By-laws and Constitutions.
One of our liveliest meetings today. A spirited throng of 26 members turned up to fulfill the requirements of a quorum (25) to vote on proposed changes to the club’s by-laws. Had we fallen short of quorum we would have had to induct Abraham and gloss over Rotary’s age, profession and domicile requirements.
President Janet was unable to join us so Past President Mike, President-elect Lawrence and President-elect-elect David managed the meeting.
This scribe usually skips over the routine announcements from the floor. Too often by the time the bulletin goes out much of it is redundant, and sometimes, well you shoulda been there. Today was a little different and the following announcements bear repeating.
· Peter Thoem asked for an impromptu sign-up / head count for the tree-planting event at RBG two Saturdays from now, April 28. Watch your inbox for more details.
· Albert Schmid said he will host a pig-roast at his farm sometime in July.
· Bryce Leggatt gave us advance notice of a planned mystery tour on Saturday September 29th. $60 / head takes you to places you might not expect.
· Bernie Scrivener urged everyone to save June 14th date for the Presidential Induction Dinner, Tickets will be $50 per person.
· Lawrence (?) urged as many as could to participate in the Hike for the Hospice on May 28th. RCBC is the lead sponsor of the hike.
· Johanna Haan summarized an email from Katri Niemisto (with 2 dots over the o but I don't know how to do that), a previous in-bound exchange student from Finland. She has just about finished school studying speech therapy and is moving to Switzerland where, among everything else, she hopes and expects to learn German. She also reported having spent January at a running camp in Kenya.
· Abraham told us he’s moved to new hosts and spent last weekend’s ice-storm playing Monopoly indoors with his new host brother.
· Joe Watson announced that next week, Keith Williams, Owen McElhinney and Joe will take Abraham to inspect the construction of a 37-storey office tower in downtown Toronto. Abraham will get a guided instructional tour from the site engineer and lunch afterwards will be at Canoe. If this works out well we’ll be looking for a repeat for the entire club Joe.
And then to business. Allan Ramsay presented the proposed changes to the Club’s Constitution and By-laws. He offered us a line-by-line analysis but it threatened our quorum so we went with a high-points-only summary.
Well, actually the Constitution is not ours to change. All clubs go through life with a Rotary International Standard Constitution; it sets the ground rules and every now and then RI tweaks it, whether clubs like it or not. Tweaks are generally benign; so it’s okay. To that end Allan Ramsay moved and Rob Sybersma seconded the following motion. That the proposed revisions to the Club Constitution as outlined in the document entitled “Constitution Revisions as per Rotary International” be approved. The vote by our scant quorum was in favour.
Then Allan outlined changes to the club’s By-Laws; those we can adapt to suit our circumstances. For full details I suggest you check the email sent a week or so ago with supporting document. But essentially the changes fell into 3 categories: 1) Housekeeping; 2) To reflect current practices; and 3) Improvements in how we do business. Too tedious for me to retype.
Allan Ramsay moved and David Roscoe seconded the following motion. That the proposed revisions to the Club By-laws as outlined in the document entitled “By-law Review: Annotated (For consideration April 19, 2018)” be approved as Amendment No. 8. The vote by our still scant quorum was in favour.
Most of this won’t make the slightest bit of difference to your life unless you’re habitually inclined to hold off paying your annual dues until they’re sent out for collection.
Then in the absence of a speaker (time having been allotted to the proposed changes to the Club’s Constitution and By-laws) we muddled around for a while. Rod Collard collected some fines and then we left early. That was it.
