Bylaws Suggestions

Posted on HASnotes in January 2016

One of the consequences of going on overnight trips is they give people time to try to talk you into something. I had resolved to not be any part of the bylaws revision, but Sarah Faulkner, on the Long Island trip, and Fran D'Amico, on the Cape Ann trip, tried really hard to get me to read and comment on the latest bylaws revision. Against my better judgment I made the attachment.

I started with version Sarah sent out two days ago. I then marked up things in red, green and orange. The red are parts I want to delete. The green are parts I want to add or are a comment. The orange are things I want to take out or really revise.

The problem with the current bylaws is that they are too hard to read and therefore do not get read. The problem has carried over to the current revision. Sarah has recently replaced a good bit of the legalize with language most of us like much more. This was good start. However, there is much more to do.

The bylaws need to be short and sweet to be readable. To this end, my basic effort was to remove redundancies, things we have not been able to do, and things we will never do.

A frequent redundancy involves the law, the CT Nonstock Act, and the Certificate of Incorporation. All three of these items take precedence over the bylaws when they say different things. The bylaws always lose. There is no need to expressly say this throughout the bylaws.

We are not able, without spending a few thousand dollars, to have an audit of merit. We are not going to have an annual budget plan. We are not going to change the number of members on the Board. We also do not need a provision that allows the Board to establish a committee of two people that can act for the Board on most any matter because we expect the Board as a whole to run HAS.

Fred

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