HOAleader.com - Tip of the Week - September 22, 2017
Published: Fri, 09/22/17
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Good or Bad: HOA Board Member “Fleshes Out” the Minutes
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In this week’s tip, we answer an HOAleader.com reader’s question on whether it’s OK to do a little creative writing with your meeting minutes by including things that weren’t said or discussed.
Melissa Garcia, a partner at Hindman Sanchez, a law firm in Arvada, Colo., with about 1,600 association clients, is succinct: “That’s bad,” she says of the idea of adding to meeting minutes topics that weren’t said or discussed at an HOA meeting.
“Our philosophy has always been that minutes should be brief and to the point,” she says. “They should capture the decisions made, and they don’t include the ‘he said,’ ‘she said.’ It’s just who made the motions and the motions that were made. Whoever is taking the minutes, whether it’s the secretary or someone else, lists the agenda item, and next to each item states who motioned for and against the item and what was the action.
“If there’s stuff the secretary or board wants to add to the minutes, such as stapling a document they’re referring to during the meeting, that’s OK,” says Garcia. “But they shouldn’t include anything that was or wasn’t said, nor discussed in the meeting. I don’t even think they should include all the things that were discussed at the meeting. It’s just: What was the action? What was the end result.”
That’s also the route that Barbara Holland, CPM, regional manager for FirstService Residential in Las Vegas, follows. “I joke about the meeting minutes,” she says. “Should they read like Gone with the Wind or Reader’s Digest? They should look more like Reader’s Digest. They should include action items only, not the conversations that took place.
“In terms of proper protocol, there’s an action item, and there’s a motion,” explains Holland. “Then, was it seconded? Or there was discussion—you can say that. Then you state, ‘The motion passed 4-1 with one abstention. In Nevada, we also have to say, ‘Everybody voted yes, but Barbara said no.’ If you have a management company, it can probably provide you with template of the meeting minutes you can use as a guide.”
Despite the advice of Garcia and Holland, you might get pushback from board members who argue, “But how will we know what was discussed at meetings?”
Find out the answer, along with the answer to whether you can move to approve minutes at a meeting you didn’t attend, in our new article:
https://www.hoaleader.com/members/3606.cfm
Best regards,
Matt Humphrey
President
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