meeting minutes approval question

Is it required for minutes to be signed by the secretary? Also, can meeting minutes of a regular board meeting be approved in a subsequent special board meeting, or do they need to be approved in a regular meeting only. I understand that special meetings should be held only to discuss items that cannot wait until the next regular board meeting, but we have a lot of pending minutes that required corrections and now the corrected minutes need to be approved.

Thanks for the response. So can a general board meeting minutes be approved at a special board meeting minutes, considering that both the general board meeting and special board meeting are board meetings and we are requesting to approve board minutes.

thank you Tim.

Basically, approving the minutes are done by the same people who were at the meeting when it was taken. This is why general membership meeting minutes are approved by the membership at the next general membership meeting, Committee meeting minutes are approved at the next committee meeting and Board meeting minutes are approved at the next Board meeting. This actually comes from Roberts Rules of Order.

Roberts Rules of Order is considered the authority of the procedural process used for committees, boards and governments. To use a quote from that site:

"The application of parliamentary law is the best method yet devised to enable assemblies of any size, with due regard for every member’s opinion, to arrive at the general will on the maximum number of questions of varying complexity in a minimum amount of time and under all kinds of internal climate ranging from total harmony to hardened or impassioned division of opinion."
Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised [RONR (11th ed.), Introduction, p. lii]

Information on minutes are available at this link: http://www.rulesonline.com/rror-10.htm#60

NOTE: Most Associations use a modified version of Roberts Rules of Order when conducting meetings. However, Roberts Rules are not required to be used unless the governing documents specifies that they are. Even if the governing documents specify this, unless there are practicing parliamentarians on the Board, the rules are not completely followed because the average person doesn't have complete understanding of Roberts Rules of Order and won't take the time to learn them.

Hope this helps,

Tim

Many times, minutes from an annual meeting are approved at the next board meeting, so any action items can proceed. However, that MUST be voted on, giving permission for that body to approve the minutes of another body.

PS - a "special meeting" usually has a specific purpose for meeting and should be for one specific topic only. I don't think approving mintues from a previous meeting warrants a "special" meeting.

Interesting. I just read a recent blog by Jim S., the attorney and Parlamentarian from NC mentioned above, and I quote:

"The recommended practice for annual meetings of members is that the executive board or a committee (sometimes called a “Minutes Approval Committee”) should be authorized to approve the minutes shortly after the meeting. While the entire organization can always revisit the minutes the following year, this process allows the organization to have official minutes without waiting 12 months."

I am curious, is this common practice in your state ??

In quite a few professionally managed associations the manager takes and draft the BOD meeting Minutes, and later submits to Secretary or to the entire board via email.

What about your Annual membership meeting ? how do you handle it ?

Disagree. Anyone may make notes about what happened in a meeting. At some point, one or more people will need to reduce those notes to a written statement in the form of proposed minutes. The proposed minutes are then submitted to the board for approval as written. The board can accept them or request changes. The proposed minutes do not become minutes until the board approves them. At that point, the secretary should sign them to indicate that these are the minutes that the board approved.

Thanks. Good to know although the Davis-Sterling Act and/or California Civil Code do not apply to other states.

As as far the comment that it is not a good practice to re-activate older threads, I disagree. It depends on the subject. This topic is procedural in nature and timeless.

Susan, Tim cited Davis-stirling.com, not the CA statutes with that name--the Davis-Stirling Act. The website belongs to an HOA law firm and many of their opinions are germane to the nation as a whole. Their section on minutes, for instance, draws from Robert's Rules of Order, not from CA statutes.

Our secretary signs all minutes after the board approves them at a meeting. Our minutes also are signed by the president and "attested to" by our PM.

I'm curious, Susan. Is there a particular reason why you're so interested in minutes from annual meetings?