Re: Meetings and Minutes and More

A few questions:

- The current bylaws have an Article Six that specifies the order of
business of a meeting. Not that we follow it now, but should we change
this or eliminate it? It doesn't work very well with our new
definition of a meeting, and it requires certain things (such as
minutes being read) to be done at certain points in the meeting.

- Are we going to require the board to keep minutes of meetings such as
email discussions? It seems implied by the above and by other
occurrences of the word "minutes" in the bylaws at various points. Are
these going to have to be made public? Also, the Treasurer's report
needs to be "physically affixed" to the minutes of the meeting in which
they happen. How are we going to adapt this to our electronic
meetings?

- We need to amend our board member election amendment to replace 2003
with 2004 and 2004 with 2005, unless we think we're going to finish up
really quickly.

I know most of this is out of order and would have been allowable
primarily in our identification of problems phase, but these are things
that we are apparently going to be directly contradicting, rather than
things that could simply be improved. Therefore, we should at least
consider them.

- Jimmy Kaplowitz
jimmy(at)debian(dot)org

On Sat, Jun 28, 2003 at 01:21:06AM -0400, Jimmy Kaplowitz wrote:
> - The current bylaws have an Article Six that specifies the order of
> business of a meeting. Not that we follow it now, but should we change
> this or eliminate it? It doesn't work very well with our new
> definition of a meeting, and it requires certain things (such as
> minutes being read) to be done at certain points in the meeting.

Kill it. Order of business shouldn't be in the bylaws unless we really
require something be done.

> - Are we going to require the board to keep minutes of meetings such as
> email discussions? It seems implied by the above and by other
> occurrences of the word "minutes" in the bylaws at various points. Are
> these going to have to be made public? Also, the Treasurer's report
> needs to be "physically affixed" to the minutes of the meeting in which
> they happen. How are we going to adapt this to our electronic
> meetings?

Yes, minutes should be kept and approved for every meeting, and they
should be made public. Replace "physically affixed" with "included
with" -- that should solve that little problem.

> - We need to amend our board member election amendment to replace 2003
> with 2004 and 2004 with 2005, unless we think we're going to finish up
> really quickly.

Agreed.

--
Taral <taral(at)taral(dot)net>
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"Most parents have better things to do with their time than take care of
their children." -- Me

On Sat, Jun 28, 2003 at 01:21:06AM -0400, Jimmy Kaplowitz wrote:
> - The current bylaws have an Article Six that specifies the order of
> business of a meeting. Not that we follow it now, but should we change
> this or eliminate it? It doesn't work very well with our new
> definition of a meeting, and it requires certain things (such as
> minutes being read) to be done at certain points in the meeting.

This is already present as item 32 on our list.

> - Are we going to require the board to keep minutes of meetings such as
> email discussions? It seems implied by the above and by other
> occurrences of the word "minutes" in the bylaws at various points. Are
> these going to have to be made public? Also, the Treasurer's report
> needs to be "physically affixed" to the minutes of the meeting in which
> they happen. How are we going to adapt this to our electronic
> meetings?

"physically affixed" is item 28 on our list. The others might be able to be
handled under item 0A ("minutes of email meetings should be public").

> - We need to amend our board member election amendment to replace 2003
> with 2004 and 2004 with 2005, unless we think we're going to finish up
> really quickly.

I will draft a proposal for that; however, we should keep in mind that our
proposals to date will be released to the public on July 1.

> I know most of this is out of order and would have been allowable
> primarily in our identification of problems phase, but these are things
> that we are apparently going to be directly contradicting, rather than
> things that could simply be improved. Therefore, we should at least
> consider them.

If you take a look at the list and think that items 0A, 28, and 32 are more
important than the items ahead of them on the list, I have no problem
considering them first.

-- John

On Mon, Jun 30, 2003 at 08:53:11AM -0500, John Goerzen wrote:
[snip]
> This is already present as item 32 on our list.
[snip]
> "physically affixed" is item 28 on our list. The others might be able to be
> handled under item 0A ("minutes of email meetings should be public").

Ah, heh heh, I see I haven't looked at the list enough recently :-) I
will do that soon.

> If you take a look at the list and think that items 0A, 28, and 32 are more
> important than the items ahead of them on the list, I have no problem
> considering them first.

I'll give you my opinion on that after I look at the list, certainly.

- Jimmy Kaplowitz
jimmy(at)debian(dot)org