approving minutes in consent agendas

[Guest Christine S.]

Hello. With the approval of minutes in a consent agenda, how do you handle business arising from the minutes? If this comes from the floor, do you move the minutes to the regular agenda?

[Hieu H. Huynh]

The business would be handled separately from the approval of the minutes.

[jstackpo]

Also, I'm not clear on what you, Christine, mean by "business arising from the minutes".   Could you give us an example, please.  It sounds a bit as though your association has a practice, a custom, that isn't described in RONR.  Tell us about it and we shall see what we can do to help.

 

 

[Richard Brown]

I don't understand what guest Christine means either.

[Atul Kapur]

To quote myself:

In case it gets cut off, the full quote is:

          A common order of business, at least here in Canada, is "Business arising from the minutes," which is usually used
          to provide updates on items decided upon at the last meeting. eg: "At the last meeting we adopted the motion 'That
          we have the clubhouse repainted.' The manager has obtained three quotes and chosen a painter, who will start next week."

          Under RONR, I think this would properly be done as a report. And I think this would be the same thing for what I anticipate
           is the usual type of item that shows up under Old Business.

To which I will add: it can also be used to ask questions, such as, "Last meeting we adopted a motion to repaint the clubhouse. What's going on with that?" Again, I think that this would be properly done under Reports.

 

To answer Guest Christine S.:  The approval of the minutes is usually what is placed on the consent agenda. If there are questions arising from the minutes, that does not affect the approval of them, so the approval does not need to be taken off the consent agenda. It is only if someone wants to move a correction to the minutes that they need to be taken off the consent agenda. This is what Mr. Huynh said much more concisely.

I'm making some assumptions here about Guest Christine S.' situation based on the terminology she used. I hope she'll let us know if my assumptions are correct and the answer makes sense.

[Guest Guest Christine S.]

Thank you for your replies. This makes sense to me. The approval of the minutes remains under the consent agenda. But if a member wishes to ask about the business from a previous meeting noted in these minutes, that discussion would come under the regular report of the current meeting.

All the best,
Christine

[Rob Elsman]

Huh? Where is that in RONR?

[Atul Kapur]

Word for word? That's not there. However, based on the terminology used in the OP, it sounded like they 

1) use an Order of Business that, while it is not the standard one, is common enough that it is familiar; and

2) use RONR or, if they don't, follow general parliamentary law closely enough that the principles in RONR can be used to answer her question, as Mr. Huynh did concisely.

Edited May 10, 2019 at 04:54 PM by Atul Kapur
Fixing run-on sentence

[Gary Novosielski]

I would suggest that the reading and approval of minutes does not belong on the consent calendar. RONR states that the Consent Calendar is an optional heading that may, pursuant to a special rule of order, be included in the standard order of business in addition to those headings already listed as standard.  Reading and Approval of Minutes is already a standard heading, and as I read it, should not be subsumed into any of the optional headings.

Handling minutes separately is no hardship.  In order to be placed on and remain on the consent calendar, there would have to be no intent on the part of any member to offer a correction.  If this is, in fact, the case, the amount of extra time added to the meeting depends on how quickly the chair can pronounce There being no corrections, the minutes stand approved.

Edited May 11, 2019 at 02:38 AM by Gary Novosielski

[Atul Kapur]

3 hours ago, Gary Novosielski said:

RONR states that the Consent Calendar is an optional heading that may, pursuant to a special rule of order, be included in the standard order of business in addition to those headings already listed as standard. 

I do not read it as saying that you can only use a consent calendar if you are using the standard order of business. The standard order is there for any organization that does not establish its own order of business (p. 353 lines 17-20). An organization is free to adopt a Special Rule of Order to create any order business it desires, including one with a consent calendar.

3 hours ago, Gary Novosielski said:

amount of extra time added to the meeting depends on how quickly the chair can pronounce There being no corrections, the minutes stand approved.

They presumably use a consent calendar to save time. If they want to save this extra little bit of time as well, I see nothing wrong with that.

Edited May 11, 2019 at 05:57 AM by Atul Kapur
Fixed typo

[Gary Novosielski]

17 minutes ago, Atul Kapur said:

They presumably use a consent calendar to save time. If they want to save this extra little bit of time as well, I see nothing wrong with that.

Well, they save time only if there are no corrections.  If there are, then there must first be a request to remove approval of minutes from the consent calendar. And then where does it go?  It surely should not go after the consent calendar is complete.  Minutes are put first for a reason.

[Richard Brown]

I agree with Dr. Kapur. An organization is free to adopt whatever order of business it wants, including a consent agenda which includes approval of the minutes of the previous meeting. In fact, my own city council does that.

[Dan Honemann]

I agree that an organization is free to adopt by special rule of order any order of business it wants, even one which includes a consent calendar which specifically includes approval of the minutes of the previous meeting, but I also agree that it's a dumb idea. 

[Gary Novosielski]

On 5/11/2019 at 5:41 AM, Daniel H. Honemann said:

I agree that an organization is free to adopt by special rule of order any order of business it wants, even one which includes a consent calendar which specifically includes approval of the minutes of the previous meeting, but I also agree that it's a dumb idea. 

Thanks.

I also agree that an organization may adopt dumb ideas. When they do so, they stray beyond the borders of what RONR has to say on the matter.  My response was offered under the assumption that the main purpose of this forum was to explain what RONR has to say on this and other matters.

Edited May 12, 2019 at 03:01 PM by Gary Novosielski

[Guest Blaine]

I belong to a non-profit board that does the following:  Immediately after the call to order, the minutes are reviewed and, if necessary, corrected.  The wording on the Consent Agenda states "The Board approves the minutes of the December 10, 2019 meeting with any corrections agreed to by consensus vote prior to the motion to consider and adopt the Consent Agenda".

[Richard Brown]

Guest Blaine, this topic (thread) is one year old.  Please post your question as a new topic (thread).  Even though your question might seem similar to the original question, we prefer that new questions be asked by starting new topics.

Edited to add:  The  instructions for starting a new topic can be found  here:  https://robertsrules.forumflash.com/topic/25416-important-read-this-first-faq-and-information-for-new-members-and-guests/

 

Edited April 6, 2020 at 06:56 PM by Richard Brown
Added last paragraph