:FAN: FAN Bylaw Changes

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I like the idea of giving the at-large membership the equivalent of 2 votes instead of just 1.

@Phil_Wiley What kind of time frame would you think would work for allowing for a time period of the member NAs to vote? Is there anything that we could do if there’s a big issue coming up within a week that wasn’t previously known about that people would want to take a position on? That might be something that we want to make a policy change of instead of putting it in the bylaws since we’d be stuck with the change for a while if it turned out we wanted to make another change later.

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@Pete_Gilcrease, if “FAN Allows People in Member NAs to Be At Large Members”, which I personally support, then does it make sense to give them 2 votes on resolutions instead of 1? I think the “if/then” argument can be made for it, because by adding others who theoretically have a voice elsewhere, we are faced with a choice of either diluting the vote of the at-large group, or giving it special treatment. I personally would rather err on the side of the later, but must emphasize, I am one of 10 +/- delegates, have not discussed this with the others, and believe the intent of the bylaws is that it be an Assembly of Delegates group decision.

The time frame for a vote helping me to include JHCC members is surely different from other member NA’s, wouldn’t it be valuable to assemble and learn, so that FAN can adapt, and member NA’s can adapt, or at least feel like we all know the process and are equal partners in how we choose to participate in it? To better answer your direct question, I would like to know who is running for office, have online questionnaires completed, and any candidate Q&A forums completed several days before the member NA notice period begins - this would include nominations from the floor, not to preclude write-in candidates on day of election. Wouldn’t everyone be happier with that? Similar discipline when possible on resolutions, great, that will not always be the case - so should not be hard wired into policy, agree with you, as already stated. Resolutions have got into Helios that did not allow time for broad participation, but could have with better advance planning and recognition of the down stream effects.- no criticism intended, we are all volunteers here learning as part of a great experiment in democracy.

Whether the at-large group also gets special treatment in the nomination / election process requires further dialogue. I could support it, perhaps only if the Assembly of Delegates is activated to fulfill it’s role. The Board is disproportionately “at-large” already vs. the design point, so a bylaws change to increase at-large voting weight may not be currently needed. There was never an intent for the Board and at-large to be the primary voices at the expense of member NA’s.

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The issue of vote timing isn’t only directed at Elections (which we have agency to affect within the Org) but also at City issues that can come up and need a tight turn-around.

If an NA doesn’t hold online votes, and also can’t manage to meet, debate, and vote in-person before we take action on an issue, that entire NA is left out of the mix of the vote that FAN takes.

I think the nimble opportunities we offer with online discussion and voting are what set us apart from traditional NA structures, and allow us to have input on issues facing the City with out dragging out the process of growth at the sake of a slightly-outdated notion of only in person public input.

If a member is a part of an NA that doesn’t have a structure which allows them to partake in a FAN vote of its Delegates, allowing all FAN Members as part of the At-Large body of votes would at least allow them to at least have a say in the overall outcome in some way.

The gist is: Asking that FAN align its vote timing to NA’s whose schedules meet/vote the least frequently is essentially asking the entire organization of FAN to reduce it’s throughput of Resolutions to only things that the least active NA can manage to address. I think that could end up being a minoritarianism if any one NA decides to drag it’s feet on voting in the future.

Perhaps we need to provide more guidance to NAs on how to conduct online votes so that our timelines can align more frequently. Would that be a project you’d be wiling to head up, or do you know someone who has the bandwidth to put together that kind of outreach?

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@alyshalynn, I completely agree with most of the points raised in your last posting, FAN is an amazing addition to the community and has been supported by an amazing group of dedicated people - including yourself - so thank you for that!

Please understand that, for purposes of providing an example, JHCC does conduct anonymous (eligibility verified) online voting / polling, exclusively, in the manner (Helios) and timing recommended by FAN - from announcing a vote to closing of the polls. In addition, JHCC bylaws added a provision for emergency short term voting that would waive the FAN recommended notice period. @Pete_Gilcrease is probably the Board expert on this topic.

There have been times over the last year, when if everyone understood others processes, we could easily have been more inclusive in offering member NA’s members an opportunity to vote. Agree, there will be times when it is not possible / responsible, and so I would suggest other member NA’s consider including the emergency clause JHCC has implemented, or fall back on the delegates judgement, as the member NA have empowered them to do so. Having said that, if we were to use the emergency clause every time it would bypass the intent of the member NA bylaws notice period, which has left me as a delegate in an awkward situation at times. Like when the officer polls closed shortly after we definitively knew who was running. I do not consider any of this a criticism having come from an environment where constant process improvement was a survival instinct, FAN is a new initiative, of course we will learn as we go.

I would like every member NA to consider having an emergency vote clause, because I think doing so could be considered a “best practice”. I would like to know how they do so many other things, because it is clear they have much better practices than JHCC. Having the Assembly of Delegates convene will help make us stronger individually, and thus as a collective. I don’t know why we are not doing it already, it is pretty strongly “encouraged” in the bylaws.

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So I’m not sure I’m parsing your concerns completely, and correct me if I’m not gathering all of it accurately - I’m trying to be concise for the sake of drafting actionable language into a future vote of the members. Please correct or elaborate.

It seems that you’re advocating for:

  1. Stricter oversight/approval of NA by-laws as part of an organization’s membership under the umbrella of FAN re: Delegate voting

  2. Only letting individual NA members vote in the At-Large block if their NA is not casting a vote through their Delegate structure (whatever that may be).

  3. Voting notifications for some undetermined period of time before a vote which is beyond the current 24 hours in the Bylaws, and also the informal policy we’ve been using of 3 days to a week.

On #3 I’d say that while we haven’t been giving much more than a few days notice on when we might vote for upcoming resolutions, I think a large part of our assumption is that Delegates are keeping up with active forum posts where those are being fleshed out.

Ideally Delegates would also be keeping their organizations up to date and directing their members to do further research & partake in those posts so that they aren’t caught off guard by a quick vote of FAN.

Perhaps something like that needs to be included in the description of a Delegate though, to make it more clear on how we can all stay on the same page.

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I’d like to point out that changing the Bylaws v changing the website are very different animals.

While the initial intent of FAN over a year ago may have been to take membership dues, we are not doing that and it is reflected in our operating Bylaws which have a voting process and were last finalized in 2015. I get what you’re concerned with, but I disagree that updating a website to reflect official documents is any kind of red flag.

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RE #2) or FAN NA members also voting in the At-Large block in an if-then scenario…
We can’t separate individual votes from a voting block after they’ve been cast in Helios because we can’t trace which members belong to which votes. If we wanted to allow this we’d need to have two separate and subsequent voting timelines, one first for NA votes, and then one for the At-Large, which would include those members whose NA didn’t cast a vote.

This adds more complexity and lead time to the Gantt chart for completing a vote, or consequently less time to hold a voting period open for either type of member in the case that we have a looming deadline for reporting votes, like a Council / Board hearing.

Perhaps allowing individuals who are covered by an NA to also vote in the at-large block regardless of the NA Delegate vote would create the incentive and encourage them subscribe here in the FAN forums, and to actively to stay abreast of issues instead of passively assuming their Delegate will do so for them.

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I’ve included the document below with some suggested changes for the bylaws so far. If anyone wants to read over them and make any changes, please feel free. If anyone wants comment access to the document also, please let us know.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Y8QDqfuX0jmoO85pt5pjv9ze4kT4flqfkVleOmNj0OE/edit?usp=sharing

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Regret the delay in getting back and confusion. That is not what I meant at all, and needed to have a little time to dedicate before responding to see where the misunderstanding came in - as I am not advocating that interpretation for (1), (2), (3), or delegate description, quite the contrary on all of the above. Adding complexity to the process is contrary to my DNA.

Believe the source of the misunderstanding, is that as a delegate, when I said “vote” I thought of it in that context, as it is my role, and it is also the organization structure - hopefully that was clear in my posting of 6 days ago… When I suggested giving “at large members… 2 votes”, I meant delegate votes. It would be a big change to further empower them, considering it is coming late in the cycle, and as I can see you are trying to get something prepared to vote, we should table that thought and put it in the to be discussed later category, it is to big to do without adequate debate. .
To be clear, I fully agree, “everyone” should be encouraged to be an at-large participant, who should have the right to express their views through the at-large group, and where applicable / available, their member NA’s, so if others think of 2 votes that way, I fully support it… My only concern was diluting the current at-large member voice as part of that transition, but it would not prevent me from supporting this positive change.

The member NA’s do not need stricter oversight on the provisions related to member NA’s voting, if merely following what FAN has advocated vs. the FAN process is the issue, and if addressing that would allow broader participation. To hopefully be clearer, if you finalize wording on a proposition here, then open the polling up for 3 days, you have excluded member NA voices where they are given a week from the time of notice to closing of their polls. What exactly would a delegate have to say today to people who only have bandwidth to absorb the cliff note version of the upcoming bylaws vote when the poll language is clear?

I will look at what @Pete_Gilcrease sent this weekend.

btw - I put “everyone” should be encouraged to be at-large members in quotes because I question whether it should include me, or others who already have potential to weigh in at more than one venue, so I will not go there, & perhaps as a next step we should consider limiting others.

Thanks for your work on this!

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Where are NA’s given a week to vote? Are you referencing the timeline that NA’s have decided on for themselves in their byalws, which FAN doesn’t have any oversight of in an official capacity?

This suggestion is why I interpolated that you wished for greater oversight of FAN member NA’s bylaws. Since we don’t have a formal say in the way NA’s conduct votes, FAN either stretches out our voting timelines to accommodate NAs with long voting periods, or FAN adopts specific language on how long NAs should hold open votes to be counted in our NA block.

Again, I would hope that Delegates themselves would be creating those “cliff’s notes” regularly and keeping their organizations up to date on current topics of conversation or at the very least directing their members to do further research & partake in active FAN forum posts themselves.

I understood that you meant At-Large block would get two Delegate votes.

And for clarification to readers who may not be privy: FAN doesn’t currently use the “Delegate” structure for the At-Large block. We instead conduct an online vote for that block, where each member is is given a vote, and if all votes pass a 60% threshold for a particular issue, then it’s considered a “For” vote on that issue. Much more deliberation wold be needed to discuss how 2 votes would work if given to members in 1 type of voting block. e.g - 2 votes to each member, or the final online vote being counted twice.

But our discussions about 2 votes in this thread up until now, as well as in this one were centered around 2 different types of voting members having a vote in each type of member block e.g. - 1 in their NA and 1 in the At-Large.

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@alyshalynn, right, I think we are getting closer. FAN does not have any veto power over NA bylaws voting rules, but it is my understanding that many followed the guidance that FAN provided in the bylaws template (which by the way is an excellent piece of work). If a year into this we are consistently finding that member NA practice and FAN practice are not gelling in a way that optimizes participation in the manner we may aspire to, it just seems like a good thing to meet and talk through. Maybe the member NA’s should now be encouraged to change their bylaws (along with the template), maybe the Board tries to come up with more ways to make the timing of upcoming votes more obvious and or consistent, where possible, maybe both, and we get closer to the happy place.

I may just be exceedingly dull but I honestly don’t usually know that a Board sponsor is officially in place, who is working to finalize language, and expects to have that complete in X days. If I did I might then know which topics to brief local members on. Others may have better suggestions on trigger signals / events that would help them, so again it seems like a productive thing for people to brain storm about.

Understand, and agree, I loosely used the term “delegate” when referring to the at-large vote, because to the extent 60% agree, it has equivalent weight in the outcome. Agree that I introduced the idea very recently that maybe they should get two delegates (at some point), and regret if that created confusion, so one might fairly conclude nothing I have written about in this current posting is on the critical path short term to hold a vote on “FAN Bylaw Changes”. Hopefully you see why I thought this an appropriate venue to raise certain points as it all ties together from where I sit in trying to make the process work better for all…

As I look back at @ChadV earlier concerns, I wonder if they might not be addressed by an approach to allow at-large members not affiliated with a member NA one “delegate” vote, and those who are affiliated with a member NA one “delegate” vote. If we can make it work for everyone, so much the better.

I partially reviewed the full list of proposed changes from the link @Pete_Gilcrease sent, cursory review is that everything prior to 7.3 appears to make complete sense, 7.3 may not be what they intended (so let’s not close without doubling back on that one) and there is a lot of red ink after that I’ll have to look at later. Thanks to him & @rcauvin, it appears to, as usual, be a very well thought out effort…

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@Phil_Wiley Is there a way to make 7.3 make more sense? The main reason why it was edited was because if anyone in Austin can be an at-large member then specifying people that area “member delegate of a FAN member organization” can also be an officer, since those people were previously excluded from being a direct member of FAN.

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like I said cursory review, but I was not sure based on the many adds / deletes color coded, if it might make at-large members the only ones eligible to serve. thus note to follow up vs. a statement that was the case, as I am certain that would not be the intent. so please double check in that context. perhaps a “clean” copy of that section would ease my weary eyes. thanks!

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Ok, I see. I went back through it to make sure and it would allow only at-large members to be officers or on the board, but with the other changes in the bylaws everyone that’s a member of FAN would be considered an at-large member. Under 3.1 there are two types of members 1) Neighborhood Associations and 2) At-large members. In order to be an officer, someone would just have to join FAN as an at-large member. The “at-large member of the board” reference is referring to anyone on the board that’s not an officer. I think it makes sense as written?

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Unless there are any other suggested changes, I’d like to make sure this is ready to go this weekend to vote on at the same time as the Guadalupe activity corridor vote so we can do both at the same time.

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The link to the bylaw changes wasn’t working correctly and it wasn’t displaying the changes, so that’s been updated and the new link is on the votes page (http://www.atxfriends.org/votes/).

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I will be voting in favor of these changes, however I hope the number of in person meetings are not reduced.

In person meetings allow for people to develop relationships, if FAN relies more heavily on online discussions I think it will be a determent to the organization.

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@neider_dave We should still be having the same number of in person meetings. We should have one again soon too!

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