Question about "ratifying prior actions of the board"

At our last annual meeting the board President asked us if we would pass a motion that would "ratify all the prior actions of the board". I asked, "what are the actions" since we don't know. They have many "executive meetings" where decisions are made that we are not aware of. Others in the audience agreed and said we have no idea what we're ratifying. The board did the first and second motion but then the audience vote failed with the numbers. The property manager said that it didn't matter. They could put it down as a failed vote but that this was a motion for show anyway, or something to that effect. Does anyone else have any experience with this?

It's possible that there might be something within your governing documents or State law that would have required an affirmative vote by the membership on something the Board did on their own. When this was discovered, the Board chose to get a blanket affirmative vote by asking for ratification of the Boards actions.

If you wish to pursue finding out what it might be, I would suggest you look at the minutes of Board Meetings over the past year and compare those actions to your governing documents and State Law. However, if everyone is happy with the way things were running, you might just want to let things be.

Tim