New Revised Parish By-Laws
The Parish Council has approved a New Revised Version of our Parish By-Laws at a special meeting on September 9, 2008. This document will be presented at the next Parish Assembly, which will take place on October 19 immediately following the Divine Liturgy.
You can see and download the New Proposed By-Laws here.
Please bring the text with your comments for discussion to the Parish Assembly on October 19. You can forward any commends to Fr. Panayiotis at fr.panayiotis@comcast.net or Alex Miltiades (Parish Council President) at holytrans@comcast.net.
The revision of our By-Laws has been long overdue. Metropolitan Alexios requested the revision of the By-Laws of all Parishes in the Metropolis of Atlanta more than three years ago. The Metropolis provided Model Parish By-Laws to help bring about a certain degree of uniformity in the local By-Laws.
The proposed text of our By-Laws is a complete revision and not a line-by-line (or even section-by-section) update of the previous By-Laws of the Parish. The following three texts were utilized by the By-Laws Committee in order to reach the final text. The goal has been to provide a better text, but also bring our Local By-Laws in line with the Metropolis of Atlanta Model By-Laws as well as with the Archdiocese Uniform Parish Regulations of 2005.
“THE PROPOSED TEXT IS NOT A DEPARTURE FROM THE PREVIOUS VERSION OF THE BY-LAWS. RATHER, IT IS A ‘RE-DESIGN’ OF THE WAY IN WHICH THE INTENTION AND SUBSTANCE OF THE FORMER TEXT WAS EXPRESSED. THE IMPETUS FOR THIS INITIATIVE WAS DRIVEN EXCLUSIVELY BY A PURSUIT TO SIMPLIFY THE LANGUAGE AND MEANING OF THE TEXT, MAKING IT MORE ACCESSIBLE. THE REVISION WAS ALSO NECESSARY TO BRING THE TEXT IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE UNIFORM PARISH REGULATIONS, BY WHICH ALL COMMUNITIES WITHIN OUR ARCHDIOCESE ARE BOUND.”
Please download the following three texts used for the revision and make your own comparison.
Original 1998 Holy Transfiguration By-Laws
Metropolis of Atlanta Prototype Parish By-Laws 2005
Archdiocese Uniform Parish Regulations 2005
NOTE: There are no substantive changes to the actual “laws” of the Parish in the proposed text except for whatever was necessary to bring the text in line with the Uniform Parish Regulations. The primary changes to the arrangement of the articles is aimed at bringing our By-Laws in line with the Atlanta Metropolis Model By-Laws. There is only one major change in the officers of the Parish Council: the creation of a “Second Assistant Treasurer” for the purpose of providing one more person to be trained to assist with the job of the Treasurer and prepare successors for this demanding position. Please read the original texts and try to understand the work that went into this revision and why a line-by-line explanation of the changes will only create a far more difficult text to handle either privately or at the Parish Assembly.
This is one of those times when the text has to be received as a whole. That requires that those who really care to study the development of the text carefully have to do it on their own. It took the By-Laws Committee nine months to complete this new text. The work was both careful and painstaking. The parishioners are invited to do their homework at home before they come to the Parish Assembly.
Download a chart of the changes: In order to further facilitate your ability to understand the changes, the committee has put together a chart of comparison between the old and new by-laws. You can download the chart here: Chart of By-Law changes
