Other community councils across Scotland supporting these amendments are urged to consider them at their meetings and submit them as official decisions of their community council to nationalsecretary@ascc.org.uk or frank@gunning.co.uk before the end of September 2010.
The proposed amendments seek to end the practice whereby national officers of ASCC are, in effect, elected by a handful of members of the Executive since only one nomination is put forward for each office for approval subsequently by the membership. More open nomination and election procedures should allow more candidates to come forward and guarantee more contests for these posts -thus making ASCC a more vigorous and more democratic organisation.
Similarly the amendments propose that election of the two Board members from each Scottish region should be by ballot of member community councils in the region and not by agreement among the ASCC local authority representatives in the region.
The amendments are as follows;
Election of Executive Council Members
That the words that ‘save the election to the Executive Council as described herein’ shall be omitted from clause 5c of the constitution and that the existing clause 5d be omitted to be replaced by the following new version;
5d. Two Executive council members for each region shall be elected from among the area representatives for the region by a postal ballot of all member community councils in the region every second year. Candidates will be validly nominated if they are proposed by any two community councils in the region. The elections will be organised by the National Secretary.
Executive Council and Area Representation
That the first sentence of Clause 5a should be amended to read;
The Association shall be managed by an Executive Council composed of 20 members consisting of the four elected national officers and 16 area representatives – the latter composed of two from of each region as detailed in Appendix 1 to this constitution.
Election of National Officers
That the existing clause 6a be omitted and replaced by the following;
6a. That there shall be national officer posts of national president, national secretary, national vice-president and national treasurer and these officers shall serve in the respective post for two years and they shall be members of the Executive council.The first sentence of the existing Clause 6b ‘National Officers’ shall be omitted and replaced by the following;
Nominations for national officer posts shall be made by member community councils. Candidates must be nominated by at least two member community councils from different local authority areas.
As a result of pressure from myself and others the existing constitution is now readily available to member community councils on the ASCC website in the documents section. You will also find other valuable information at www.ascc.org.uk
