Question: Special Committee Limitations

We recently created a special committee to rewrite our Constitution. After vote, a member (one who tends to speak up about everything), amended the motion with rules on how the committee would run, how many board members could serve, and total amount of committee members. This got tabled. Does he/she have a right to impose differing committee rules than what our current constitution states. The President, as it stands, appoints committees, in our current constitution, and there is no law prohibiting Board members, in any number, serving on any committee. How could he/she possibly dictate limitations on the President's appointments? Mind you, only about 2 Board Members of 5 want to serve on the Committee. Please help!

Asked by Anonymous

Answers:

Advice from PTO Today

Craig writes:
If I understand correctly, you've already voted to form the committee under current rules. Someone wants to propose several amendments to the already approved motion. In that case, you would be best to consider each proposed change separately, and each would require a two-thirds vote to be approved.

Community Advice

JennSalgado77 writes:
Someone wants to change the current rules in order to stack a committee. So, our best bet would be to vote on both changes - number of people and amount of Board Members who can join the committee, hope for a 2/3 defeat (even though our constitution states majority), then hopes someone introduces an amendment we can get on board with? I guess I'm just confused - if we continue to change the standing constitution to suit naysayers, what good would even having a constitution be? My thought would be have the committee, even keep the number suggested but strike down limitations that have been opposed per current law. There's no intent to freeze out opposing members from the process but it's blatant that it's happening to the board, who, struggles to get volunteers because a select few, one of the members proposing this, have turned many people away from meetings because fruitful decisions never get made.