Division geographic borders

[KD5MDK]

[quote=Rock;694381]

Originally Posted by mfp

According to the Oregon division bylaws as of June 2007, the division still includes 50 miles into Washington from Portland.

True, but redundant (which is a GOOD thing). The original USFA (or to be precisely correct, the AFLA) charter is authoritative. The Oregon bylaws just include elements of the original AFLA/USFA charter.

Rock

The USFA charter does not define Division boundaries and cannot be relied upon to determine where they are. This is especially the case in Divisions which were founded after the USFA was created.

Originally Posted by dberke

It's interesting to note that there's no mention of that in the Western Washington Division bylaws:



An amusing discrepancy, if you ask me!

Dan

Maybe have an annual tournament where teams or champions compete to see which division will control that territory this year?

[MyrddinsPrecint]

Originally Posted by mrbiggs

(Much of it IIRC was about Pennsylvania and Western Mass, the first of which has been cleared up and the second seems to have improved somewhat recently).

I think it's mostly that no one cares anymore...........

And people aren't threatening to "destroy" others ... in public venues.......

[oiuyt]

Originally Posted by Rock

A nice resource that could be added to the USFA website is a list of defined Division chartered territories (in original charter wording). This could be supplemented with a graphic map, too.

For what it's worth, for a while now I've planned as a project for myself for next season to try to gather all of the available By-Laws and effectively do this.

My aim is more looking for overlaps and unincorporated areas and then making suggestions for changes that will remove both such situations. Secondary goals of increasing the availability of the information and making the language more clear, when ambiguous.

Basically do nationally what was recently done with Pennsylvania.

For those unaware, until recently PA had four divisions. The boundaries of some of those divisions overlapped (boundaries that extended in a circle with a 50 mile radius from city X are prone to that) and there was lots of territory that didn't belong in any division. This was compounded because there were several clubs which were in the unincorporated territory and were being dealt with as members of National Division (ie as if they were overseas).

This all got cleaned up with division territories being defined based on county lines, and every county was assigned to one (and only one) division. In the process a five division was created.

As a second, unrelated, project that will dovetail with much of the work, I also plan to gather the most current available By-Laws for each division into one place. For those divisions where "the most current available" By-Laws are massively out of date or non-existant, suggestions can be made that the divisions examine what they have and what they want, and start the process of moving from the one to the other.

From bits of information gathered over the years I suspect that the state of the By-Laws in many divisions is very poor. Hopefully this process will help improve that.

Any information generated from these two projects would, presumably, appear on the USFencing website.

-B

[Rock]

[quote=KD5MDK;694422]

The USFA charter does not define Division boundaries and cannot be relied upon to determine where they are.


Sorry. I was referring to the Division charters that are granted by the USFA. These do define boundaries. (page 18 of the USFA Operations Manual).

Division by-laws would hopefully be consistant with the Division's original charter granted by the USFA/AFLA head office.

Rock

[HDG]

Originally Posted by Rock

Division by-laws would hopefully be consistant with the Division's original charter granted by the USFA/AFLA head office.

Does the USFA keep these on file?

[KD5MDK]

You're incredibly optimistic.

[FencingKitten]

Brad, if you would like to spare yourself just a *tiny* bit of trouble, I have it on good authority that the secretary of Gulf Coast knows to a T the boundaries of his division, and I bet if you asked nicely he'd tell you instead of making you look it up

[fencerX]

Originally Posted by oiuyt

From bits of information gathered over the years I suspect that the state of the By-Laws in many divisions is very poor.

Personal favorite: http://www.gulfcoastfencing.org/bylaws.htm

[MyrddinsPrecint]

Originally Posted by fencerX

Personal favorite: http://www.gulfcoastfencing.org/bylaws.htm

That reads like a Monty Python sketch....

[oiuyt]

Originally Posted by fencerX

Personal favorite: http://www.gulfcoastfencing.org/bylaws.htm

Yeah, I'm afraid that's going to be fairly typical, with the exception that Gulf Coast has done this process in the past few years, rather than 20+ years ago. And has better documentation.

-B

[HDG]

Not a word about borders / boundaries in the Gold Coast by-laws.

[Rock]

Originally Posted by mfp

[It's interesting that the Oregon division bylaws run for 37 (!) pages and states officers are elected for two year terms among other things]

The Oregon bylaws are so long because in Oregon the Division is considered a non-profit corporation, and the bylaws have to conform to the form of nonprofit corporations.

This wasn't always the case, but we do have to conform to state laws and interpretations now.

I doubt that many other states have the same interpretation of a division's function.

btw, the "territory" of the division in our bylaws (including the "50 mile radius from Portland into southwest Washington) is not determined by the bylaws. It just repeats what was in the original Division charter granted by the USFA/AFLA head office when the Division was formed.

Rock

[Lemonaide]

I don't know, but one area that has always mystified me: LA-Ark-MS and then LA. Why are there two areas for LA?

[KD5MDK]

Because each Division covers part of the state of Louisiana.