Bylaws Omnibus Necessary and Essential Revisions

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PS:One Bylaw Bug Hunt

(Bylaws Omnibus Necessary and Essential Revisions)

Language

General

  • quorum, remote attendance, proxy voting, and majority
    • Sections relating to these topics often repeat each other, and the sections are repeated for general membership votes and BoD votes. This makes the bylaws more difficult to read. "Perfection is not when there is no more to add, but no more to take away."
  • officers vs directors
    • There is a distinction made between officers and directors in the bylaws, but the line is either not bright enough or should be further erased. Since there's little practical difference between an officer and a director I think it should be erased, which would mean changing wordings to emphasize that the officers are elected as directors to hold a certain office.
  • Notice for votes
    • Some places say 5 days, some say 7. According to the current language, I could submit a bill at 11:59 PM on Thursday and have it voted on at the next meeting. In politics, the least palatable moves are brought public late in the afternoon on Fridays because that is when it is likeliest to go unnoticed. This is dangerous and should be 7 days across the board.


Eligibility (3.2.1)

  • "A member must also provide government-issued photo identification to at least two members of the board of directors at the time of payment of the first membership fee,"
    • We don't do this currently.

Rights and responsibilities (3.2.2)

  • "A member must pay the monthly fee as determined by the board of directors."
    • Implies directors control membership rates, revise to empower members as is currently the case.
  • "Full Members enjoy the following privileges: ..."
    • This list is not comprehensive. It excludes lockers and class discounts. Incidentally, these benefits may have been voted on, but that was never properly recorded.

Notice of meetings (4.3)

  • "Notice of all meetings of Members, including regular meetings and the annual meeting, must be sent at least 5 days in advance. Notice shall be sent electronically to all members, to the e-mail addresses they have on file with the corporation. Notice of meetings shall also be posted at the corporation's registered location."
    • We're not very rigorous about this.

Submitting an Issue for Vote (5.1.3)

  • "To be properly submitted for a vote, the member must submit a written statement of the issue to be voted on to the board of directors at least seven days before the meeting at which the issue shall be voted on. An e-mailed statement of the issue shall be considered submission in writing for the purpose of this rule."
    • A single person (i.e. Secretary) should be responsible for receiving the final language of any policy change. In the past, bills were discussed and revisions suggested until it became difficult to know the actual language you were voting on. Once the Secretary or other person receives the bill, they should be responsible for posting and maintaining the up-to-date language so that when the time comes to vote, the final policy is clear. Should the motion pass, the wiki and any other documentation affected should be updated in a timely manner.

Voting Procedures (5.1.6)

  • "Voting procedures, including time limits for discussion before taking a vote, shall be defined by the MIBS Simplified Rules of Coordinated Consensus Through Chaos."
    • The MIBS is too weak on voting policy. Having spent a year as secretary, I've often had to insist on getting actual numbers and counts for record purposes to the dismay of the person trying to keep the pace of the meeting. We should define when and how the vote takes place more specifically. I suggest as the first order of business at any regular meeting after greetings and that any election not containing accurate vote statistics from here forward is considered illegitimate.

Submitting an issue for vote (5.2.2)

  • "Only issues that these bylaws explicitly state are subject to a vote of the officers shall be resolved by a vote of the officers. "
    • This section is about votes of the directors, is officers really intended here? There are no other provisions for officer votes excluding the directors at large.
    • What issues are proper for a vote of the board of directors? I didn't notice anything listed in the bylaws.

Notice (5.2.3)

  • "Notice of all issues properly submitted for vote by the board of directors shall be given to all directors no later than 5 days before the meeting at which they will be voted on. Notice shall be sent electronically, to the e-mail address that each director has provided to the corporation."
    • I don't think we do this.

Eligibility (6.1)

  • "In order to be eligible to be nominated, a person must be Full Member as defined earlier in these bylaws for six consecutive months."
    • This isn't what we do. Replace with "In order to be eligible to be nominated, a person must be Full Member as defined earlier in these bylaws and must have maintained that status for the six consecutive months prior to the nomination."

Naming Rights (6.4)

  • "Every officer has the right to rename the office the holds for the duration of his or her tenure."
    • Typo: "the office *he or she* holds"

Vice President (6.5.2)

  • "The Vice President is also responsible for providing notice of all meetings of the members and of the board of directors, pursuant to these bylaws and the law of Illinois. "
    • We're not rigorous about notice in general.

Secretary (6.5.3)

  • "The Secretary shall be responsible for recording all minutes of all official meetings of the membership and the board of directors. The Secretary must make available a hard copy of the minutes of all meetings of the members and the board of directors at the registered location of Pumping Station: One, in addition to making such records available online in a static format on the Pumping Station: One website."
    • Change "recording all minutes" to "recording all minutes, votes & motions"
    • Hard copies of the minutes are unnecessary, this clause should be removed (unless those copies are just for archival purposes, but even then digital is better).

Treasurer (6.5.4)

  • "The Treasurer is responsible for monitoring all financial assets of Pumping Station: One. This includes but is not restricted to the collection of membership dues from members, the payment of rent and utilities for any space leased by Pumping Station: One, the disbursement and reimbursement of funds authorized to be spent under the procedures detailed in these bylaws."
    • Add emphasis on regular reporting of metrics. Membership count and financial metrics should be easily available.

Chief Technical Officer (6.5.5)

  • "The Chief Technical Officer is responsible for ensuring the maintenance and consistency of the technological infrastructure as needed by the organization. This includes, but is not limited to, the website and internal network of the physical space."
    • Append language about CTO being the key holder for all accounts owned by PS:One including Twitter, EventBrite, etc. CTO in charge of giving access to all other necessary parties.

Resignation (7.7)

  • "The replacement officer's term ..."
    • This paragraph is about directors.

Structure

Currently all revisions to the bylaws are added to the end of the wiki document as opposed to revising or removing language where changes have been made. From the view of a governing body, does it make more sense to keep the original document in tact for record, or would it be more readable by embedding all changes in the language instead of appending?

There is a character encoding issue remaining on many wiki pages including the bylaws. Fix this so that they are more readable. -- "Under the meaning of �present� in this section"

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