An article outlining the current Ballot Proposal procedures and all pertinent deadlines has been written and was presented to the BPC members via Slack before hopeful inclusion in the special ABC edition of the ComLine coming up. In addition, committee members have collected, and are reviewing, balloting submission procedures and protocols for other organizations like ACA.
The goal of this review is see what would make the process more efficient for both the groups submitting the proposal and those who research the proposals before being presented in the annual ACA Group Conscience Survey.
Some items of interest in other fellowships are:
1. Proposals must reference what specifically it affects in the fellowships current state
2. Requiring regional/area votes be taken before presentation to the fellowship for voting
3. Referring all submitted proposals to committees for review before balloting
4. Is the item of an urgent nature
A review of ballot proposals submitted within ACA over the years is also underway. In the early days of ACA most of the ballots were focused on the foundation of our fellowship and now that the Big Red Book and other literature is in place the focus appears to have shifted to other areas.
This information may help us see where we are getting the ACA message out. For anyone reading this report on the ACA website I encourage you to talk to your group about the 2017 ballot proposal process and the Group Conscience Survey (GCS).
The statistics from the 2016 were:
23 Ballot Proposals were sent in the 2016 GCS to 1500 registered ACA groups
87 GCS Surveys were returned or just 5.8 percent of registered groups responded.
Was your group’s voice one of them? Yours in Service,
Tom R. Chairman,
BPC [email protected]
