Chair moving vote - stopping debate

[Guest Sheila]

I was appointed to a small board a year ago and made President with no former board experience - I know, not good but I was the most qualified, imagine that. I've been reading all afternoon looking for answers to my million questions. It seems you can't limit debate and yet the Chair needs to keep the meeting moving and focused. How do you handle someone who talks a long time, repeating the same thing and never comes to a conclusion?

[Robert B Fish]

I was appointed to a small board a year ago and made President with no former board experience - I know, not good but I was the most qualified, imagine that. I've been reading all afternoon looking for answers to my million questions. It seems you can't limit debate and yet the Chair needs to keep the meeting moving and focused. How do you handle someone who talks a long time, repeating the same thing and never comes to a conclusion?

Small boards of less than about a dozen use less formal rules. The chairman can make motions, speak in debate, and vote with the other members. See page 470.

To rein in a person taking more than his/her share of the time, ask him if he any more to say that's germane to the subject and proceed to a vote.

It the less formal method p[p470] isn't working for your board, you might try the more formal one. It's your choice.

-Bob

[Guest Sheila]

Small boards of less than about a dozen use less formal rules. The chairman can make motions, speak in debate, and vote with the other members. See page 470.

To rein in a person taking more than his/her share of the time, ask him if he any more to say that's germane to the subject and proceed to a vote.

It the less formal method p[p470] isn't working for your board, you might try the more formal one. It's your choice.

-Bob

[Guest Sheila]

Thanks Bob, I think more formality would help. With some strong personalities on the board as well, it will prevent problems.

[Gary c Tesser]

Let me first point out that, while I'm tempted to welcome Guest Sheila's million questions, we here on the world's premier parliamentary Internet forum have barely got to about 70,000 discussion threads in about ten years, so maybe we can't handle Sheila's million fast enough. On the other hand, it often looks as if the regulars compete to answer questions, so maybe we collectively have too much time on our hands. So, Sheila, take your best shot. :-) ... and the other 999,999 shots.

Please, please, get yourself a running start by picking up your copy of RONR - In Brief and reading it TODAY. As Dr Stackpole says, you can read it (the first time) just by skipping a couple of "Law & Order" episodes. Come back to the world's premier parliamentary Internet forum to ask questions that arise from that reading. (I personally like questions about p. 23 and 119. But that's my quirk, there's almost 200 other pages to ask about.)

And as the president, do have a copy of the full RONR, 10th Edition. It's got those endearing bilious gold, or green by now, covers. Notice it has small pages and big print: if you set yourself to reading a trifling ten pages a day, you can go cover-to-cover in a couple of months. Even less time if you skip parts that just plain don't apply to your situation, like founding an organization, or dissolving or merging it with another. Or keep reading if you just can't resist its graceful if sinuously convoluted sentence structure and overall charming traditionally laconic style (as exemplified by, say, the sentence spanning lines 7 - 17 on p. 75, which I've been trying to get a handle on since about 1992, when it was hiding on p. 78).

(This is me encouraging Sheila. I'll hold off on mentioning the crocodiles till maybe Sunday, when she's finished RONR-IB maybe the third time, and broken the ice with her first 25,000 questions.)