Amendments for vote at August meeting

[Rebecca Rogers]

Hi neighbors,

At our July meeting several additional DSNC bylaw amendments were introduced and they will be up for vote by the DSNC membership at our August meeting (Monday, Aug. 31). We will also be voting on the bylaws that we were supposed to vote on at the July meeting but that we didn't get to for lack of time.  

Once again, to help the membership decide how to vote, the Bylaws Working Group has prepared a Voter's Guide.  You can find it, with links to all the amendments (both the new ones and the ones leftover from July), at:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-sBlhZ00s-U5HlgNsDXbPtQxZ1Yf6uLuvcIR2tJAKvg/edit?usp=sharing

We encourage people to discuss these amendments on the DSNC-Di...@googlegroups.com mailing list before the August meeting – maybe start a new thread for each amendment (or cluster of amendments) you want to discuss to help people follow them. The Bylaws Working Group does not necessarily endorse any particular one of these amendments. 

I've included below a brief list of all the amendments (not necessarily in the order we'll be voting on them), but please see the Voter's Guide for more details.

Thanks,

Rebecca (for Alex, who's on vacation this week)


Peripheral Quorum

• Amendment 60 (Lee Auspitz, Alex Dehnert) allows meetings to proceed without quorum, without substantive votes.
• Amendment 32.5.1 (Alex Dehnert) makes clear that section 6.6’s quorum requirement applies to general and special meetings only.

Quorum threshold

• Amendment Q1 (Bylaw Working Group) raises the threshold from 8 to 20.
• Amendments QX (Bylaw Working Group) bases quorum on attendance at the last three meetings. There are several different variants.  There are various proposals to raise the threshold to be based on a percentage (50-100%) of the three most recent general meetings, with some different details.
• Amendment Q2 (Ed Woll) changes the threshold to 20% of DSNC members.

At our July meeting we ran out of time to vote on the following amendments, and they will also be up for a vote at our August meeting:

Community Benefits Agreements

• Amendments 18A1.2-4 (Chris Beland, Ashish Shrestha) reduce the threshold to pass a CBA, from the current ⅔ majority to 60%, 55%, or 50%.
• Amendment 18C1 (Ed Woll) requires at least ⅔ of verified DSNC members to vote (like a quorum requirement) on CBAs.
• Amendment 54 (Ashish Shrestha; not referred by the Bylaws Working Group) requires CBA votes be conducted “consistent” with board elections and specifies certain minimum requirements.

Miscellaneous

• Amendment 16G (Zachary Yaro; not referred by the Bylaws Working Group) restores direct election of the treasurer and secretary, and simplifies Section 4.6 Voting Method.
• Amendment D (Derrick Rice) makes clerical changes to section 3.1, primarily labeling the membership eligibility criteria for easier reference. It does not change the membership criteria.