The process, the CTC AGM, voting etc.

A place to discuss the issues relating to the proposed change in the national CTC’s structure.
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The process, the CTC AGM, voting etc.

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millimole
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Re: The process, the CTC AGM, voting etc.

Post by millimole »

Without wishing to appear dense (or lazy) please could someone post the date, time, location, and an outline of the rules around voting at the AGM. For example, presumably I will need to present my membership card at the door to get a voting card?
What will the process be if there are too many members turning up in person for the meeting to go ahead in the planned venue? (I ask this because I imagine the AGMs have traditionally been quite tame affairs, but this one is generating a fair bit of interst!)
As it's local (ish) to me I do intend pootling along.
Karen Sutton
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Re: The process, the CTC AGM, voting etc.

Post by Karen Sutton »

millimole wrote:Without wishing to appear dense (or lazy) please could someone post the date, time, location, and an outline of the rules around voting at the AGM. For example, presumably I will need to present my membership card at the door to get a voting card?
What will the process be if there are too many members turning up in person for the meeting to go ahead in the planned venue? (I ask this because I imagine the AGMs have traditionally been quite tame affairs, but this one is generating a fair bit of interst!)
As it's local (ish) to me I do intend pootling along.


Well I hope lots more turn up than usual, especially if the proxy votes might be disregarded in the event of a significant amendment to the Resolution
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Re: The process, the CTC AGM, voting etc.

Post by admin »

millimole wrote:Without wishing to appear dense (or lazy) please could someone post the date, time, location, and an outline of the rules around voting at the AGM.


AGM Details are here:
http://www.ctc.org.uk/DesktopDefault.aspx?TabID=3416

millimole wrote:For example, presumably I will need to present my membership card at the door to get a voting card?


Yes, I believe so.

millimole wrote:What will the process be if there are too many members turning up in person for the meeting to go ahead in the planned venue?


I don't know, but I'd presume that the University of Loughborough will have some suitably large halls on campus. The advertised venue Burleigh Court apparently has "240 delegate capacity seated".
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Simon L6
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Re: The process, the CTC AGM, voting etc.

Post by Simon L6 »

the answer to millimole's question is that, for the moment, there is no answer. A paper on voting procedures will be presented to the next Council meeting on 23rd January. I'm going along to the meeting as an observer and I'll report back. I think that the Guildford and Belfast AGMs left some of us feeling uneasy, and Council will, I hope, come up with a clear set of procedures we can rely on
psmiffy
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Re: The process, the CTC AGM, voting etc.

Post by psmiffy »

An explanation of the proxy procedure would be nice - when I have returned the form in the past it is not always clear about how my proxy is going to be used - not being on first name terms with the listed proxies - some sort of manifesto?
Karen Sutton
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Re: The process, the CTC AGM, voting etc.

Post by Karen Sutton »

I had the first request from one of our Group members that I should take their proxy vote to the AGM. She also asked how it works. The CTC website just says to follow the instructions on the voting paper carefully. Very helpful (not). :?
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Re: The process, the CTC AGM, voting etc.

Post by Regulator »

Simon L6 wrote:the answer to millimole's question is that, for the moment, there is no answer. A paper on voting procedures will be presented to the next Council meeting on 23rd January. I'm going along to the meeting as an observer and I'll report back. I think that the Guildford and Belfast AGMs left some of us feeling uneasy, and Council will, I hope, come up with a clear set of procedures we can rely on


As Simon says, I have put a paper in for Council this weekend on proxy voting. The key step is that I want to employ Electoral Reform Services to manage the proxy voting process, so that there is independent and reliable scrutiny of the system. This will cost (about £5,000) but CTC can actually afford this - and it will be a big step towards giving members some confidence in the system.

I have a feeling that certain Councillors and National Office may try to defeat the proposals on the basis of cost (although their real reasons may differ). So, please contact your national councillors and ask them to support the proposals. Details of current councillors can be found on this page.

Greg Price
CTC Councillor for London
workhard

Re: The process, the CTC AGM, voting etc.

Post by workhard »

Gregulator

Will do. But do we email them all or just our local/regional ones?

Also can you briefly explain what the relative roles of the co-optees to council are compared with actual councillors when you get a minute please.

Greg 'workhard' Collins
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Re: The process, the CTC AGM, voting etc.

Post by psmiffy »

Ive never attended a CTC AGM but I have been to many others for "proffesional" organisations and it is often customery for an advance copy of the previous minutes to be published showing - attendance- motions - numbers of votes cast (particulaly where proxy votes are included) etc - so that interested parties have time to scrutinise them before they are agreed - I have searched the CTC website and cannot find any such thing for 2009 - does such a thing exist?

The main thing I was interested in was how many votes were actually cast at the last AGM - The debate on this forum seem to have been among only about 40 members - If I had not come across the origonal thread I probably would not have picked up that something fairly important was going on at the CTC - outside of the forum I have not seen much of significance - are the other 62000 members aware this is happening (do they care?)
Karen Sutton
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Re: The process, the CTC AGM, voting etc.

Post by Karen Sutton »

psmiffy wrote:Ive never attended a CTC AGM but I have been to many others for "proffesional" organisations and it is often customery for an advance copy of the previous minutes to be published showing - attendance- motions - numbers of votes cast (particulaly where proxy votes are included) etc - so that interested parties have time to scrutinise them before they are agreed - I have searched the CTC website and cannot find any such thing for 2009 - does such a thing exist?

The main thing I was interested in was how many votes were actually cast at the last AGM - The debate on this forum seem to have been among only about 40 members - If I had not come across the origonal thread I probably would not have picked up that something fairly important was going on at the CTC - outside of the forum I have not seen much of significance - are the other 62000 members aware this is happening (do they care?)


The minutes of the last AGM are printed in the April/May issue of Cycle. That is the issue which will also contain the agenda for this AGM. also your voting papers will be included. So look carefully at all the bits that come with the mag. I know people who threw their National Councillor voting papers in the recycle bin and just kept the mag; then said they couldn't vote as they didn't receive a voting paper!

However the AGM minutes you will see will give very little detail of last year's AGM. The motions will be recorded as passed or not; you will get no idea how many voted either way. It seems that this is not regarded as important and we don't want to take up space which could be sold to advertisers do we? :?

As to whether the membership knows what is happening, it depends whether they read the magazine, Newsnet or notice stuff on the home page of this website. Then they will find out, and if they are interested they may want to know more.

I have been asked to take proxy votes to the AGM by members of our Group. One of them said to me: "I have to admit Karen, that I hadn't given it a lot of thought before I read the blog you forwarded. I just took the magazine articles at face value (which of course I should have known better). Now that I have informed myself a little better, I want to vote against, so if its OK with you I would like you to have my proxy vote".
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Simon L6
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Re: The process, the CTC AGM, voting etc.

Post by Simon L6 »

psmithy - I can't answer your question directly, but I can point to some numbers.

- the CTC does not publish the AGM voting figures. When I discovered this I was amazed, but, hitherto, there has been no general desire on Council for this to change. Regulator may succeed in his bid to have votes recorded this coming Saturday.

- prior to the introduction of proxy voting the number of votes cast at AGMs was pretty small - the Cardiff 2006 AGM had only 26 attendees other than officers and people on the platform - and there were no votes taken other than near unanimous show of hands

- the Guidford 2007 AGM was the last without proxy voting - it had a contentious motion, proposed by Council, to reduce the numbers of Councillors. It was defeated (happily) by something like 53 to 17 - but no formal voting figures were published.

- the Belfast 2008 AGM was the first with proxy voting. My resolution to improve services to member groups reaped 140 votes in favour and 140 votes against - although the Chair, who was clearly not up to the job, had to be reminded of the existence of the proxy votes. She cast her vote against, so you have a total of 281 votes.

- the Chester 2009 AGM had only one contentious vote - on the supply of CTC badges. It was defeated 'in the hall' and we were told that the majority of proxy votes were against, but, and if I'm wrong I hope someone will correct me, no numbers were announced. The only other contentious vote was for the acceptance of the Annual Report - a few of us abstained, but, in the light of later study and revelations on the finances and membership system I wish now that I'd voted against

Anyway - there you have it. The record vote in recent years is 281. I confidently expect this to be surpassed this year, because the campaign for the Special Resolution run by National Office has been, if nothing else, unremitting. Whether those of opposed to it can get anything near to the 25%+1 required to defeat it, armed with nothing other than a rag-tag of e-mail addresses and a bit of help from Group secretaries who themselves have only a proportion of addresses of their members remains to be seen. It's an uphill task.
psmiffy
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Re: The process, the CTC AGM, voting etc.

Post by psmiffy »

Thank you Karen

Yes I did read that part of the Magazine - But I thought maybe there was a "proper" account giving an idea of what was the overall turnout

I understand that for a Special Motion that the vote has to be 75% - what constitutes a quorum - from what I have read prior to 2009 and proxy votes it would appear that a show of hands on a relatively small number of people in the room would have sufficed.
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Re: The process, the CTC AGM, voting etc.

Post by Regulator »

psmiffy wrote:Thank you Karen

Yes I did read that part of the Magazine - But I thought maybe there was a "proper" account giving an idea of what was the overall turnout

I understand that for a Special Motion that the vote has to be 75% - what constitutes a quorum - from what I have read prior to 2009 and proxy votes it would appear that a show of hands on a relatively small number of people in the room would have sufficed.


I think it’s important to note that the majority required to pass the Special Resolution is 75% of those voting – not 75% of the membership. Given the level of disengagement* of many of the CTC’s membership, this means that the future of CTC could be decided by only a few hundred people. Even Council and National Office are only planning for a maximum of about 2,000 people (roughly 3% of CTC's total membership) actually voting.



*the way things are done doesn’t actually encourage people to become engaged with CTC. A number of changes of the way we do things have been suggested, such as holding Council meetings around the country, but these have been rejected by Council. National Office and Council keep harking on about how few members actually get involved in things – but they seem reluctant to take steps to encourage greater participation.
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Re: The process, the CTC AGM, voting etc.

Post by bikepacker »

Was there anything resolved at the Council Meeting with regard to AGM voting or this topic?
There is your way. There is my way. But there is no "the way".
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