AHC Bylaws Subcommitee Meeting Minutes: 09/20/2006 7PM-9PM

Venue: Galib’s Apt

Attendees: Rabiul, Galib, Mithu, Rana, Nasim, Kochi, Rashed, Tahsin, Biju, Shams

Agenda:

1. Introduce the Community Experts and expectations.

2. Assignements of the Community Experts to Subcomm members.

3. Basics of bylaws

4. Trustee and complaints

5. Sections Discussed

6. Prepare next open forum:

7. Next Step/Action Items:

1. Introduce the Community Experts and expectations.

- Three community experts Tahsin, Biju and Shams were introduced to the subcommittee.

- The subcommittee members will work closely with the community experts in matters of the bylaws.

- AHC Members will not expect the Community experts to write bylaws for them. But the experts will counsel the members in interpreting, reviewing, bylaws language in writing.

2. Assignements of the Community Experts to Subcomm members.

- Three experts are assigned to two members each.

- Members and experts will have access to the sections other than the assigned sections of the bylaws, if they want to review and comment on other sections of the bylaws. It is encouraged to review other sections, which may help checking for coherency of language and content among different sections.

3. Basics of bylaws

In most parts of the bylaws the subcommittee will write in a broader way as guidelines for the future BODs. There will be parts to give them the flexibility to choose specifics for their term as they see fit.

- However, there will be some parts where specific is obvious and necessary that the future BODs must abide by.

- $ amounts may be too specific and may be left to the BOD at the time to choose. But the bylaws will dictate a certain time limit for BOD to publish the specifics.

4. Trustee and complaints:

- Board of trustee. But it may be too complex for BAGA at this stage. A provision may be left for the future BODs to implement.

- Director for Organizational affair may be made responsible to address complaints and disciplinary actions in operational guideline.

5. Sections Discussed:

Community input from open forum, emails were reviewed and discussed for the following sections:

Goals

- Encourage active participation from the community.

- Define the term “Bangladeshi origin”.

- Welcome new students and professionals.

- Create a definition section for terms/phrases used in bylaws, if needed.

Membership

- Use the term “qualified to be a member” and not “member”.

- Membership fee should have language like “BOD will announce the fee, if any…”

- There may be an Associate membership to address cases of ex-austinites, non-bangladeshis, west Bengalis who may want to be members. This category will participate in BAGA activities, but will not have voting rights.

Membership Meetings

- AGM will be held towards the end of term by the outgoing BOD on the Election day.

- The new BOD may choose to have additional general meetings during their term.

Committees

- Define the size, roles and responsibilities, dissolution, chair, escalation of subcommittees .

6. Prepare next open forum:

- Open meeting on October 1^st.

- Subcommittee should work on the bylaws and prepare a bulleted presentation for the community open meeting. Actual text should be a ‘living document’ (with proper disclaimer) published on the web for the community perusal and comment.

- Maximum effort should be given by the subcommittee to converge on most issues.

7. Next Step/Action Items:

- Wednesday, Sept 27^th, 2006.

- Each member will review additional sections of the reference bylaws to prepare discussions on the following topics based on community input:

Membership, BOD, Election.