Re: [Fsfe-uk] Once more, unto the constitution, dear friends...

[MJ Ray]

Alasdair:
>     http://www.cloaked.freeserve.co.uk/affs-so.html
>     http://www.cloaked.freeserve.co.uk/affs-const.html

I'm having problems updating these.  Please use mjr.towers.org.uk and I'll
redirect it as soon as I get control of one of my web spaces.

> [...] I think it's mostly the standing orders rather than the constitution
> that needs more debugging.)

Indeed.  In any case where they disagree, the consitution wins.  The SOs are
not to be adopted yet.

> Objects: word "to" duplicated ("established to to promote" etc.)

Fixed.  Thanks.

> Do we need:
>     President, Vice-P, Chair *and* Vice-Chair?  If so, what is the
> role of the P: C seems to have more power and P is hardly mentioned.

No.  I've tried to make this consistent now.  President is the exec post. 
Chair is for a particular meeting.

> 'regions' is not defined - do we really need this?

Broadened to "regions or fields of interest".  I just don't want passengers
on the exec.

> post - 3 days or 10 days?  or something inbetween?

Made consistent to 3.

> (opinion)
> I believe committee members and voters should always be fully "paid-up"
> which means any committee members "suspended" if they haven't paid
> subscription by due date irrespective of whether they've had reminders.  
> No grace period.

People will bitch about it if you just cut them off with no last chance. 
The key is not to hold any votes in that time frame.  Consequently, I've
removed the month's grace and halved the reminder time to 15 days.  I hope
that's OK?  It also makes payments come in before April 1st, which may be
significant later.

> Is the intention that "annual" means subs are Jan-Dec?

12 March to 12 March, given in SOs.

> Clearer statement that except for approved expenses, committee (and
> companies in which they or spouse? have substantial interest) can't be
> paid anything? (So contracts for services cannot be awarded to committee
> members etc.)

This is too difficult to define cleanly.  If you think you can, I welcome
your wording...  If we are not careful, the assoc will not be able to buy
anything from anyone.  I've added "approved" to the expenses wording.

> Two years then a one year gap could be too short for continuity - think
> the 4 year version is better (with re-election reqd every 2 years).  Rules
> for who stands down each year are often complex: I prefer simple and
> unambiguous rules.

"Longest serving third" IIRC.

> I'd also like something saying that minutes of committee meetings
> (summarised where necessary to remove personal/confidential bits) will 
> be made available to members; and that any member may attend 
> committee meetings as an observer provided that two committee members
> give their specific permission (separate permission required for each
> such occasion for each individual).

Can you phrase this?  This is for the SOs.

> "The Chair and the Honorary Officers shall automatically be members 
> of the Association" - even if they've failed to renew their subscription
> *after* their election?

Ooops.  Dropped "automatically".

> "Bring together in conference representatives ..." not sure if preventing
> companies from sending representatives is good or bad? Or maybe any such
> event just has to be called a "meeting" instead of a "conference":-)

Whatever it's called doesn't matter to me ;-)

> Rules for removing committee members need tightening to prevent
> the rest of the committee "ganging up" on another of their number
> and holding 4 (or 3 depending which bit you read) consecutive meetings 
> at times they know that the other person will find it very hard to
> attend: eg add a timescale (eg also attended no meetings over a period
> of 3 months) (Four consecutive meetings could all be on the same day!)
> I've seen another organisation do this: arrange 3 meetings in the
> course of 2 weeks (normally they meet once every 6 weeks) at very
> short notice and at times when someone was known to be unavailable
> (out of the country part of the time) and then "spring" a rule similar
> to this upon them afterwards.

They still need to be heard by the committee, which means holding a meeting
at their chosen time, effectively.  If a majority of the committee wishes to
get rid of one of them, there's not a lot written rules will do to prevent
it.  Hopefully any such wronged committee member would make their feelings
known to the membership.  (Toasty)

> Needing 20 members to support a poll seems high - I doubt there'll
> be large numbers at these meetings - I'd prefer 3-5: if some people
> doubt any result announced is correct, then I think they're entitled
> to ask for votes to be counted to remove all doubt about the result.

Dropped to 5

> Appointing two tellers on the stated terms could be another headache for
> a small meeting.

Not an easy way round this.

> STV?  Personally I'm not keen on it when voting for *multiple* people: if
> I'm voting for two people I want a say about *both* of them: I don't want
> to find that only my first preference was taken into account and my second
> preference was effectively ignored (because my first preference wasn't
> eliminated until near the end.) I'm OK with STV when just appointing one
> person. But it can be painful to administer and sometimes produces strange
> results.

I think you'll find that STV does take into account your later preferences,
as long as your first preference didn't *exactly* hit the quota.  How much
weight you get is an interesting calculation, but if your first choice was
almost ignored, at least you got some voice despite being an odd one out.

People are also quite good at tactical voting with STV, as I've seen in the
past.
-- 
MJR