Necessary Policies

Our HOA has been pretty much run by the MC(who has now been terminated).. We do not have collection policies or ever had board orientation for new board members.. I would like to develop a board orientation w/ an attorney present to review our bylaws, declaration, coporate law etc.. Besides a collection policy, are there other policies we should adopt? And once the board votes on these policies, would they be considered administrative resolutions?

Over time our board has adopted a substantial number of policies. In most cases these are intended to provide the specifics for provisions in our higher level government documents that are too general to be consistently implemented. For example, our governing documents and state law provide for member access to association records. The board adopted a "records examination policy" that lays out when and how records will be made available. We have a records retention policy that specifies which records will be retained and for how long.

The most recent policy adopted by the board addresses financial accruals. The finance committee drafted the policy to clarify the threshold for accruals and to define the responsibilities for various types of accruals. Our governing documents specify that our books are to be kept on an accrual basis but our management company wanted to do modified accrual accounting which was not acceptable to the finance committee. The policy specifies the accrual requirements that are to be included in the management contract.

I believe boards should adopt a policy for any issues where ambiguities exist in higher level documents.