Date: Mon, 3 May 2004 20:08:57 -0400 (EDT) From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl at KeithLynch.net> To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org> Subject: [WSFA] Our constitution and bylaws online Cc: john at bungalow.org, jekindell at aol.com Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org> The club voted that I should place our current constitution and bylaws online. I've been working on doing so, with the help of Sam and Wade. Sam provided me with what he believed to be the current version of both. I've converted them to good HTML, and placed them online as http://www.wsfa.org/bylaws.htm and http://www.wsfa.org/constitution.htm with bracketed comments and with disclaimers that I'm not yet sure they're completely correct. In May 1998, John Pomeranz distributed a proposed new set of bylaws, and of changes to the constitution, which the club approved. My understanding is that any differences between that and our current bylaws and constitution should be reflected in the minutes of some meeting since May 1998. Wade and I went over the bylaws, to find all differences between what I have recently placed online and what was distributed in 1998. Since our annual elections are coming up in four days, the most important difference right now is in how we run our elections. The 1998 hardcopy says we elect our trustees one at a time, while the online bylaws say that they're done all at once -- the three nominees who get the most votes become the new trustees. I agree that that makes more sense, and it is how we have done it recently, but is it official? Can anyone point me to the minutes of the meeting when the change was made? Thanks. Other substantive differences in the bylaws include: * II.B.7: "WSFA may issue annual membership cards" in 1998 has turned into "WSFA shall issue annual membership cards". The latter was also in the bylaws before the 1998 revision. Is it possible that this 1998 change simply didn't get copied into all the right places? (I for one haven't received a membership card in several years.) * V.A.4 and V.D: The online version mentions a Facilities Committee. There's no mention of any such thing in the 1998 version, or in any earlier version. If it exists, when was it established, and why has it never given any reports? A complete copy of the constitution wasn't distributed in 1998, just the sections that were to be changed. Of those sections, I've found one substantive difference between the online version and the 1998 hardcopy: The sentence "The corporation shall not engage in lobbying or any form of legislative or electoral activity" has inexplicably been deleted from the Fourth Article. I've restored it, but placed it in brackets. If anyone wants to search the meeting minutes, they're online, and a chronological index to them can be found at http://www.wsfa.org/journal/index/minutes.htm Also, you can do Google searches (http://www.google.com/) such as: "membership card" site:wsfa.org "membership cards" site:wsfa.org "facilities committee" site:wsfa.org lobbying site:wsfa.org trustees election site:wsfa.org trustees voting site:wsfa.org (The first finds all pages on our site which contain the phrase "membership card". The last finds all pages on our site which contain both the words "trustees" and "voting" not necessarily anywhere near each other.) I did such searches, and found nothing relevant. Am I misunderstanding something? Or am I failing to find the relevant meeting minutes? Or should I go ahead and back out the changes, restoring the 1998 version? Thanks. When I'm done, I'll remove the bracketed comments, then create a "business section" of our website, which consists of pointers to the constitution, bylaws, past copies of the constitution and bylaws in various past WSFA Journals, the meeting minutes in various past WSFA Journals, and lists of our past and present officers. All of which are already online. -- Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/ Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.