Bylaws change for two year board terms

“These are not hard and fast rules, merely guidelines to aid the human judgment of our community and keep this a clean and well-lighted place for civilized public discourse.”

So How can they be enforced?

I think a conversation about the administration and moderation of this website deserves a separate thread. It doesn’t have anything to do with a discussion about changing the bylaws for two-year board terms.

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It’s like it’s important…maybe even so important that it’s a rule or something…

Kez Cook

Board Member
MakeICT

kez@makeict.org

I agree it deserves a separate thread, and the place for it is the currently empty category: Site Feedback

Mike B

once again , this is something that cant be enforced. Everyone at one time or another has done something “not exellent” at the space. If you want rules to be enforceable then make proper rules.

If there are other arguments either for or against changing board terms to two years which haven’t already been shared in this thread, please share them now.

I don’t remember seeing your thoughts on the question.
How do you feel about it?

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I think I wrote earlier that I’m undecided. Having served on different boards for 3+ years each, I totally appreciate how a long commitment can be truly draining. On the other hand, continuity in leadership does deserve attention, and that’s the primary motivator for this motion, as I understand it. Further, one year is not a whole lot of time to maximize one’s potential, especially if your board cohort is also mostly or entirely new also.

I think people might fear having someone they don’t like in power for too long. I don’t recall anyone writing that directly, but that’s the sense that I have. As it stands right now, I would support the 2-year terms IF those terms are staggered and if there is a path for the membership (and maybe the board) to unseat and replace a board member by a vote.

Tangentially, I think we should also explore a board structure where President is not voted in, but perhaps promoted after serving at least one year as VP. FTR, I’m not advocating for that at this time, I just want to explore the idea and discuss it with level-headed thinkers. That probably should be a separate thread though?

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The reason I oppose this change is that if there is some reason newly elected Board members are not able to be up to speed relatively early in their term, that problem needs to be addressed with something like a “Handbook for New Board Members” and/or an orienteering meeting, and/or having new Board members take office after a delay for mentoring purposes. All those things are commonly done in other organizations with “Working” Boards. Allowing new Board members to continue being slow to come up to useful speed, but saying it’s OK since they will be around for two years is not really addressing the problem at the source, just potentially reducing the impact of the problem while also potentially creating new problems. The new problems would be how to replace a poorly functioning Board member before much harm is done, and how much smaller the pool of potential Board members is when asking for a multi-year commitment.

Mike B

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Thank you. I can understand being undecided. You asked for everyone’s 2¢. All the nominees, who took the time to answers the questionnaire, had already given their opinion. Just wondering where you stood on the issue for all of those who ate also undecided.

Yeah, that’s a lot of places to click through to gather thoughts, and really only a handful of opinions. Important opinions, but still just a relative few. It would be nice to hear from others who haven’t had a platform to speak and especially nice to have the conversation from everybody in one place

I think we already have something like this. The 9th board member is previous president, correct? They are not elected, per se, for their term on the board.
You’re probable right, a separate thread would be better.

  1. I totally think this should be it’s new thread…
  2. I don’t know how to quote on this thing…
  3. I actually had this thought while driving earlier and was hoping to discuss it later. I think it’s a great idea if structured correctly.

I think it would be smart to move to a longer term. We really need to so that we can promote more long term thinking among the board members.

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Sorta. Past President gives advice after they’ve served, which may or may not be taken. it’s backward-looking, kinda retrospective. Whereas a VP-who-will-become-President is more forward-looking / proactive. I think the biggest difference is that with Past President, there’s no guarantee that a new president will have had any experience whatsoever. With the VP-promotion thing, they will have served on the board as VP for at least a year.

Another idea I was thinking about last night was what it might look like if we made officer positions 2-year terms and at-large positions 1-year terms. It might be the best of both worlds, or it could be the worst of both worlds lol

It is interesting that you assign backward-looking and forward-looking to the same thing. The Past President and the VP2Pres have both served a term on the board and moving into a position without being elected.
If continuity is the goal it would seem that both have continuity.

My concern with the VP2Pres plan and you throw in a 2 year term, you are essentially electing someone for the board for 4 years.

Do the officer position have different standing or clout than the at-large positions? If continuity is the goal of a the 2 year term (which I am opposed to), then the staggered year is optimal, Pres, Sec, 2 at-large and VP, Treas, 2 at-large. Making at-large members a 2nd-class board member does not make sense since they have the same vote.

I have heard a response of “well, they can run again…” That is my response against a 2 year term. If you are doing a good job, you can run for another 1 year term.

The other issue with a 2 yr term without other changes in the bylaws is the consecutive term limit. It goes from a 3 year to 6 year limit.

I realize we are in the voting phase and it is possible that all of this may be a mute point. Just adding my 2¢.

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In general, what are the benefits of turning the leadership yearly and at most in less than 3 years entirely?

Since others have already went off topic I don’t feel to badly going a little beyond.

1. Seriously, we should have locked this and the other pertinent topics once voting started.
  1. Discussion here about future proposals to change the bylaws is a distraction for those trying to decide about the one on the ballot.

  2. Discussion here about future proposals to change the bylaws makes someone have to read all about the current proposal at that future time when they are trying to research for [however bylaw alterations is next attempted].

  3. Sets a bad example for any discussion to continue once it has been pointed out (as Kez did) as needing to be in a separate topic.

I agree with MikeB. I’ve been surprised how “informal” we’ve been about this election process.

I also don’t think it invokes confidence to have people running the election who are also running for office.

On a positive note, it’s not really much different this year than it was in 2016 and 2017…

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