That pesty board president -

I am a fairly new hoa board president and wanting to do a good job. I have identified a few very important things that I myself would like to see accomplished and I am driving hard at them. We like to limit the monthly meetings to about 1.5 to 2 hours per month, but whith committee reports and the like, we are not able to get into anything really new or pressing in my opinion. Because of schedules, it is very difficult to meet more often.

I have started sending out some paper work mid month for the board members ot read over and be familier with, so when we get into the meeting, we can move through discussion and decisions faster. The paper work are articles and broshures to look over and think about and it might take 1-2 hours to look over.

Is this typical?
Is there a good way to do this?
Am I pushing to hard?

Thanks

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WilliamS1,

My community consists of an hoa (sf and twnhse)and coa (twnhse), all in one property. The Boards meet in joint workshop session twice a month, and an open meeting once a month on the same night for both associations. Meetings can go on for 2-3 hours depending on the time of year, and what's up in the community.

Have you found that you are getting things accomplished quicker in meetings, now that you've started providing information mid-month? If not, then the paperwork is not helping but it certainly is not hurting. It's very typical and you are not pushing too hard. It could be you are not demanding enough, or that the other board members don't understand how the paperwork factors into the association related matters.

As for email, be careful you set up ground rules and it doesn't involve debates. Email is a good method to provide quick information, but all communication be it paperwork or email must be received by everyone in order to be fair to their decision making process. You do not want board business to become discussion blogs, that's like multiple conversations going on at once. Discussion blogs are awesome for the communication we provide to eachother in this format on hoatalk. I do not think discussion blogs are good to conduct official and binding board business.

You must set up ground rules if you get into email. Let's say email or any communication other than an open meeting discussion is used for a vote. Lets say timing is of the essence. A decent response time for the vote should be provided. Let's say this happens mid month before or right after an open meeting. Your by-laws or state statues may have a provision that the owners be notifified of the decision no later than a certain time period. Often it's 7 days.

Email must not be for debates, I have learned this well. Board members can form opinions and decide matters in the process of excluding other board members who may have delayed access to email and come late to the debate.

Gerald,

I note that you mention in one case email is used for a vote. Then you say email must not be used for debates.

This is of interest to me because our bylaws state that our board can take any action outside of a meeting as long as all board members agree.

That means we can vote for an action via email, and is good for actions that can't wait for the regular meeting.

Now, if the board votes on an action, there is normally some debate preceding the vote, so I'm a bid confused by your statement that email must not be for debates, but is used for a vote. It would help me a great deal to completely understand the process you use.

I'm new on this board, and this year the board elected to have meetings quarterly, which in my opinion is far to spread out because a lot of things need to be done, and don't get done.

In addition the president insists that we not communicate via email unless it is an emergency. All regular business must wait until the meeting. So while the email capability is there, the president says he doesn't have time to communicate; and there is another board member who never responds to any email. The president will not be president forever, so things will change one day, and I hope to be prepared.

Bill

Bill,

Voting and debating, or just informative discussing, are not one in the same. Ideally all occur in front of the community, but sometimes this can't be achieved.

The one and only time we used email for an official vote was, believe it or not, for the transition firm we decided to contract.

However, the vote question was "Which firm do you vote to award the contract for the Transition Study and Capital Reserve Analysis?". Timing was of the essence to award the contract.

The debating, interviews, dicussions, etc. had already occurred prior to the email vote. Communication of our decision was made at the next open meeting and was very openly broadcast to the community.

Does the one board member that does not respond to the email at least contact a person to communicate his or her opinion? See, all the opinions, or votes of all board members should be heard in an environment where everyone can hear their inflection. That is where email is flawed and I don't blame the board member or president from abstaining in the technology for debates, but fyi's or voting if the topic has been debated can help the association business.

Quarterly meetings, while permissible in many associations, are in my opinion inadequate.

Hope this helps you understand the distinction between debates, and voting.

GeraldT1

Gerald,

Thanks for the clarification. It helped.

Bill