I agree with KaH and Xavier. It’s best to stick with the basics when writing minutes: date and time of the meeting, who was there, who was absent, left early or came late, what agenda items were discussed, board votes on what to do next, and action items for the next meeting date – and every board member should be expected to follow up with something to spread the workload. That’s easier than spending a lot of time wondering who said what, what was meant or implied, why board member one was petty towards homeowner 3, who won the ensuing fistfight or got arrested and so on. There are plenty of templates around that will guide the secretary or whoever’s taking minutes on how to do it in a way to reduce the risk of exposure for getting sued.
Any homeowner should be able to go to any board member and ask about an association issue and get an explanation as to why he or she voted a certain way, abstained – or didn’t attend that meeting at all. If that board member can’t or refuses to, and does this often, maybe you should consider if that person should remain on the board.
And homeowners need to remember THEY vote these people in or out, so if they really want to know what’s going on, turn off the TV and go to a meeting once in awhile and listen for themselves. Bad board members don’t fall out of the sky (rising up from the 9th circle of hell may be another matter!) They do what they do when homeowners fail to hold them accountable.
If you have board members who are engaged, attend meetings and stay until the end and vote in the best interests of the community, whether the meeting’s recorded or not, you’re off to a good start. You might not always agree with the vote, but that’s ok – no one agrees 100% and you don’t have to. The problem is when one or several board members vote one way or another just because everyone else did or are incapable of speaking intelligently about the issue because they didn’t take the time to ask questions, read the proposals (because reading’s hard) and so on.
As for recording meetings, I won’t get into stuff like whether your state is a one or two party recording state, if you’d have to get everyone’s permission to record them before the camera or recorder is clicked on, if AI will pick up what you said accurately (hint – it doesn’t always happen that way). Nor will I ponder what might happen if someone slices and dices said recording and sends it all over the internet (ask your association attorney about that). Especially in this age of AI and deep fakes that can make it look like someone said or did something crazy.
If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it. Marcus Aurelius