The Tweaking of the C&B

I don't know who writes this stuff, but sometimes I really do find it comical. I read with great interest the Board's assessment of the proposed bylaws amendments. It's funny how they say that they take no position with the substance of the proposed amendments and then proceed to say they cannot support them for all the following reasons. Isn't that like taking a position?

Speaking only about the Board's comments to the proposed amendment that I wrote and the rationale that I wrote as well, Article V, Section 2, the Board says the number of seven years is totally arbitrary on my part, which, of course, it isn't. First I looked at the fact that a director can serve a full three-year term, sit off for one year, and then run again and serve another full three-year term. In essence, just being arbitrary now with this picking of numbers, a qualified reporter could be a director for 12 out of 15 years. In choosing seven years for officer positions, I felt that if a person served as vice president and then succeeded in going through the chairs of president-elect, president and immediate past president, that would be four years, and then three more would be seven, so it would be seven years before that person could run for vice president again. I hardly consider that logic arbitrary. It ends up being three times more time that the person serving in the officer position would have to wait over what a person serving in a director position would have to wait.

Then they say that piecemealing the C&B is just not a good thing and perhaps the whole thing should be rewritten. I wonder what someone would say if it was suggested that we rewrite the U.S. Constitution? And, oh, by the way, weren't there a few amendments to that document?

And lastly, I have said here and elsewhere more than once, but do it again here, that if I win the election for secretary-treasurer, I will not try to move up the ladder again. I will try to stay on for three years in that spot and then retire from board service. So if anyone gets up and says this is all about Bruce Matthews wanting to be president again, well, I'm afraid it just won't be so.

BAM