Recent Changes to NLRS Bylaws

At the annual Business Meeting at Aurora 2002, we discussed and voted to make changes to the NLRS Bylaws. These changes are mainly motivated by changes that ARRL plans to make concerning the definition of clubs and members' eligibility for contesting purposes, plus some basic housekeeping issues.

If you have Microsoft Word 97 or later, you may wish to download this document, which shows the relevant sections of the former bylaws, plus annotated changes.

If you don't have MS Word, or are not familiar with the examination of Word documents that have "edit tracking" enabled, you may want to skip that file and just keep reading here.

If you want to examine the current Constitution and Bylaws, as recently amended, you can click either of the following links:

 

Change One
Membership Requirements
Old Language:

Current members - Members are considered to be current for the purposes of voting and holding office if they have met the following requirements:

  1. New Members must have attended at least one (1) club meeting during the year.
  2. Current (continuing) members must have attended at least two (2) club meetings during the year.
  3. Dues have been paid as provided in the Constitution and By-laws.

New Language:

Current members - Members are considered to be current for the purposes of Club activities, voting, and holding office if they have met the following requirements:

Justification:

The ARRL is changing its “two meeting per year” policy for Club competition participation, effective 1 Nov 2002, allowing individual clubs to determine their own membership requirements. Following the ARRL action allows greater participation by those members who live in the outer areas of the NLRS Service Area. (Note that the proposal prior to Aurora 2002 was to also have at least a one-meeting attendance requirement, but this was dropped during the discussion at the meeting due to overwhelming member preference.)

 

Change Two
Service Area
Old Language:

(none)

New Language:

Service Area - The Service Area of the Northern Lights Radio Society shall be a 175-mi radius circle, centered at 45 degrees North by 94 degrees West, or approximately 3 statute miles NE of the town of Winstead, MN.

Justification

Effective 1 November 2002, the ARRL is allowing medium and unlimited clubs to define their service areas as either: a 175 mile radius circle or an ARRL Section, but not both. Use of the 175 mi radius circle allows us to include a large number of current members who do NOT live in the ARRL Minnesota Section. This includes members in western Wisconsin, northern Iowa, and eastern North and South Dakota. Additionally, five (5) non-Minnesota “grid-corner” locations popular with Rovers are included in the 175 mi. radius service area. This allows Rovers using these corners during Club Competition Contests to add their scores from those locations to the Club Aggregate score.

You can view a map of the service area here. If you want a more detailed map (and can tolerate a slower download time), click here instead.

 

Change Three
Dues
Old Language:

Dues shall be $5.00 per year.

New Language:

Dues shall be $5.00 per calendar year. Dues are payable upon joining for the current year, and upon 1 January there after.

Justification:

To remove the considerable confusion as to when dues are to be paid, 1 January or at Aurora (the Annual Business Meeting). Since the Annual Business Meeting is not fixed as to date, having dues payable on 1 January provides consistency.