Board meeting minutes

The board of directors meeting minutes are not complete, in that they do not print topics that were discussed which may show boardmembers, actions that were questionable, and in some instances outright wrong/illegal. Can I put out a newsletter (and/or email) to other homeowners to make them aware of this. The HOA is in Illinois and is a not for profit corp. Thanks.

Short answer is YES.

You have freedom of speech and may certainly spend your own money for publishing a newsletter. Publishing a newsletter is how I chose to fight my issue with my Board when they failed to comply with the governing documents.

Note: You should first attempt to have this corrected at the board level before making it an issue for the membership. Perhaps it's just a learning curve for the individual taking the minutes. Perhaps you can volunteer to take the minutes which can eliminate the issue and allow everyone else to actively participate in the meeting.

Points to remember if you are going to publish a newsletter:

1) you are responsible for what you print. Therefore, do not exaggerate, embellish or lie. Doing any of these could open yourself up to legal action.

2) It's best to provide references where the members can verify the issues for themselves (links to copies of e-mail, governing documents, etc.)

3) Keep personal opinions and emotions out of the newsletter. Let the facts speak for themselves.

4) Offer suggestions on how to correct the issue.

Hello CarolR11,
I am not a board member. There are 8 directors, the secretary takes the minutes, with input from other boardmembers. There is no property manager.

I did not claim --decisions-- were wrong or questionable. I claimed-- actions-- were wrong or questionable.

Minutes do contain details of discussions but only homeowners who attend the meeting are quoted. Board member comments are not permitted to be published, as stated by the VP at a recent meeting. Some homeowners comments were published, in quotes, and were attributed to the wrong person(s). At the next monthly meeting, the board President acknowledged the quotes were wrongly attributed, however the board decided to stand by their originally recorded meeting minutes. It was also discovered that the Treasurer hired his son to do landscape work last summer and again this summer, without putting the job out for bids, as was done in past practice. The board could have easily posted the job opening on our homeowners website, but chose not to offer this job to anyone other than the teasurers son.
Hence my use of the words: wrong or questionable.
Basically a small group of homeowners feel the need to alert/notify others about the boards actions. They "elected" themselves since the ballots were flawed(and they had prior knowledge of the flaw), and were not considered valid except for the few that had pen and ink changes to make them valid (guess who's ballots were valid).
Most homeowners dont realize whats going on since there has not been a newsletter for over 5 years. Time for the word to get out, just want to be sure its done correctly.
RB4