Notes on Amendment to the Constitution

This page documents discussion of the proposed constitutional amendment to ensure the membership is informed in the lead up to the motion to adopt at the June 19, 2019 Annual General Meeting.

The following documents are posted for consideration in support of a motion to adopt them at the BTG Annual General Meeting June 19, 2019:

Notes on these documents as presented above:

  • It is the content of these documents that is being presented for consideration by the members.
  • These documents when finally presented and approved may look different due to the incoporation of formatting changes (signature blocks, removal of watermarks and highlighter marks, consistent indending etc.) or other minor editorial fixes.

Notes on the Proposed Amendment:

  • The main changes in the Proposed Amendment (both 2018 and 2019 versions) compared to the Current Constitution are as follows:
    • Administrative sections (e.g. definitions, numbering conventions, interpretation, etc.) have been added to appropriately reflect its status as a legal document.  These changes are not intended to affect the operation of the BTG.
    • The detail contained in a number of  sections have been removed and placed into a lower level document called "Bylaws of The Belleville Theatre Guild".  Concurrent with this change a section has been added governing the amendment of these Bylaws (Article XVI).  This change is intended to affect the operation of the BTG and is discussed further below.
    • Article XVII has been added to describe the process for dissolution of the BTG should it ever come to that.  This is not intended to affect the operation of the BTG as a currently active living organization.  [A good constitution prepares for this type of eventuality even if it is anticipated that it will never happen.]
    • See the link below for a comparison of the two documents.
  • The Proposed Amendment (June 2019) has been updated to address concerns raised during the Spring 2019 review period.  Changes to wording compared to the Proposed Amendment (as drafted for June 2018) are highlighted in yellow within the PDF document.  Most of these changes are editorial however some are material as follows:
    • The expectation that there is a Fall General Meeting (FGM) and an Annual General Meeting (AGM) and what constitutes a quorum has been added back in to Article IX.  Both of these meetings are necessary for the successful amendment of Bylaws (Article XV) and amendments to the constitution (Article XVI)
    • Article XV pertaining to the amendment of bylaws has been reorganized and Section XV.5 has been added to require a cooling off period before the Board can amend a byaw if the amendment has been previously rejected by the membership. See discussion below about how bylaws are amended.
    • The 30 day lead to inform members of amendments to the constitution has been restored (in June 2018.  This requirement also specifies that the previous and revised version of the amendment must be provided with that lead time.

 Notes on Bylaws and the Bylaw amendment process.

  • The Bylaws document is referenced in the Proposed Amendment and revision 0 has been created to demonstrate the intended continuity between the Proposed Amendment and the Current Constitution. 
    • The Bylaws of the Belleville Theatre Guild is a verbatim copy of all of those sections of the Current Constitution that were removed in the process of creating the Proposed Amendment.  
    • By being referenced in the Proposed Amendment, at the outset they will continue to have the same authority as they had with the Current Constitution following adoption of the Proposed Amendment.
  • The removal of this content from the constitution and its placement in the Bylaws allows the Board to have slightly more flexibity in to amend this content in a timely fashion.
    • The Bylaws amendment process allows the Board to make a timely immediate change and implement a bylaw subject to ratification by the members at the next general meeting (FGM or AGM).  Through this process members maintain control over these amendments as they do in the Current Constitution.
    • Section XV.5 mentioned above has been added to prevent the Board from re-enacting an amendment immediately following it rejection by the membership, again reinforcing membership control.  [Another example of preparing for an eventuality even if it is anticipated that it will never happen.]

For reference here are links to the additional documents mentioned above.