Bylaws are currently being reviewed by a newly appointed Ad-Hoc Committee.
Tom Marone is our Bylaw and Robert's Rules of Order go-to guy. Here are his thoughts on where they should start with the enormous task ahead of them. Please view the two attachments that pertain to the current review of the RCSC's Bylaws.
The first article pertains to items that I believe need the most attention. There are several other items that could have been included, such as permission to collect petition signatures on RCSC property, but since I passed these comments onto some of the members on the Ad Hoc Committee, I didn't want to overwhelm them!
ATTACHMENT A contains the reasons why I believe Article IV, Section 4 of the Bylaws are in conflict with both the Arizona Revised Statutes and the RCSC Articles of Incorporation and we, the Members, should be allowed to make motions and amend the Bylaws at our Annual Membership Meetings.
5 comments:
It will be interesting to watch as this ad hoc committee clearly has it's work cut out for them. IT know appears the additional 16 pages have been added to the by-laws in just the past 3 or 4 years. As a reminder, the order of importance is as follows:
1). Articles of Incorporation (Changed by a vote of the membership).
2). By-Laws (Changed by the board via motions and a vote of the membership).
3). Board Policies.
For some strange reason, some of the existing board policies had been moved to the b-laws which made them virtually unreadable. Sadly, it wasn't just a case of moving them, things were added that existed nowhere (see Article 9), it is pure gibberish.
Kudos to those who have stepped up to help restore our documents to being both readable and meaningful.
This is highly educational. Since the BOD does not appear to be inclined to this re-education, when does a recall or legal action against the BOD start?
We all seem to get the highly documented point. The BOD ignores it all. Do we just continue to write posts and go to RCSC meetings to be shut up? What will deliver concrete change in our lifetimes?
It's a fair question and one that has frustrated any number of us. As you may know, a Sun City resident has applied for a recall petition control number and has been rejected four times. The by-laws nor the board policies give them the ability to do that. The do it because they can, the remedy, legal actions. Not our objective.
For the next 6 months our goal is to educate (thank you for pointing that out) the membership. More importantly, identify three candidates we can endorse in the coming election. No small task, but one we relish because once the majority of board members believe the membership should have a voice, easier to change the move back towards a sense of community.
In the old days, and according to the 2008 Bylaws, the only time a motion or amendment was referred back to the Board for study at a Membership meeting was if it was requested by the President.
Somewhere along the line, what was once only an option became mandatory?
These are my personal notes, comments and opinions from the April 4th Ad Hoc Bylaw Committee. These notes and comments are mine alone and do not reflect the opinions of the Committee.
Anyone who has read my previous comments and opinions regarding Robert’s Rules of Order will not be surprised to read that in my opinion they are going about this process incorrectly.
They are currently still attempting to find the best way to approach the project, which by no means is a small task, and I commend each member of the committee for their commitment especially since they meet once a week and have vast homework assignments between meetings.
The committee is currently starting with the 2022 Bylaws and are comparing them to the March 2018 Bylaws. Their first go-around is to separate anything that is, or was a Board Policy that was placed within the Bylaws and remove it. They are also concentrating on the headings of the Articles and Sections within the Bylaws to determine whether they actually belong in the Bylaws or not.
Here’s where I believe they’re going wrong. At one point someone questioned why a particular rule was in the 2022 Bylaws. It was determined that since that rule was not in the 2018 Bylaws it probably shouldn’t be in the 2022 Bylaws.
Here’s my point; if you continue to look at the previous sets of Bylaws you’re going to find things that were in the older set but not in the newer set, and things that weren’t in the older sets but are now in a newer set! So…where does it end? Do they keep on digging deeper and deeper into the older sets of Bylaws? It seems to me they are attempting to reinvent the wheel?
Here’s my opinion: I understand that Robert’s Rules of Order was not specified as the corporation’s parliamentary authority when it was first established, but now it is. So if the Bylaws must now comply with Robert’s Rules then the committee should first read the section of Robert’s Rules that explains the Content and Composition of Bylaws (RONR Chapter XVIII, Section 56). Once they understand what needs to be in the basic set of Bylaws they should start from scratch and develop a whole new set of Bylaws based on Robert’s Rules of Order and compiling and inserting the pertinent rules and bylaws already established by the RCSC over the many years of the various versions of the Bylaws.
I believe they will, at some point, end-up continuing to look back at each older version. Although not intended, I believe it’s unavoidable, because how do you research where or why a Bylaw was or was not in the previous set of Bylaws unless you look back at the history of each previous set of Bylaws? I think they could save themselves a lot of time and aggravation if they were to just start from scratch.
But that’s just my opinion!
Tom Marone
Post a Comment