- There’s significant rewording and rearranging in the minister article, committees and ministry teams article, and the congregational meetings article. See drafted new bylaw changes for more details.
- Possible changes to bylaws quorum percentages, dollar minimums, affirmative voting percentages and minimum petition percentages. You can find a table defining these numbers and showing what is in the current bylaws here.
- We’re interested in your thoughts on 25% for quorum versus 10% for quorum on the 7 exceptions to the usual 10% quorum and majority vote.
- The purchase, sale or transfer of property or authorization of security interest and authorization of unsecured indebtedness needs a 25% quorum for amounts over $100,000 and they can pass with the majority vote. There is another situation where a congregational vote is required for purchase or transfer property or authorization of security interest and authorization of unsecured indebtedness over $75,000 with a 10% quorum and majority vote. Why this is $75,000 versus $100,000, why those are different amounts, we’re not really sure. Can you see any reason for those amounts to be different?
- Changes to format of document to improve readability (See drafted new bylaw changes for more details)
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- Replace roman numerals (I,V,X,i,v,x, etc) to indicate parts of bylaws with western arabic numbering (0,1,2,3, etc) and lettering (A,a,B,b,C,c,etc)
- Replace ‘shall’ with ‘will’; ‘procedures’ with ‘written procedures’; ‘policy’ with ‘board policy’
- Add a Definition of Terms Article and Log of Bylaw amendments
Other proposals to Change the bylaws
- Mission/vision statements becoming a stand alone governance document rather than an appendix to bylaws. The wording that requires East Shore to have mission and vision statements and review them periodically is unchanged.
- Two new sections in the Organization article to explain how staffing is authorized and who creates the staff leadership structure.
- Change the Organization bylaw to say the Board is required to pick a method for running congregational meetings. The current chosen method, Robert’s Rules, is proposed to move to policy.
- Public witness section goes to policy. Public witness has many different levels, it can be at a congregational level, it can be at a committee or team level and it can be at an individual level. A policy would enable us to give the details and say that under certain circumstances there needs to be a congregational vote. See this link to learn more about public witness.
- There is an Open meetings section that requires all committees, teams, task forces, and the board to have open meetings. We are proposing that this section be deleted and language added to specific groups’ in the bylaws that indicate when they are closed. In the case of the nominating committee and ministerial search, their meetings would be closed unless somebody’s invited and the board of trustee meetings would be open unless they’re in executive session. The reason for the nominating and ministerial search meetings being closed is because their work is highly private for vetting and exploring candidates for board positions. Ministerial search does a lot of confidential work before they select a particular minister to recommend to the congregation. So, people need to be invited to attend their sessions.
- In-kind gifts are referred to in the bylaws. There is no policy currently on in-kind gifts. In-kind gifts are currently handled by the staff. For example, in kind gifts are typically physical items and there’s established procedures for how the staff works through those offers. An in-kind gift of services and skills is not addressed in policy or in bylaws. Bylaws Task Force recommends that this be addressed in a new in-kind gifts policy.