#03: Board meeting quorum issues

[John Goerzen]

Anyone have any thoughts on this yet?  Please? :-)

On Wed, Apr 02, 2003 at 10:03:31AM -0600, John Goerzen wrote:
> [ chairman hat on ]
> 
> Thanks to everyone for participating in the process so much this week. 
> We've made a lot of progress in a short time.  At the same time, we need to
> keep up this pace to meet our deadlines.
> 
> The next oldest thing on our plate was the board meeting quorum problem. 
> I'd like us to get this resolved quickly, and finish off our other old
> business, before I introduce new items for discussion.  My hope is that this
> will help us remain better focused and more efficient.
> 
> [ chairman hat off ]
> 
> When we last left it, we were pretty far away from consensus.  I had
> proposed no changes.  David proposed a sliding quorum scale based on
> regrets.  We've also heard of sliding scales based on missing a certain
> number of meetings, etc.
> 
> So, now's the time to take all these different viewpoints, apply some pixie
> dust, and magically arrive at a cohesive workable solution :-)
> 
> Let me start out by stating where I stand:
>  * I believe that the Board should appoint more committees to handle its
>    regular business, and return to quarterly meetings as contemplated by our
>    current bylaws.
> 
>  * Further, if we are going to allow non-real-time meetings, I believe that
>    the quorum issues are less significant.
> 
>  * Therefore, my conclusion is that we should use other means to engineer
>    the problem out of the picture rather than directly modifying quorum.
> 
> However, having said all that, I am willing to compromise on some points. 
> We could, for instance, change quorum from 2/3 to 3/5 to make it a little
> easier.  That would change quorum from 7 to 6 with the current makeup, which
> could help things.  David's sliding scale based on regrets is not completely
> unreasonable in my mind.
> 
> What I don't want to see is something based on missing x meetings.  This
> creates a bookkeeping headache and procedural troubles (how do we know if
> they officially missed the last meeting if the minutes for it haven't yet
> been approved because there is no quorum to do so?)  More generally, I think
> anything relating to presence or performance at past meetings is too complex
> to be practically workable, at least given our current organization.
> 
> Of course, I can be overruled here too :-)  Consider this a starting place
> for discussion.
> 
> -- John
> 
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