Two kinds of meetings
A board meeting is the directors doing the association's business; owners may attend and, in most states, must be allowed to, but they do not vote. The annual meeting is the members' meeting: owners elect directors, hear the budget, and vote on anything the documents reserve to them. Special meetings of either kind are called for one subject.
The notice period is different for each and comes from the bylaws within the state's floor. Common ranges are 48 hours to 7 days for a board meeting and 10 to 60 days for the annual meeting. Missing the window is the most common reason a vote is challenged later.
Before the meeting
Send the notice by the channels the documents allow, and keep proof of sending. For the annual meeting, enclose the proxy form or ballot, the candidate list, and the proposed budget where the state requires it. Post the agenda; several states bar the board from deciding anything not on it.
Prepare a packet: the last minutes, the financials, the manager's report, and one page per decision with the recommendation and the cost. Directors who read the packet decide in minutes; directors who see it for the first time at the table do not.
A board meeting agenda that works
Put decisions before reports. Reports are read in advance; the meeting is for choices.
Board meeting agenda
- Call to order, roll call, quorum
- Approval of the previous minutes
- Owner forum (a set time per speaker, no board replies required)
- Decisions: each item with a motion, discussion, vote
- Financial report: balance, delinquencies, reserve balance, variances
- Manager's report: work orders, violations, projects
- Executive session, if any, with the reason stated on the record
- Next meeting date, adjournment
The annual meeting agenda
The annual meeting is shorter than boards expect. Most of it is the election; the rest is information.
Annual meeting agenda
- Call to order, proof of notice, quorum (with proxies and electronic ballots counted)
- Approval of last year's annual meeting minutes
- President's report: the year in five minutes
- Treasurer's report and the coming year's budget
- Election: candidates introduced, ballots collected, tabulators named
- Member business on the notice
- Announcement of results
- Adjournment
Executive session
Boards may meet in closed session only for the subjects the state names, typically pending litigation, contracts under negotiation, personnel, and an owner's delinquency or violation hearing when the owner asks for privacy. The open minutes should note that an executive session was held and its general subject; the decisions made there are recorded in the open meeting.
Minutes
Minutes record what was decided, not what was said: the motion, who made it, the vote count, and the result. Attach the financial report and the agenda. Approve them at the next meeting and post them where owners can read them; several states require the draft within a set number of days.
Write them during the meeting from the agenda. The secretary fills in the motion and the vote as each item closes, and the draft is done at adjournment.