#06: Public resolutions

[Jimmy Kaplowitz]

On Tue, Apr 01, 2003 at 10:30:28AM -0500, David Graham wrote:
> 
> "Any resolution passed by the Board of Directors of this organisation may,
> with the absolute unanimous consent of all Board members, be kept
> confidential from the membership and the public. If any Board member
> decides at a future date that the resolution should no longer be
> confidential, unanimous consent will be considered to no longer exist and
> the resolution will henceforth be available to the membership.
> 
> "No resolution may be considered enacted or enforceable until it is
> available to the entire contributing membership, notwithstanding (above
> paragraph reference number)."
> 
> How's that?

I am pretty sure that "notwithstanding" means "despite," and so the
second paragraph would pretty much void the first one. Consider
replacing "notwithstanding" with "except as provided by" or some other
similar phrase.

Also, I think it is a very good thing that the general public can see
our resolutions when appropriate. Why are we deciding to restrict our
public resolutions to the contributing membership (or allowing the board
to do so)? Certainly 

Finally, the first paragraph refers to the "membership" and the second
paragraph refers to the "contributing membership." Honestly, if people
take enough interest to sign up even for non-contributing membership, I
think they should be able to see our public resolutions, which will
probably concern things like new member projects, new committees,
directions to existing committees, membership in other organizations,
etc. Also, everyone who can be on a committee should surely be able to
see the resolutions; I seem to remember that we weren't planning to
restrict that to contributing members, or even to members at all. These
inconsistencies ought to be reconciled, and I suggest that the general
public be allowed to see our public resolutions.

- Jimmy Kaplowitz
jimmy at debian.org

P. S. - I'm sorry for not being active in the conversation for a long
stretch of time; I have had lots of real-life obligations of various
types, and although I have had some free time I have not managed it
well.
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