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This is a proposal to change our bylaws, reducing the size of Grex's Board of
Directors and the number of board members necessary to meet quorum.
Presently, there are seven board members and this proposal asks that to be
changed to five. Quorum would change from five to three board members present.
This proposal would simply substitute the new numbers for the old. The current
bylaws state: **************************** ARTICLE 3: BOARD OF DIRECTORS
a. The Board of Directors (BOD) shall consist of seven individual members of
Grex, and shall include a
chairperson, a secretary, and a treasurer.
d. The BOD shall hold face-to-face meetings on a regular, bimonthly basis, and
in addition may hold special meetings if necessary. A quorum consists of five
BOD members. A board member will be considered to be in attendance at a
meeting if he or she is physically present at the location of the meeting, or
if he or she can, via a telephone or other electronic system, hear and be
heard by all the other attendees.
*****************************
With the proposed amendments the bylaws would read:
*****************************
ARTICLE 3: BOARD OF DIRECTORS
a. The Board of Directors (BOD) shall consist of five individual members of
Grex, and shall include a
chairperson, a secretary, and a treasurer.
d. The BOD shall hold face-to-face meetings on a regular, bimonthly basis, and
in addition may hold special meetings if necessary. A quorum consists of
three BOD members. A board member will be considered to be in attendance at a
meeting if he or she is physically present at the location of the meeting, or
if he or she can, via a telephone or other electronic system, hear and be
heard by all the other attendees.
*****************************
These changes are now up for discussion for two weeks. During that time 10% of
the membership will need to endorse the proposal in order for the proposal to
qualify for a membership vote.
We have very few members at present. Very few. Please consider sending in $18
to qualify as a voting member and be part of the process.
The bylaws can be found at:
https://grex.cyberspace.org/cyberspace/bylaws.xhtml
49 responses total.
Looks like the formatting didn't exactly translate. Sorry.
I'm in agreement for these 2 changes.
I'm in agreement with these 2 changes, as well.
Representation should be somewhat proportional to the constituency, especially when Grex has no members....
Oh, it has a few, Rane. :) I don't know that I'm in agreement with the proposal, but I do think it should be voted on. :)
reformatted: This is a proposal to change our bylaws, reducing the size of Grex's Board of Directors and the number of board members neces- sary to meet quorum. Presently, there are seven board members and this proposal asks that to be changed to five. Quorum would change from five to three board members present. This proposal would simply substitute the new numbers for the old. The curren t bylaws state: **************************** ARTICLE 3: BOARD OF DIRECTORS a. The Board of Directors (BOD) shall consist of seven individ- ual members of Grex, and shall include a chairperson, a secretary, and a treasurer. d. The BOD shall hold face-to-face meetings on a regular, bi- monthly basis, and in addition may hold special meetings if nec- essary. A quorum consists of fiv e BOD members. A board member will be considered to be in attendance at a meeting if he or she is physically present at the location of the meeting, or if he or she can, via a telephone or other electronic system, hear and be heard by all the other attendees. ***************************** With the proposed amendments the bylaws would read: ***************************** ARTICLE 3: BOARD OF DIRECTORS a. The Board of Directors (BOD) shall consist of five individ- ual members of Grex, and shall include a chairperson, a secretary, and a treasurer. d. The BOD shall hold face-to-face meetings on a regular, bi- monthly basis, and in addition may hold special meetings if nec- essary. A quorum consists of three BOD members. A board member will be considered to be in attendance at a meeting if he or she is physically present at the location of the meeting, or if he or she can, via a telephone or other electronic system, hear and be heard by all the other attendees. ***************************** These changes are now up for discussion for two weeks. During that time 10% o f the membership will need to endorse the pro- posal in order for the proposal to qualify for a membership vote. We have very few members at present. Very few. Please consider sending in $1 8 to qualify as a voting member and be part of the process. The bylaws can be found at: https://grex.cyberspace.org/cyberspace/bylaws.xhtml
Hmmm... Not quite what the item was intended for, but still . . . I'd like to modify the attendance definition to eliminate the reference to a specific sense. (What happens should we elect a deaf member to the Board? OK; that's facetious, since the Director would likely be physically present.) I propose rewording the clause to: "or if he or she can, via a telephone or other electronic system, communicate directly and simultaneously with all the other attendees."
I'd support that change.
I like it. I'd change "hear" to "communicate" and remove mention of telephone (or any specific technology).
Two weeks have gone by and we seem to have two members endorsing this going
forward. So I'm asking this bylaw change be put up for a membership vote. This
is the text for the ballot:
MOTION: It is proposed that Cyberspace Communications Bylaw Article 3,
subsections "a" and "d"
be replaced as follows:
ARTICLE 3: BOARD OF DIRECTORS
a. The Board of Directors (BOD) shall consist of five individual members of
Grex, and shall include a chairperson, a secretary, and a treasurer.
d. The BOD shall hold face-to-face meetings on a regular, bimonthly basis,
and
in addition may hold special meetings if necessary. A quorum consists of
three BOD members. A board member will be considered in attendance at a
meeting if he or she can communicate and be understood by all the other
attendees.
Between text edit and Grex something seems to go very wrong with formatting. Sorry, again.
I checked the bylaws listed in coop, and found that there are no provisions for the choice/election of chairperson, a secretary, and a treasurer, or their terms, or how they can be removed from office.
True. That has always been left to the elected board to decide. Our bylaws are pretty casual in terms of only addressing the broad strokes.
Personally, I'd prefer, "communicate WITH and be understood by," but that is a minor quibble. :) I endorse this proposal coming to a vote.
So do I [along with the change in dues].
(Each item has to have its own endorsement, Denise.)
I too like "communicate with" and will add that to the proposal, which now
reads:
MOTION: It is proposed that Cyberspace Communications Bylaw Article 3,
subsections "a" and "d" be replaced as follows:
ARTICLE 3: BOARD OF DIRECTORS
a. The Board of Directors (BOD) shall consist of five individual members of
Grex, and shall include a chairperson, a secretary, and a treasurer.
d. The BOD shall hold face-to-face meetings on a regular, bimonthly basis,
and in addition may hold special meetings if necessary. A quorum consists
of three BOD members. A board member will be considered in attendance at
a meeting if he or she can communicate with and be understood by all the
other attendees.
Thank you, Mary. :) I still endorse putting this proposal to a vote. :)
Re #13: "That has always been left to the elected board to decide. Our bylaws are pretty casual in terms of only addressing the broad strokes." Yes, pretty "casual": the bylaw don't even say that the Board can choose the officers. No one can, as far as the bylaws go. Or anyone can? It would be very simple and hardly constraining to add "..chosen or removed by a majority vote of the Board." to the end of 3.a.
You know, Grex is in such a state right now that it seems counter productive to quibble about anal details like those in resp:19. I endorse this going to vote, as is, instead of starting another round of discussion that will delay it even further. It it really needs to be addressed, it can be addressed at another time. Let's not lose sight of the forest for the trees. To reiterate, I suppose this proposal going forward to a vote, as is.
I agree. The vote admin has been notified in a casual fashion. ;-)
Hello, this is your friendly vote admin. It looks like this proposal is ready to go forward to a vote. To be honest, this matter kind of snuck up on me. It's been quite a while since a member proposal has been formally voted on, and so it's been quite a while since I've had occasion to look at the vote program code for doing so. It'll probably take me until this weekend sometime to get that up and running. To facilitate matters and move this forward more quickly, since there are very few voting members at this point (less than 10?), it might be reasonable to run this vote somewhat less formally as an email poll, or something of the sort, if that's acceptable to the voters. Let me know how you'd like to proceed.
I'm fine with email. More than fine. It's a practical way of moving this forward.
Yes, e-mail is fine by me. Anything to speed this up as long as it is properly counted and documented for future reference.
Hmm, email access for me right now is occassionally problematic. I vote yes.
E-mail's fine with me; just let us know who to send it to.
My only quibble is that people can pay their dues at any time during the vote and have their vote counted as that of a member. If the VoteAdm is comfortable collecting the messages and sorting the wheat from the tares, I can live with that.
How does one become a member in order to vote? Members have not been asked to renew their membership for a long time, so there are only a few members now, who are a tiny fraction of the former membership. Are the the only ones that can vote, when the whole idea of membership has lain fallow so long? Just have the board declare all users that vote are members for the action of voting on this amendment.
The one always has, Rane: pay dues.
Members should know when they last paid dues and how much they paid.
Therefore, they should know when their membership expires. Reminders
from the organisation shouldn't really be necessary.
Back in December, the Board declared all former members to be eligible
to vote and then declared a six-month moratorium on dues; these actions
did not encourage people to join. The only conclusion possible is that
the now-former members don't really care all that much.
From the web site:
Paying Dues by Check or Money Order
Membership dues are US$6 per month or US$60 per year. You can send a
check payable to "Cyberspace Communications" or "Grex" to
Cyberspace Communications, Inc.
P.O. Box 4432
Ann Arbor, MI 48106-4432 (USA)
Be sure to tell us your Grex login name. If you pay other than by
personal check, please include a photocopy of some ID. (As a membership
organization, the law requires that we be able to identify our members,
but we do not publicize your identity.)
There are PayPal links on the Grex web page, also. They are on the same page that Joe quotes in #29. See: http://www.grex.org/member.xhtml
I look at the PayPal site a few weeks ago and the only amount available is $60 for a one year membership. Maybe that could be changed?
resp:29 :: jgelinas wrote: " Members should know when they last paid dues and how much they paid. Therefore, they should know when their membership expires. Reminders from the organisation shouldn't really be necessary." I only know a handful of people in the world who run their lives like that. Most people do not. Grex does not provide any on-line means for members to query their status. I think any organization which depends on users to remember when their membership or subscription expires is bound for extinction. :-)
If you look at the grex.org web page with the PayPal links, there is a $60 year membership and $6 per month membership links. If we get the dues change passed, then we can change that. As for PayPal itself, if there's only a $60/yr membership link there, then, yes, we should change that to add the $6/mo. membership x however months you want. It's a bit of changing after we change the bylaws, but we don't want anyone to be confused or the situation to be wrong when they apply. Currently, it's $60/yr and $6/month.
"Members should know when they last paid dues..." Organizations that don't remind members when their dues are due are doomed to disappear. "Back in December, the Board declared all former members to be eligible to vote and then declared a six-month moratorium on dues; these actions did not encourage people to join." What did it mean to "join" if there were no dues? If the dues are going to be $18/a, hardly anyone is going to join now at $60 - especially when the organization isn't acting very friendly toward long time supporters.
Can't paypal handle all of this, like remind people who are no longer paying, and provide an API for grex to reference which accounts are members, etc?
Maybe it won't pass? Here's the deal, if you want to tell people it will be $18 a year but then later it isn't, then people will feel ripped off. It's okay to say there is a proposal to lower it, of course, with the proviso that until it passes, the old rate will apply.
Which is why I set $18.00 in my proposal: $18.00 buys three months at the current rate, which is enough to vote. If the proposal passes (and it doesn't look like it is even going to come to a vote), then the retroactive clause will turn those three-month memberships into one-year memberships without further ado. Right now, *I* am not feeling "very friendly toward long time supporters." Unfortunately, my rhetoric reflects that feeling. :(
So, are voting by e-mail or by the Polling Booth? If by e-mail, is the address "voteadm@cyberspace.org" valid and useful?
I was kind of hoping someone in a leadership position would step in and give folks the okay to email their vote or state their vote in this item. Board? This should be a done deal before nominations for the next board elections begin. Again, the final text of what we're voting on is in this item, response #17.
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