Bylaws Omnibus Necessary and Essential Revisions

PS:One Bylaw Bug Hunt

(Bylaws Omnibus Necessary and Essential Revisions)

Language

Rights and responsibilities

• "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.

Voting

• Submitting an Issue for Vote
  • "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.
• Notice
  • 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.
• Voting Procedures
  • "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.

Officers

• Secretary
  • "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"
• Treasurer
  • "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 Office
  • "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 necesarry parties.

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"