[Community-Discuss] AoB of the Minutes of the Board Meeting - May 11, 2016

[Owen DeLong]

> Is it OK for somebody to be a Director and also to hold a position in another committee or working group?  Certainly not for a Director to also be a PDWG Co-Chair. 
> 
> If not, then when should they resign from other positions?  On being nominated, or on the candidate slate being announced, or on being elected?  

Actually, I would argue that there is no reason they should have to resign their current position until the moment before their term of service begins in their newly elected position.

It makes no sense to me that someone should resign an existing position before they know that they have been elected to the new position.

In AfriNIC, the distinction between election and start of term of service is very short (perhaps minutes) IIRC, so this could be a distinction without a difference in this case, but that may not always remain the case. In ARIN, for example, elections take place in October, but we don’t start our term of service until January. If I were to run for and be elected to the ARIN board, it would not make sense for me to resign from the AC prior to December 31 for my Board Term starting in January. (Relax, this is just an example, I am not planning to run for ARIN board). 

If, at some point in the future, AfriNIC chooses to go to a delayed transition to facilitate a more orderly succession process (newly elected AC members work with the existing AC members between October and December to come up to speed on AC processes, though they do not participate in debate or voting), then this distinction would become more relevant.

However, while we are writing rules, I think that requiring resignation prior to assuming the new office makes more sense as it works in both scenarios without having to be touched in the event of a change between the current process and one of delayed transition.

> Who should decide the rules? Most reasonable to allow the Board to do this, in consultation with the Community.

I agree with this. However, when should the rules be changed also merits discussion IMHO. It is not a good idea to change the rules in the months leading up to an election. In fact, IMHO, the best time to change the rules is immediately after the election so that the lessons learned from the previous election are still fresh and can be best applied in the creation of new rules. This also has the virtue of providing maximum notice period on the new rules prior to the next election sequence.

> Where should the rules be written?  The Board thinks that the election guidelines would be a good place for most of the rules, but perhaps some of the rules are important enough to appear in the Bylaws.

I trust the board’s judgment on the placement of such rules/guidelines.

Owen
> 

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