HOAleader.com - Tip of the Week - Dcember 7, 2012
Published: Fri, 12/07/12
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Are You on the Verge of Making These Annual Meeting Mistakes?
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In this week's tip, we give you a jump on
annual meeting planning by revealing two
mistakes boards make all too often.
1. Failing to set up a pre-meeting timeline.
"The number one thing I think boards make
mistakes with is planning," says Kristen L.
Rosenbeck, a partner at the Mulcahy Law Firm
PC in Phoenix, who advises many community
associations. "They need to be setting up their
timeline. Clients will say, 'The meeting is on
this date, and we were supposed to have set
up a nominating committee.' But they just
threw themselves into the meeting without
planning and looking at their governing
documents.
"I recommend to my clients that they plan
backwards," says Rosenbeck. "Go through your
bylaws and write down all the things that
have to be done before the meeting. If you're
supposed to create a nominating committee
90 days out and provide notice 60 days out,
set those dates in your calendar so you're
hitting all those requirements. If you're
not doing that planning, you're not going
to hit the correct dates. That's a problem
especially if the bylaws say things have
to happen on specific dates. If the governing
documents don't give flexibility and say
your meeting has to be the second Tuesday
of December, you're stuck with that meeting
date."
2. Failing to check your state's meeting
requirements. "Many states have regulatory
requirements as far as notice for the meeting,"
says Duane McPherson, the Carrollton,
Texas-based division president at RealManage,
an association management firm that oversees
properties in Arizona, California, Colorado,
Florida, Louisiana, Nevada, and Texas. "They
might include posting requirements as well.
In some states, you need to post the agenda
four days ahead of time. In others, it's less
in advance than that, but you still have to
have the agenda posted; emailing it to owners
isn't sufficient. That's difficult for some
associations that don't have a place to post
things.
"In addition, a lot of states have adopted
the open-meeting philosophy that county and
city governments have," adds McPherson. "So
boards may be required to have a home owner
forum, and many boards forget about that. Or
they'll have it at the wrong time. Some states
specify that it must be at the beginning or
the end of the meeting."
That's just a taste of the traps some boards
fall into. Read about four more snafus to
sidestep in our new article,
Avoid These Six Common Annual Meeting Mistakes
http://www.hoaleader.com/members/790.cfm
Best regards,
Matt Humphrey
President
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