You gotta walk before you can run, and that describes how WSBC Business Meetings kick off. These are OA business meetings and we open the meeting with the Serenity Prayer, in English and, not English. Members are selected to read the 12 Steps, 12 Traditions and 12 Concepts. We move into introductions. The Board of Trustees (BOT), World Service Office (WSO) staff, Region Chairs and the Conference Support Committee (service volunteers) are all introduced, to great applause from the floor.
Before we can sit to do business, Sandy Allen gives the report of the Credentials Committee, letting us know how many voting members are present for the meeting. From this, we know how many votes are needed for majority and for 2/3s votes. For the morning session we had,: Trustees: 15 plus Voting Delegates: 181 for a Total: 196.
Betsy, our professional parliamentarian (4th year), addressed the conference and explained some useful details about handling motions.
We moved on to the standard practice of adopting the Standing Rules. These are pretty specific rules about how we run our business meeting and are often different or in addition to the default rules in Roberts Rules of Order. If my memory serves, in the past, these were adopted quickly. This year, not so. A member rose to submit a motion to change paragraph 2e, which states:
2E) There will be no children under the age of twelve and no pets except animals assisting handicapped people in the business meetings, committee meetings or educational workshops.
I didn’t write down the changed language, but the change was, in effect:
2E) There will be no children under the age of twelve and no animals except service animals assisting people with disabilities in the business meetings, committee meetings or educational workshops.
This was a good an appropriate change I thought and it took a pretty long change to adopt. We had debate, suggested changes to language, questions. I probably got the final language wrong, but it’s close. We debated the phrases “disabled people” against “people with disabilities”. The case being made that people should always come before their disability. I don’t recall what we adopted so I wrote, above, what I hope we adopted.
We moved on to adopt the agenda, after which, we had what is called the “Parade of Motions”. All makers of motions and all makers of amendments to motions (if those amendments were in hand) were introduced. This included me as I had submitted an amendment (which passed later, btw).
Next, each member of the OA BOT and our managing director took a few minutes to answer questions about their reports (which were included in our binders). Some questions. One of note was about our lifting of the monitary limit on bequests. There was a concern that a large gift could make WSO a seat of perilous power. Bob F, a General Services Trustee and current Treasurer assured the conference that if by some stroke of good fortune this happened for OA, the funds would quickly be dispersed to accomplish our primary purpose. I believe this and it makes a lot of sense because he was also asked, earlier, about WSO prudent reserves. Our accountants recommend, for IRS reasons, not to exceed 4-6 months reserves. A large donation would blow that out of the water so clearly we can’t hold onto that sort of money for too long. Still, we can find a good use for it :-).
I did learn from the reports, that Region 2 has established a phone number for native spanish speakers.
Thus ended the morning session of the business meeting. I was off to make and consume my lunch.