[council] Outreach Task Force Charter motion, (item 3 of our agenda on Thursday)

[Stéphane Van Gelder]

Councillors,

This is to inform you of discussion that has been happening on the above topic.

John Berard contacted the Council Leadership a few days ago asking whether the OTF motion could still be considered at our next Council meeting, in light of the fact that both maker and seconder of the motion (Olga and Debbie) are no longer on the Council.

In order to frame our answer, we first put to the question to ICANN general counsel. The response was that there is no special provision for this in the bylaws. So simply put, we're on our own here.

The Leadership Team and Support Staff have discussed this just now during our usual planning conference call that happens ahead of every Council meeting and we have looked at some possible options.

As a reminder, we find ourselves in this situation because the motion has already been deferred once.

I am of the opinion that despite the fact that its sponsors are no longer on the Council, the motion itself is valid and therefore should be considered.

However, we could do several things:

- Request two new sponsors for the motion at the start of this agenda item.
- Request whether there would be any opposition to, due to exceptional circumstances, a second deferral of the motion.
- Vote on the motion at this meeting, and accept the outcome as the decision of the Council, which is what we do for every motion anyway.

If we go ahead and vote on the motion and it does not have two new sponsors, we may have to deal with possible proposed amendments. In this case, as there would be no-one to accept them as friendly, I suggest that we would have to treat them as unfriendly by default and vote on them first.

I put these options to you now so that you will have time to think about them before Thursday's meeting and maybe refer to your groups.

No action or decision is expected before then. I will present these options to the Council again as we come to this item on Thursday.

 Thanks,

Stéphane