Votes and nominations must be with the Administrator by Friday 9 June 2023, and a further vote will be held at the BGM if more than one candidate is put forward.
The Administrator was elected for a term of 2 years in 2021, so is now at the end of that extra term. As she has now been 27 years in one position or another running the Society, she felt it was time to step down, but is willing to continue in a more symbolic role if a Membership Secretary is elected. This entails a few changes to the Constitution (see below). The Committee’s recommendations for this, and nominations for Administrator, Membership Secretary, Treasurer and Publicity Officer, as Ros Bayley and Janice Benson are at the end of their 4-year term, were also put forward in a postal ballot distributed with the May 2023 Chronicle:
The Constitution, and why it needs to change
When Lorraine and I (having taken legal advice) formulated the Constitution for the Society in 2012 – eleven years ago! – it seemed logical for me to be dealing with membership matters, as she was editing the magazine. We found someone (Janice Brown first, then Ros Bayley) to be Treasurer, something else that I had been doing up until then. The idea of doing the reprints, for which we needed to be a legal entity in order to sign agreements and contracts, was very new, and although we had agreement in principle for the first few Chambers titles, we had no idea whether they would be a success.
Since then, the reprints have become a much larger part of what we do, and their sales greatly add to our income, allowing us to keep the subscription level lower than it might otherwise be. To start with, the task of getting the texts ready for publication was shared with Lorraine, but since her death it has largely devolved upon me, with help of course from the proof-readers – at least 2 other people per title – and initial typesetting by Adrianne Fitzpatrick.
I had thought that after 27 years I ought to step back, or even step down, but am persuaded that I am still useful as a ‘fount of knowledge’. So moving the membership part of the job elsewhere is the logical step, so I can be a more symbolic Administrator for the Society, and continue to do the work on the reprints and chair committee meetings.
But we had set out the role of the Administrator in Annex A of the Constitution to include membership record-keeping. In splitting the job, we need to alter the Constitution to allow for this. That is why we have included a copy of the proposed new constitution with this issue of the Chronicle, and put it on the voting paper. We hope you will vote the changes through, as well as voting in a Membership Secretary to undertake this task.
Ruth (the Admin) and the Executive Committee
If instead you wish to nominate someone else for this post, you need to gain their permission, and a seconder, and to contact the Administrator as above with these details, but instead of ‘VOTE’ please put ‘NOMINATE’ on the envelope or in the subject line of your email. Please state which position the nomination is for.