[Bylaws-l] Fwd: Bylaw Requirements Committee: Bi-Weekly Update - November 13, 2009

[Dave Blaser]

FYI

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dave Blaser <vcs at sfi.org>
Date: Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 12:48 PM
Subject: Bylaw Requirements Committee: Bi-Weekly Update - November 13, 2009
To: STARFLEET Official List <sfi-l at lists.sfi.org>, STARFLEET Discussion List
<starfleet-l at fleetlist.org>, ECAB List <ecab-l at sfi.org>,
sfi-announce-l at sfi.org


** Free to be cross-posted to other STARFLEET related lists.  IE: Regional /
chapter lists. **

(I figure that, by now, most of you already understand that these may be
some long posts, so I'm not going to bother warning you about it anymore.)

Good afternoon, STARFLEET;

As had been discussed in the previous report, the committee was one-week
away from the deadline originally given by the AB, and a 60-day extension
had been requested.

A motion was made by Ruth Lane and seconded by Jack Eaton to extend the
deadline by an additional 60 days and was named AB09-21 and voting
commenced.  While voting has not yet completed on this, enough votes had
been cast supporting the extension that it has effectively passed, just not
officially completed as yet.

During the time that this was taking place, the committee itself took time
to discuss term length and limits for the President, as I noted in my last
report.  A motion was made to note that a member of STARFLEET who is elected
President be permitted to serve no more than two (2) non-consecutive, three
(3) year terms as President.

That motion went through a good deal of discussion and went to vote, passing
7:2:0 (aye:nay:abstain) with only Michael Conard and John Halliday voting
against the motion.  A number of good points on both sides of the debate
were made about two 2-year terms, and about the number of times someone
could run and be elected as President.

The committee next moved on to Regions and the Board of Directors with a
number of initial points being suggested by John Roberts about the
requirements for the Board of Directors:

* The Organization shall have a Board of Directors.
* The Board of Directors will be composed of one member from each Geographic
Region of the Organization
* The members of the Board of Directors will be elected by the Chapter
Presidents in the Region they represent.
* Election procedures and protocols shall be listed in the MHB.
* Regions shall be established by the Board of Directors and defined in the
Membership Handbook
* Regions shall be composed of no less than 1 Chapter and no more than 30
Chapters
* If a Region grows to be more than 30 Chapters and holds that strength for
at least one full year, the Board of Directors shall take steps to create a
new Region as needed.
* Chapters and members in the Regions of Starfleet may petition the Board of
Directors to create new Regions as outlined in the Membership Handbook.
* Regions with Chapters in Training and no full chapters are not entitled to
a representative on the Board of Directors.

Initial discussion on this has been in regards to:

- Changing the upper limit on the size of a region from being 30 chapters to
a maximum of 500 members, or a combination of the two;

- Increasing The length of time a region must maintain that number from 1
full year up to 18 months as we may occasionally see membership number
spikes as a result of a special event such as the release of a new movie,
start of a new television series, or any number of other reasons;

- Splitting the "RC" position into two roles, the RC who would act
effectively as a Regional Governor (not specifically by that name, I'm
trying to give an example that most people will probably understand) and the
actual Board of Directors member who would act effectively as a Senator,
however this idea has not been favorably received by approximately half of
the committee at this time.

Discussion is continuing on the various topics listed above, as well as in
regards to the following:

- Member voting in RC elections instead of chapter voting;
- Term length and limits;
- Residency requirements of a Board member (whether they must reside in the
geographic area of their region, or just be a member of a chapter in that
region);
- Age requirements;
- Removal of a Board member.

I will freely acknowledge that this last point is going to be a somewhat
touchy subject, however the one thing that this summer illustrated is that
we need to have a clearer definition of how something like that would take
place.

These are all preliminary topics, and have not had extensive time in
discussion or debate.

Commentary continues to come in through various means, sometimes via
Facebook or private E-Mails, and since my last report we had commentary from
Michael Dugas, Liz Woolf, Tony Rowley, Aaron Murphy, Martin Lessem, Ron
Bishop and Pam Michaud.

Thank you to all of those who have contributed thoughts, comments, questions
or concerns.  If your name wasn't listed there, it was not on purpose, I
merely missed you by accident.

The next update from the committee should be on or about November 27th,
2009.

For those who would like to follow on in the discussions, please feel free
to read the list archives at:

http://lists.sfi.org/pipermail/bylaws-l-sfi.org/

Regards,

VADM Dave
VCS
vcs at sfi.org



-- 
Dave
dave at blaser.ca
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