The ARRL 2021 Annual Board Meeting will be held Friday/Saturday January 15-16, 2021. Today, I received the meeting agenda by email. (You can get the agendas, too, by logging into the ARRL website and going to https://www.arrl.org/Users/edit#!/edit-info-email_subscriptions.) I must say, though, that this is the least informative of any agendas that I’ve ever received.
Basically, all it says is the order in which the board is going to receive reports. In order, these are:
- Treasurer’s report
- CFO report
- Officers’ reports
- President
- First Vice President
- Second Vice President
- International Affairs Vice President
- Chief Executive Officer
- FCC Communication Counsel
- Connecticut Counsel
- Committee reports
- Executive Committee
- Administration & Finance Committee
- Programs & Services Committee
- Ethics & Elections Committee
- Amateur Radio Legal Defense & Assistance Committee
- RF Safety Committee
- EMC Committee
- Public Relations Committee
- Historical Committee
- ARISS Committee
- LoTW Committee
- ARDF, Co-Coordinators
- Contest Advisory Committee
- DX Advisory Committee
- Legislative Advocacy Committee
- HF Band Planning Committee
- Legal Structure Review Committee
- Emergency Management Director Selection Committee
The problem, of course, is that you can’t see these reports to comment on them because they haven’t been published yet. (You can see past committee reports at http://www.arrl.org/committee-reports.) Presumably, the committee reports that will be presented at this board meeting will show up there in the next month or so.
Having said all that, now is the time to bend your director’s ear if you’d like to get some action from the ARRL on any matter that you’re interested in. You can find your director by going to http://www.arrl.org/divisions.
Unless I’m missing something—and this is a distinct possibility—there haven’t been many contentious issues lately. Perhaps that has to do with not having a CEO for the past year. Now that we do have a new CEO, presumably things will progress to the point where hams can start complaining about them. <I’m just kidding…..sort of, anyway.>
The agenda is simply a template for the meeting. The motions and reports are still coming in. The Board book doesn’t get assembled until a week before. And the agenda may be substituted at the last minute for tactical or other reasons. In January 2019 we substituted the agenda at the last minute in order to address some governance items. Part of this was the fact that we had 4 new directors that year (5, if you count Stratton who moved up at the meeting).
There’s no way to realistically pre-plan a comprehensive agenda. So this is what you get.
Articles of association and By-law changes require advance notice, 30 days otherwise the vote threshold for passage changes from 3/5 to 3/4. There is only one of them this go around and it’s pretty minor – simply rewording the purpose of the Foundation to reflect its current mission.
The CEO doesn’t set the agenda. The President does. The Board approves the agenda at the meeting, with amendments. A lot of the CEO’s plans are set in the CEO’s report and the annual plan, which are on the agenda.
The two major standing committees – Administration and Finance, and Programs and Services – typically do not meet until a day before the Board meeting. Final motions are generated at those meetings and that won’t be on the agenda right now.
So there you have it.