term of service of TEI council members

[Syd Bauman]

Introduction
------------
On 23 Sep 03 at our conference call, the Council charged me with
reading through the By-Laws and Board meeting minutes to resolve our
uncertainty about when TEI Council members' terms expire. According
to the minutes I agreed to do this by 01 Oct.

Method
------
I spent a half an hour or so reading what I believe are the current
Bylaws[1] and the minutes of the Fall 2002 Board of Directors meeting
in Chicago[2].

Results
-------
The Bylaws do not address this issue for council members at all. They
do address it directly for Directors (i.e., members of the board of
directors), but since Oct 2002 have been self-contradictory.[3]

In the past (there have only been 2 elections for TEI council members
in the history of the world), my recollection is that we have thought
of the newly elected council members' terms as starting immediately.

Discussion
----------
Logically, if an elected councilor's full term[4,5] started at the
first members' meeting (held in Pisa) on 17 Nov 01, his or her term
would terminate on either 17 Nov 03 or the day of the members'
meeting election in 2003 (in this case 08 Nov 03). Since the council
does not meet at the members' meeting, it is not such a major problem
that we do not know in advance who will be council members by the end
of the members' meeting.

Some concerns follow.

1. Minor ambiguity of actual date a term ends. Probably pretty
   inconsequential, but annoying nonetheless.

2. Overlap with (what I believe to be) term of service of a Director.
   Not a big deal, either, but it makes it a bit more problematic for
   people to move from service in one capacity to another -- you
   either have to wear both hats for 2 months, or neither for 10.

3. Serving councilors whose term expires at a members' meeting may
   well be inspired at the meeting to take on a particular task or
   suggest to the council a particular path, or whatnot.

Proposal
--------
I'm going to go out on a limb, here, and say that I think it would be
better for the organizational health of the TEI if a councilor's term
started on the 01 Jan following the election, lasting for two years
(i.e., until the 31 Dec roughly 26 months after the election).
Besides addressing the concerns above, this also gives incoming
councilors the opportunity to read up on minutes and issues and query
their outgoing colleagues before "taking the helm". I think it should
be standard operating procedure that the councilors-elect be
permitted to join council conference calls (at TEI expense), but not
face-to-face meetings (at least not at TEI expense), without a vote.
Probably should sign 'em up on the council list, too.

One disadvantage with this proposal is that someone in the TEI
administrative world (Officially a duty of the secretary, I believe;
but in fact, handled by Lou as our pinch-webmaster, most likely :-)
needs to remember to change the list of councilors on the website and
in any other official documentation on the New Year. Since we have to
do this for Directors already, I don't see this as a big deal.

Suggested Course of Action
--------- ------ -- ------
1. Council should discuss my proposal and decide to endorse it or not
   immediately.
2. If council decides to endorse it, someone (Christian or I) should
   draft a quick request to the Board that they consider this
   problem, along with our recommended solution, at their meeting on
   Sun 09 Nov.

Notes
-----
[1] //TEI/web/Consortium/bylaws.xml#9, which is reflected on the
    website in HTML as part of the www.tei-c.org[.uk]/Consortium/ index
    page.
[2] //TEI/web/Board/bm08.xml#3, which is reflected on the website in
    HTML as http://www.tei-c.org[.uk]/Board/bm08.html.
[3] Contradiction contained in Article IV, section 3. I plan to draft
    a separate note to the Board about this after lunch.
[4] Some councilors were elected to half terms at that meeting.
[5] I'm not sure that "councilor" is the right term, but I'm getting
    tired of writing "member of the council". :-)