Re: Meeting log for 2008-09-17

David Graham <cdlu(at)railfan(dot)ca> wrote:
> On Fri, 19 Sep 2008, MJ Ray wrote:
> > Please don't permit AOB at meetings.
>
> We've been down this road, we've had this argument. AOB is important for
> the function of the board and banning it is an utterly useless and
> counter-productive artificial barrier.

Where was this argument? SPI hasn't had AOB for ages, it isn't in the
normal order of business and seems excluded by the promised notice
timetable. If the argument was hidden away on -board, please
summarise it.

"Important" seems clearly not true. There are many boards in all
sorts of organisations that do not have AOB. In my experience, the
ones without AOB at their meetings (my webmaster cooperative, my
village council, the local NHS Primary Care Trust and others) function
better than the ones which allow AOB (my old company, the regional
cooperative council and others). I think the reasoning is similar to
the argument for the suggested Ontario "Open Meetings Law".

Yes, having no concealing agenda item is an artificial barrier, but an
agenda is an artificial construct too. I believe people will
generally take the route of least work, which is to raise things in
AOB even when it would be better for members to put it on the agenda.
PG's dissatisfaction with the accounts would have been better in the
treasurer report discussion and PGCon's announcement would have been
more use on the agenda - it will be on minutes that won't be published
until after the conference has finished!

Hope that explains,
--
MJ Ray (slef)
Webmaster for hire, statistician and online shop builder for a small
worker cooperative http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
(Notice http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html) tel:+44-844-4437-237