jamesaepp
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- Jan 10, 2025
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Fellow CIRA members,
Preamble
Disclaimer 1: While I disagree at times with his choice of words and the merits of his ideas, Alex Beraskow has inspired a certain skepticism of CIRA in me. I have provided Alex with constructive criticism in private correspondence over email. To those of you who receive his emails, some of my contributions have appeared in more recent installments. That said, the publications are still entirely his own. I add this disclaimer because I understand that Alex could be seen as insubordinate and might turn some people off for his lack of deference.
Disclaimer 2: These are not my amendments. I don't assign copyright to them - if anything, I commit them to the public domain.
Disclaimer 3: The drafting of these amendments was primarily done by LLM/generative AI (with honing by yours truly). I don't consider this a strictly bad or good thing, but society seems to desire such disclaimers and I agree with that. While the amendment text is LLM/gAI, this entire post is my own.
Introduction and Request
I'm not 100% certain I will be able to attend this year's CIRA AGM this Thursday 2025-09-24. I attended (part of) last year's and after attending this week's candidate meet-and-greet, I think we need to shake up how the AGMs are run. After all these are our meetings as the membership. We get to decide how they're ran.
If you like any of the draft amendments I've included below, please attend the AGM and move/second/pass them.
Amendment 1/4 - Amend Agenda to Add General Question Period
The gist: After the business of the meeting is done but before we adjourn, I propose a 1-hour question period where members can ask questions and (hopefully) get responses/answers. The motion above explicitly overrides the AGM guide question timing limits to 1 minute per question, 5 minutes per answer, and one follow-up permitted per member.
Why: There is a question period before the AGM is called to order but there's no obligation of CIRA to reference those questions/answers in the meeting minutes. Further, 7 minutes to go over the financials is ludicrously low in my opinion.
Amendment 2/4 - Amend Agenda to Add General Comment Period (Assumes Above Amendment Passes)
The gist: After the question period and before we adjourn, I propose a 30-minute comment period where members are free to provide comments without the expectation of responses/answers. The motion above explicitly overrides the AGM guide comment timing limits to 1 minute per person (2 minutes on a second round if time remains).
Why: Similar to amendment 1/4 for the question period, I find the AGM guide's limits to be far too low for a member institution like CIRA. This gives CIRA members the chance to vent, to suggest ideas, and for the directors to actually hear from members in a way that they otherwise will not.
Amendment 3/4 - Amend By-Law 1 with housekeeping/friendly change
The gist: Simple housekeeping to correct an error in the amendments that was (probably innocently) missed.
Why: Under the drafted bylaw amendments as currently written, the definition of "Election Period" (page 2) references section 3.04(d) but the bylaw amendment also includes a subsection numbering/lettering change to the (d) and (e) subsections under 3.04 (page 6) so this needs to be updated in turn.
Amendment 4/4 - Amend By-Law 1 by increasing member eligibility to vote from 21 to 28 days
The gist: With the change in the timing of the board election under section 3.06(e) (page 6), the eligibility of members to vote in elections should update accordingly in the Record Date (page 23).
Why:
This year's election will continue status quo as these bylaw amendments have not been adopted yet. By the rules as they exist, anyone who was a member on September 3rd is eligible to vote in the board of director election (Sept 24- 21 days = Sept 3). Because the election period is 7 days including the date of the AGM (ending October 1st), you could consider the "real cutoff" to be 28 days from the actual last date of the election (Oct 1 - Sept 3 = 28 days).
Assuming this bylaw is adopted without this draft amendment, next year's board election in contrast would end on the date of the AGM. The "real cutoff" between when members are considered eligible to vote and the last date of the election (the AGM) is only 21 days and not 28 days as the extra 7 days following the AGM date are no longer included. This could unintentionally cut off new CIRA members from participating.
Passing the bylaw 1 amendments with this amendment corrects for the above issue by adjusting for the election period change so that the real cutoff in when CIRA members are considered eligible to vote doesn't change. To borrow from accounting, a debit in one account (-7 days) must have an equal credit in another (+7 days).
Conclusion
Please share any thoughts. I don't know of any other CIRA-interested forum where something like this could go. If you know of other places where this kind of post would be topical, well ... don't ask for my permission to copy/share.
These draft motions are just ideas - meaningless if I'm the only one advocating for their adoption.
Preamble
Disclaimer 1: While I disagree at times with his choice of words and the merits of his ideas, Alex Beraskow has inspired a certain skepticism of CIRA in me. I have provided Alex with constructive criticism in private correspondence over email. To those of you who receive his emails, some of my contributions have appeared in more recent installments. That said, the publications are still entirely his own. I add this disclaimer because I understand that Alex could be seen as insubordinate and might turn some people off for his lack of deference.
Disclaimer 2: These are not my amendments. I don't assign copyright to them - if anything, I commit them to the public domain.
Disclaimer 3: The drafting of these amendments was primarily done by LLM/generative AI (with honing by yours truly). I don't consider this a strictly bad or good thing, but society seems to desire such disclaimers and I agree with that. While the amendment text is LLM/gAI, this entire post is my own.
Introduction and Request
I'm not 100% certain I will be able to attend this year's CIRA AGM this Thursday 2025-09-24. I attended (part of) last year's and after attending this week's candidate meet-and-greet, I think we need to shake up how the AGMs are run. After all these are our meetings as the membership. We get to decide how they're ran.
If you like any of the draft amendments I've included below, please attend the AGM and move/second/pass them.
Amendment 1/4 - Amend Agenda to Add General Question Period
The gist: After the business of the meeting is done but before we adjourn, I propose a 1-hour question period where members can ask questions and (hopefully) get responses/answers. The motion above explicitly overrides the AGM guide question timing limits to 1 minute per question, 5 minutes per answer, and one follow-up permitted per member.
Why: There is a question period before the AGM is called to order but there's no obligation of CIRA to reference those questions/answers in the meeting minutes. Further, 7 minutes to go over the financials is ludicrously low in my opinion.
Amendment 2/4 - Amend Agenda to Add General Comment Period (Assumes Above Amendment Passes)
The gist: After the question period and before we adjourn, I propose a 30-minute comment period where members are free to provide comments without the expectation of responses/answers. The motion above explicitly overrides the AGM guide comment timing limits to 1 minute per person (2 minutes on a second round if time remains).
Why: Similar to amendment 1/4 for the question period, I find the AGM guide's limits to be far too low for a member institution like CIRA. This gives CIRA members the chance to vent, to suggest ideas, and for the directors to actually hear from members in a way that they otherwise will not.
Amendment 3/4 - Amend By-Law 1 with housekeeping/friendly change
The gist: Simple housekeeping to correct an error in the amendments that was (probably innocently) missed.
Why: Under the drafted bylaw amendments as currently written, the definition of "Election Period" (page 2) references section 3.04(d) but the bylaw amendment also includes a subsection numbering/lettering change to the (d) and (e) subsections under 3.04 (page 6) so this needs to be updated in turn.
Amendment 4/4 - Amend By-Law 1 by increasing member eligibility to vote from 21 to 28 days
The gist: With the change in the timing of the board election under section 3.06(e) (page 6), the eligibility of members to vote in elections should update accordingly in the Record Date (page 23).
Why:
This year's election will continue status quo as these bylaw amendments have not been adopted yet. By the rules as they exist, anyone who was a member on September 3rd is eligible to vote in the board of director election (Sept 24- 21 days = Sept 3). Because the election period is 7 days including the date of the AGM (ending October 1st), you could consider the "real cutoff" to be 28 days from the actual last date of the election (Oct 1 - Sept 3 = 28 days).
Assuming this bylaw is adopted without this draft amendment, next year's board election in contrast would end on the date of the AGM. The "real cutoff" between when members are considered eligible to vote and the last date of the election (the AGM) is only 21 days and not 28 days as the extra 7 days following the AGM date are no longer included. This could unintentionally cut off new CIRA members from participating.
Passing the bylaw 1 amendments with this amendment corrects for the above issue by adjusting for the election period change so that the real cutoff in when CIRA members are considered eligible to vote doesn't change. To borrow from accounting, a debit in one account (-7 days) must have an equal credit in another (+7 days).
Conclusion
Please share any thoughts. I don't know of any other CIRA-interested forum where something like this could go. If you know of other places where this kind of post would be topical, well ... don't ask for my permission to copy/share.
These draft motions are just ideas - meaningless if I'm the only one advocating for their adoption.
