[sac-board] Re: Constitution change proposal

On Wed, 24 Jul 2002 22:30:13 EDT, SaguaroAstro@xxxxxxx wrote:

> All,
> 
> At the last board meeting the question of wording in the constitution 
> regarding the renewal of late renewing members was discussed. I offered to  
> write up a change in wording to clarify the position.
> here is the change as I will present it at Friday's meeting:

Propsal to Amend the SAC Constitution
Currently Article VIII, Paragraph B reads as follows    

    Dues.

1   A schedule of annual dues prepared by the committee headed by the
    Treasurer and accepted by the General Assembly shall be added to the
    bylaws. This schedule will be reviewed for possible revision at the
    end of each fiscal year by the Treasurer or at any other time that is
    deemed necessary by the Board of Directors or a majority of the
    General Assembly.

2   Annual dues shall become due and payable at the beginning of the
    fiscal year. New members joining at other times will be charged on a
    pro-rated basis based on the quarter the application is accepted as
    shown:

    a)  Fiscal Quarter: 1st - 100%; 2nd - 75%; 3rd - 50%; 4th - 25% 

3   Any member whose dues are delinquent for more than 60 days shall be
    automatically terminated from membership. Any terminated member
    reapplying for membership shall pay all back dues or a reinstatement
    fee as shown in the attached schedule.

4   Any dues in excess of the regular membership fee constitute an
    optional contribution in support of the activities of the Saguaro
    Astronomy Club.

5   Regular members age 65 or older shall have their annual membership fee
    reduced by 50% upon request.

Proposal is to Change Section 3 to read as follows:

3   Any member whose dues are delinquent for more than 60 days shall be
    automatically terminated from membership. 

    a)  Any terminated member wishing reinstatement, who maintained
        membership status during the previous calendar year, shall pay the
        full years dues for the type of membership requested.

    b)  Any Terminated member, who did not maintain membership during the
        previous calendar year, shall be treated as a new member and shall
        pay dues for the type of membership desired, including any
        pro-rations based on the schedule in Article VIII, Paragraph B,
        Section 2.

The above is the same as Rick's message except the redundant material has
been removed as well as mentions to nonexistant color highlighting.

My suggestion for the change (based on the ideas from Rick):


3   Any member whose dues are delinquent for more than two months shall be
    automatically terminated from membership.  To rejoin, a terminated   
    member who:

    a)  paid dues for the previous calendar year, shall be reinstated upon
        paying the entire current year's dues.

    b)  did not pay dues for the previous calendar year shall now be a new
        member and pay dues based as such.


I changed the text from "maintained membership during" to "paid dues for"
because their membership wouldn't be terminated until March, which is two
months into the pervious year.

Part (b) also means the person is a "new member" rather than a "continuing
member".  Although, this is pretty much a meaningless distinction as we
don't track how long people have been members.

I'm not entirely happy with the linkage.  It might be better to place the
"a terminated member who" at the beginning of parts (a) and (b).

I change the expiration from "60 days" to "two months".  60 days puts the
cut-off at March 3rd (or March 2nd on Leap Years).  This not too terrible
important.

If we start adding text like "Art. ... Par. ... Sec. ..." then we make a
very hard to follow text.  Start doing this a lot and the constitution
will hard to update correctly (e.g. if the refered text was renumbered,
then all places like (b) would have to be changed too or be incorrect).

I'm willing to make up the PDF signing form, then someone can take that
PDF file and make a overhead transparency (or I can buy the transparencies
and do this too).

Comments?

        -Paul

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