APPROVED TEXT
Article 11: Standing Committees and Ad hoc Committees
Board77 recognizes standing committees which can be convened at any time without a vote of the membership according to the terms described here.
¶1: Committee for Amendments to the Charter
The purpose of this committee is to compose amendments to the Charter, to assure consistency between amendments and the existing Charter, and to conduct the ratification of amendments in accordance with Article 12, ¶2.
The committee will convene under two circumstances:
• A Ranger has exercised Extraordinary powers requiring review in accordance with Article 3, ¶5. The committee will decide whether the circumstance is anticipated to occur again with sufficient frequency to justify an Amendment to the Charter;
• An Initiative to amend the Charter is brought by the Mayor, or by two current Rangers, or by five members regardless of their status.
Composition of the Committee
The committee will have an odd number of members, no fewer than seven, no more than thirteen. The Mayor and one Loremaster will be voting members of this committee. The composition of the rest of the committee will be as follows:
If the committee was convened after the exercise of Extraordinary powers by a Ranger, it will also include:
• the current Ranger who was involved in the incident and one other current Ranger;
• one former Ranger;
• a minimum of two volunteers from among the rest of the membership.
If the committee was convened by an initiative of the Mayor or two current Rangers, it will also include:
• the two current Rangers who brought the initiative;
• one former Ranger;
• a minimum of two volunteers from among the rest of the membership.
If the committee was convened by an initiative of the members, it will also include:
• one current Ranger;
• one former Ranger;
• a minimum of three volunteers from among the membership, one of whom will be a member who brought the initiative;
• and if five or more volunteers are accepted from among the membership, two of them will be members who brought the initiative.
The Committee will be convened by posting a sticky thread in the Business Forum and accepting volunteers in order until the committee is filled and composed as required. Any registered member may serve on the committee.
Committee Procedure
The committee will convene in the Jury Room for deciding whether the Charter should be amended and for drafting the amendment. The committee itself will vote on elements of the amendment before presenting a final form to the membership for ratification.
The ratification procedure and the archiving of committee threads, ratification thread, and committee ballots with voting results must be completed in accordance with Article 12, ¶2.
¶2: Committee for Binding Votes and Initiatives of the Membership
The purpose of this committee is to decide whether a Binding Vote of the Membership should and can be held, in accordance with Article 7, and to conduct any subsequent voting process.
The provisions for convening this committee and the procedures they must follow are stated in full in Article 7. The committee may convene in the Jury Room for discussion, and the final ballot will be presented to the Membership in the Business Forum thread created for that purpose.
¶3: Election Committee The purpose of this committee is to convene and conduct the elections for the Mayor in accordance with Article 4, ¶4.
The committee may convene a thread in the Jury Room to coordinate the counting of the vote, but everything related to announcements, nominations, voting, and reporting of results to the members must take place in the Business Forum thread created for that purpose.
¶4: Committee for Technical Support The purpose of this committee is to communicate with our web host when necessary and to advise the membership on any technical questions relating to software and hardware capability. Members of the committee should have expertise in internet capability.
This committee should have no more than three members and may be convened by a Ranger or by the administrator of record (as designated to our web host) any time a question of a technical nature arises which cannot be readily answered by the membership.
The committee may convene in the Jury Room if necessary, but should maintain a thread in the Business Forum for communication with the membership.
¶5: Committee for Business Matters The purpose of this committee is to conduct the business interface with our web host, make final or interim selection of a host, ensure that backups are done on a timely basis, and delegate responsibility for aspects of moving the board from one host to another.
This committee will be convened upon ratification and will remain in existence as long as changing web hosts is a matter before the membership. The committee may dissolve itself when the move is complete, but may be reconvened at the request of any member if questions arise regarding the business aspects of our internet service. If members of the committee must be replaced, the administrator of record (as designated to our web host) may solicit volunteers by opening a thread in the Business Forum.
The committee may have seven or nine members. One current or former Ranger and the administrator of record (as designated to our web host) will be voting members of this committee.
The committee may convene in the Jury Room if necessary, but should maintain a thread in the Business Forum for communication with the membership.
¶6: Ad hoc Committees
All other committees are ad hoc committees, to be convened when a majority of current Rangers agree that a decision can be made by committee rather than by member vote and the decision does not fall within the purview of any standing committee. The size of an ad hoc committee can be decided by the Rangers, and any registered member may serve on such a committee. The Committee will be convened by posting a sticky thread in the Business Forum and accepting volunteers in order until the committee is filled.
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Original post:
We have two leftover issues that are representative of a broad class of problem. Those two issues are: Who will review an admin’s exercise of his/her extraordinary powers; and How to Amend the Charter.
The broad class of problem that these issues belong to is the naming of committees to deal with future problems.
It is customary for a charter to specify which standing committee the organization has. Committees that are convened for any other purpose are then Ad Hoc committees.
Naming the Committee does not mean that we have to name who will be on the committee, only that we have to approve the existence of such a committee so that creating such a committee it does not have to be voted on when the committee is needed. However, it is also customary to state whether any officer would automatically be a member of such a committee, and whether they would have the right to vote in the committee. For example, we could say, “ The Committee to amend the constitution must contain at least one current administrator and one former administrator with voting rights, “ or “All Standing Committees will include the Mayor as a nonvoting member.†These are just examples.
We should have a standing committee for Amendments to the Charter. It would come into being, as we did, whenever a change to the charter is needed. Who can introduce an amendment to the charter and how it gets ratified is a separate issue. What we need to do first of all is create an article that names the standing committees, and one of them should be the committee for Amendments to the Charter.
We also have to specify what body will review admin exercise of Extraordinary Powers (Article 3, ¶5). This should also be a standing committee and can be a much smaller committee than any committee convened for Amendments to the Charter, but their function is similar in being legislative rather than executive (as the admin pool is) or judicial (as the jury pool is). Their job would be, I believe, to review the action of the admin and determine whether the situation and its solution indicate that a charter amendment should be written. This committee would then have to power to convene a committee for Amending the Charter. (That would be one way an Amendment committee might be formed.)
So, what I would like to do here, first of all, is determine what sorts of standing committees we might need and write an article to create them and specify how they would be constituted.
After we’ve done that, we can move on to consider the terms by which the Charter would actually be amended, which can be a separate thread because it takes us into the realm of binding votes of the membership.
We might want the holding of a binding vote to be a decision made by standing committee as well. That means that when a vote on something is proposed, the committee would automatically convene according to the procedure that we lay out (e.g. the first five volunteers or something) and they would decide whether the vote was needed and be responsible for conducting it.
So, those are the three potential committees I can think of - please suggest others that come to mind.
Jn