[g40]

I'd be happy to also see a (pause) after asking for any objections. And I recall the preferred RONR language is "the minutes are approved as read (or as corrected if appropriate). But I'm just being my picky little self there.

A key to this process is "educating" the Chair and the membership that it is not in order to just object or disagree with the minutes or something that is in the minutes. The only thing members can and should do it offer a correction or deletion to something in the minutes.

[David A Foulkes]

A key to this process is "educating" the Chair and the membership that it is not in order to just object or disagree with the minutes or something that is in the minutes. The only thing members can and should do it offer a correction or deletion to something in the minutes.

I was thinking more along the lines of the right of any one member to request the minutes be read, even when previously distributed. Sure, education is a sorely lacking commodity based on the many posts we see here, and a chair (especially the dominating type we read about so often) who "barrels through" the if no one objects part on his way to the correction phase without giving a pause can lead members to believe their chance to do so has passed.