[H-GEN] Changes to Humbug Constitution

[Russell Stuart]

On Tue, 2011-08-30 at 17:06 +1000, Robert Brockway wrote: 
> I don't like this proposed amendment.  That's actually what used to be 
> quorum and we had trouble getting quorum several times.  There are 
> currently (as I understand it) 28 member so quorum would be 15 under this 
> proposed change.

This time something that wasn't there before is spelt out - proxies
count in the quorum.  I don't recall any Humbug AGM that has counted
proxies in the quorum during my time at the club.

Making it clear proxies are included has two effects.  Firstly it makes
it much easier to get a quorum.  Secondly, it makes it explicit people
who can't attend can still participate in the AGM.  Given we have
growing numbers of members who aren't in Brisbane, this is something I
wanted to encourage.

> 3 * execute was chosen was it made it easier to achieve quorum but also 
> left the executive as a clear minority of voting members.

A General Meeting is where the members of humbug come together to make
decisions.  We insist on a quorum so we get a representative proportion
of financial members.  Defining a quorum as 50% or some other percentage
of the members seems like a reasonable way of doing that.  I don't see
the relevance of the size of the executive to that number.  So if 50% of
the club is the executive then so be it, the executive can vote as block
and decide the outcome.  I think that's fair enough - they are financial
members, after all, so they do get to have their say, just like
everybody else.