[wplug-plan] Bylaws amendments - Board and VK proposals

[Patrick Wagstrom]

On Fri, 2006-09-15 at 22:17 -0600, Vance Kochenderfer wrote:
> Patrick Wagstrom <pwagstro at andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:
> [regarding VK proposal to strike "calendar" from "one calendar year"]
> > I think we're covered with the whole "from the reception by the WPLUG
> > board...".  If not, I'm fine with changing "one calendar year" to
> > "twelve months".
> 
> I agree that the best interpretation of the original wording is
> that membership goes for one year from the date of joining, but it
> just seemed a bit odd to use the term "calendar year" in this
> context.  Is there some other kind of year?  :)

Yeah, actually.  There is a school year (my church actually works on
this), and a fiscal year (government, businesses, etc).  The hope of
using calendar year was to distinguish, but I guess we failed.  Just
putting 12 months should be fine.  Or heck, "one year" is fine too,
everyone will know what we wanted.

> [regarding proviso relating to change in number of directors]
> > I'm not a big fan of special cases in bylaws.  I think everyone will
> > know what we mean.  We've got cluesticks to help.  :-)
> 
> I might not have been clear about this: the proviso does *not*
> appear in the bylaws - it's just part of the motion enacting the
> change to help manage the transition.  In fact, after the election
> meeting, the proviso ceases to have any effect at all.  Poof!

Do we really need it then?  The purpose of bylaws and stuff like that is
to guide an organization, not to cripple it by requiring every little
change to be specified in a motion.  For simplicity sake, we can just
agree at the meeting and move on with it.  I'm all about simple --
you'll notice these amendments actually shorten the bylaws.

> [regarding VK quorum proposal of 10 or 1/5]
> > This creates a problem with then having five directors and only five
> > other folks required for a meeting.  That worries me some.  I'll sleep
> > on it some.
> 
> This was a concern when we drafted the new bylaws.  But when you
> think about it, if we can't make quorum to have a membership
> meeting, then the Board effectively has control over the group
> anyway.  The main thing that makes me comfortable with a lower
> quorum is that the bylaws have strict requirements for notifying
> the membership of meetings.  If they don't bother to show up,
> well, can they really complain about what happens?

Touche.  There are some people who have legitimate excuses, however.
Saturdays are often packed days for many people.  While one can argue
"they just need to straighten their priorities", if there are majority
of people who can't make it, then maybe we need to pick a better time.
With 10 folks as quorum, the board could pick an obscure or difficult
time (Sunday mornings, or worse, afternoons during football season) and
have the meeting then - so just the board and their cronies show up.  Of
course,this is possible now, but at least it requires more cronies than
board members.

> I know Bill disagrees, but I just don't think the dues change
> alone will have the effect of allowing us to reliably make quorum.
> 
> Thanks for plowing through this and all the good comments.

I think for the time being, we're going to have to stick with the
current motion, it's really hard to get consensus from the board on such
short notice.  We've discussed this quite a bit, and the reality is, a
lot of the "members" just paid the $5 to get pizza.  There's a lot of
people who I've never seen post or attend more than one meeting.  Right
now I believe quorum is about 14 or 15 people, dropping it to 10 is
probably fine, but if the organization grows it may not be a good
solution.

Thanks for your help on this.

--Patrick