AMC Meeting July 2010

Amending the new Ombudsman process

Now only 80 or so people form the running pool as well as who make the decision, and no one knows how and why those people were chosen by their LGs. This motion would widen the number of people who are qualified to serve and widen the number of members making the choice.

OTOH, we should give the new system a chance to work.

OTOOH, this is the only opportunity to discuss and vote on this without it being a reflection on whoever is serving as Ombudsman.

And this does not implement the changes, but merely sends it to the members to vote on.

Bob spoke to how thoroughly the voting ombudsman in this current process understood the issues and platforms of the candidates. Ken and Art concurred.

Greg said that only 40 ballots for Ombudsman were received. On the other hand, 17 AMC members make the decision about who serves as voting appointing officers.

Once again, I’m really torn on this one.  I like the concept of the new process, but I think it should be improved. I also think we should give the new process a chance before amending it.

Vote: Dan, Heather, and Russ in favor. Everyone else opposed.

AMC Meeting July 2010

Bylaws amendment regarding getting rid of past and past-past chair.

Lori (mover) was going to withdraw pending GTF results, but decided to not withdraw it.  Some good discussion, mostly about referring it to the GTF. Marc says we should vote on it since the GTF won’t get this done by Nov and we should not wait. I urged us to not just focus on who to kick off. Guy moves to refer to GTF.

Vote to refer: opposed: Lori and Marc

AMC Meeting July 2010

More on Hearings

John Sheehan spoke about hearings. He is an on a New Hamp state hearings panel. There is a wall between the people deciding whether to bring charges, and those deciding the merits of the case.  Jean agrees they should be separate, but points out if the AMC appoints the pool of people to both the review panel and the hearings panel… the separation is negated. Dan’s edits get us closer to this desired separation.

This is difficult. Both sides have really really good points. Wish I had better a feel for how the membership at large feels about this. Oh duh… sending this to the membership to decide… like making it a bylaws referendum…that seems wiser than us deciding here and now to kill this valiant attempt at process improvements. I’m inclined to vote yes, send it to the members to decide. BUT I think I am NOT in favor of everything in this motion as written. Which makes me inclined to vote no.

Vote: 9 yes 11 no. I voted no.

AMC Meeting July 2010

Hearings

Russ & Dan had long motion about Hearings revisions. Dahl & Norris amendment is long and complex about appeals. Lots of discussion. Jean and Guy made some really good points against the amendment. Too hard to listen, ponder, and transcribe, so I opted to listen and ponder. Sorry. Vote on amendment Marc. Mel, Lori for. Amendment fails.

Original motion—Dan proposed tweaking the composition of the review panel to comprise hearings chair and two people drawn at random from the pool of potential hearings committee members. Bob spoke against including the hearings chair on the review panel. Dan was cool with that. Nick: Why put something already turned down by the membership again? Dan: It’s a good proposal and it failed because there was a competing proposal at the time. This time there won’t be a competing proposal and we tweaked it to improve it since then. Jean spoke against the motion and made good points, primarily about needing to simplify the process and the fewer members involved better. Straw poll before Dan does a bit of editing: 11 in favor. 8 opposed. Guy pointed out that for a bylaws proposal it needs to pass by 2/3.

Break time!

AMC Meeting July 2010

Finances

Treasurer’s report--She talked fast and tossed out lots of numbers. Hard to take notes.

Investments down. Membership and Dues income up. Event and pubs income up. Testing income down. Licensing income up. Legal was largest expense. Net assets ugly on paper, but when you understand how the GAAP are applied, we are plenty comfortable and Mensa will be fine. Biggest concern is continued sinking testing income.

Dues motion- basically saying that we’ll have a motion in November to increase dues. Cyndi: We’re doing this because of the timing of the AMC meetings Marc: I feel foolish voting on a motion that says there will be a motion next meeting.  Lori: can we have 1^st vote in Nov, and 2^nd vote in March? Pam: It has to be approved by Nov to get it applied to the budget for 2011-12. We can put it in the Bulletin or we can do a teleconf in Oct. But we want to have the members have a proper amount of time to comment on it, and squeezing it in the other way would not be in the right spirit, although it would be legal. Debra is cool with it. Nick wants a teleconf in Oct to be the first notice and the vote in Nov. Heather: We used to have a motion about the dues increase on every agenda. Nick: Wants to consider increasing dues in order to significantly support the Foundation to improve the world. Set the dues we want now, then set a constant rate of increase for every year so members know and predict and we get fewer people quitting in reaction to raises. Guy: Something supportive of Nick’s idea about regular predictable increases. Cyndi: The committee discussed this and decided already that every other year is a wiser pace for dues adjustments. Also, data shows that dues increases do not hurt membership levels. Pam talked about using the Strategic Plan to guide our decisions regarding how much the dues need to go up. Peggy: Kiwanis is ~$200 a year. Why did we get rid of the permanent rolling motion about dues increases? Elissa this is a bylaws compliance motion. 

Someone suggested changing this to a sense motion. Dan suggested postponing and voting on it in Nov when we have an actual dollar amount. John moved to amend to strike “place on the agenda to.”

Cyndi moved to postpone, Dan seconded. Vote to postpone: opposed Art. Nick & Guy abstain.

AMC Meeting July 2010

9am. First cup of coffee.

So the appointed officers were reappointed. Phew.

Governance Task Force

Recht gave a report as liaison to Gov Task Force, which does not have a formal written report. So far Eldon found people to serve. Several discussions have taken place between Eldon, John R., Jean B. Mike Eager, Nancy Heller, Frank Parth, and myself about how to proceed, identifying problems to be solved, and research and distillation of background material. Recht talked about how big this project is and how important it is to prepare and research how all the pieces interlock before any recommendations are considered.

Jean spoke about the GFT: There are concerns about the AMC told us what to Do, but not what we are supposed to ACCOMPLISH.

Robin: I’m reading and learning and reaching some surprising preliminary conclusions. I am confident that we will come up with ways to improve Mensa and guide it forward.

Recht asked the AMC and audience to feel free to give input.

(My unvoiced note: I have an interview template I’ll be using to formally gather and organize such input after the AG.. might find a moment to pull it together tomorrow so I can do interviews while I have so many people around this weekend.)

Marc: What is the chance that we’ll have recommendations in time to get them on the agenda for November. Answer: zero.