Gabz wrote: Karl
a question for you lets say I want to create a new branch I have 5 members in the following LGAs
2 Maitland city
1 Newcastle City
1 Cessnock City
1 Lake Mac city
(and yes this is the spread of members of the forum near me) + gosford or wyong city but it's now nearing the edge of my range radius.
what name should my branch be called on precedent ?
Hi Gabz,
It's about coverage.
You're talking about a geographical area where all interested people could go to regular meetings.
In Tasmania, it's not practical for people in Burnie or Devonport to go to meetings in Hobart. So a branch named 'Tasmania' cannot cater for all the people encompassed by the name.
This issue shows a fundamental misunderstanding about how AEVA works: AEVA is a bunch of pretty-well autonomous branches. These branches, fundamentally are their meetings. Meetings are where people get together and discuss things. This is what happens.
Interestingly, the constitution is silent on branch meetings! The closest it seems to come is 36(2)(b) which states that a quorum of a general meeting "of a branch of the association is the presence (physically, by proxy or as allowed under rule 35) of 5 of the members affiliated to that branch and entitled to vote."
Also of interest, 10(1) states: "As soon as practicable after an application for membership is received, the Branch Secretary must be informed and must present the application to the Branch Committee for consideration." Although the constitution does not say that a person must be a member of a branch, this rule does seem to imply it. This makes sense since representation on the National Council is proportional to the size of the branch.
Ultimately, what's the use of being a member of a branch you can't go to the meetings of?