Requirement vs Expectation, do words matter?

[AFS1970]

I fear we may have messed up by not catching a subtle wording difference when we revised our fire department bylaws. 

Our old Bylaws had the following wording:

Quote

 

ARTICLE III: Duties and Responsibilities of Members

Section 3: All active members are expected to attend at least 50% of the fire drills of the company during the company year. Those members failing to attend the requisite number of drills shall be subject to discipline.

 

When we revised our bylaws, this had a requirement for calls added, and it was moved to a new article as follows:

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ARTICLE 4:  Duties and Responsibilities of Members

Section 3: All Active Members are expected to attend at least 50% of the fire drills, and at least 10% of the calls, during the company year. Those members failing to attend the requisite number of calls and drills shall be subject to discipline.

 

This wording is referenced in our requirements to run for office as follows, which is where the potential trouble comes up.

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ARTICLE 7:  Service Officers:

Section 2:    Eligibility Requirements for the position of Chief

A)   Hold the membership class of First Grade Firefighter or Veteran in good standing.

Shall have met all requirements for their class of membership in the previous year

Section 4:    Eligibility Requirements for Service Officers:

A)        Assistant Chief:

1)     Hold the membership class of First Grade Firefighter or Veteran in good standing.

2)     Shall have met all requirements for their class of membership in the previous year

Captains:

1)     Hold the membership class of First Grade Firefighter or Veteran in good standing.

2)     Shall have met all requirements for their class of membership in the previous year

C)     Lieutenants:

1)     Hold the membership class of First Grade Firefighter or Veteran in good standing.

2)     Shall have met all requirements for their class of membership in the previous year

 

This adds in a reference to the following:

Quote

 

ARTICLE 3:  Membership

D)   First Grade Firefighter                     

1)   Shall be those Active Members who;

a)    During the previous year, met the required quota of calls and drills, as set forth in Article 4, Section 3.

 

Sorry for the long list of quotes, but our issue now comes up with the difference between an expectation versus a requirement. Article 4, Section 3 says members are expected to meet quotas but then says that failing to attend the requisite number makes you subject to discipline. All the other sections refer to the quotas as required not expected, is there a difference? 

This is going to be a big issue because both our chief and our president are against the new bylaws and have said they can't figure out who has enough calls and drills due to poor record keeping. The chief said this only after trying to say he wasn't going to provide the records to follow this requirement. The President has indicated that he simply will not enforce these requirements (if that is what they are). This is leading to at least two and maybe more candidates that are probably ineligible for office being allowed to run. I expect several points of order to be raised the night of the elections. 

In discussions about how to deal with this, it was brought up that expecting someone to do something is not the same as requiring them to do something. If they are the same, then we will run into the problem with ineligible candidates. If they are different (and thus not as enforcible) it is likely that those candidates will be eligible to run after all. 

[Gary Novosielski]

On a simple straightforward reading of those articles, it seems to me that those who do not meet expectations are subject to discipline.  

If you have members who like to split hairs, you should revise the language to say exactly it is intended to mean.  It is a principle of interpretation that if there are two possible readings, one of which is absurd, then that's not the right one.  To list expectations  but say that they make no difference, is an absurd interpretation, in my view.

If the President has stated he will not enforce the bylaws, it might be well to find someone else to run for that office, even if they're missing an expectation or or two.

But since I'm not a member, all of the above is just my 2¢.