At its December 2, 2019 Board meeting, the GPTA approved the following changes to the GPTA Bylaws:
a. Reduction of the maximum number of Directors from 15 to 13, effective as of the election next held after the February 2020 Annual Meeting. (That is, 15 Directors will be elected at the February 7, 2020 Annual Meeting, but 13 will be elected at all subsequent Annual Meetings.)
b. Instituting a Board meeting attendance requirement for Directors as follows: a Director may be removed by a vote of the Board if a Director has 3 consecutive unexcused absences from Board meetings, or 4 unexcused absences within a calendar year. Among factors to be taken into account in any such removal vote would be the Director’s attendance and participation in other GPTA events or meetings apart from Board meetings. Absences can be excused for personal or family medical issues, attendance to other GPTA business, or other issues in the discretion of the President. In general, work commitments will not be a basis for excused absence, the thinking being that if a person is too busy with work to attend to GPTA matters, the person should not be a Director.
c. Changing the Board meeting quorum from 1/3 to 1/2.
d. Imposing a limit of one Director per household.
e. Deleting the following language from Article III, Section 2: “If a household contains more than one (1) person, the votes allocable to such household may be divided in any manner as the persons comprising the household shall determine.” The concept here is that fractional votes, which were permitted under the previous version of the By-Laws, had never actually occurred; and the Board believes that if a household did want to cast fractional votes, they would be difficult to administer and would be likely to cause confusion.
f. Change in timing of Annual Meeting to the 4th quarter of the calendar year. This means the next Annual Meeting after the February Annual Meeting will likely be less than a year after the February Meeting.
g. Clarification of the nomination process for election of Directors: any Member in good standing may nominate himself, herself, or another Member in good standing (measured as of the date and time of the annual meeting). Candidates whose nominations are conveyed to the Board 14 days or more before the Annual Meeting will have their names reflected on the ballot, with the names of candidates presented in alphabetical order. Nominations for write-in candidates will also be accepted at the annual meeting.
Read the full text of the newly adopted bylaws.