Meeting Agenda

Does anyone know if there is any best practice or protocol that pertains to publishing the HOA meeting agendas prior to the meetings?

In the past, our Board has usually been pretty good about publishing the HOA meeting agendas prior to the meeting as they were posted on the web well in advance of the meeting. Lately, though, it seems that it's being more or less micromanaged by just one member of the board and no one seems to know what the agenda items until the meeting starts. This seems very awkward.

Can you all shed some light on how agendas are developed and do you pre-publish them in the web so that residents will know what's going to be discussed at the meeting?

I'm really looking for more input from Boards who manage their HOA Meeting agendas and I'm looking to find out if the agenda is published usually in advance, and if so, how far in advance. Our website is probably one of the best HOA websites that I've seen and one of the most informative. While we value it as an important communications tool; we are also trying to promote the use of email, but you would be surprised how difficult it is to solicite email addresses. Since we publish a very nice newsletter (almost monthly), we would like to email this as a PDF; but it's like pulling teeth to get email addresses. Re: Disclaimers - Our attorney has us covered on the website disclaimers (no problem there). My real focus here is the HOA meeting agendas.. when they are created...and when they are finalized... and ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY ARE PUBLISHED so that the residents can perhaps they can see the agenda topics in advance. This in turn might help attendance. My contention is that the agenda is too generic and is not compile in a timely manner.
Any other ideas?

MikeS1 - in some states agendas to the extent known are required to be posted in a prominent place 48 hours in advance of the open meeting, and a schedule of meetings needs to be published once a year to unit owners. agendas are developed by boards, management, special petition by a unit owner or unit owners to the board to include an agenda topic of discussion.

MikeS

Though I don't have our CAI documents at my fingertips, I am reasonably sure they provide guidelines on meeting agendas.

Our GM puts out a draft agenda for Board review about a week before our bi-monthly Board meeting. Since most of our substantive business comes from our advisory committees and the GM attends their meetings, she is in the best overall position to know what has to be done. After review and correction the agenda is posted in our Clubhouse and Mail Pavillion 24 hours before the meeting. Immediately before the meeting we have a working session (open) to go through the agenda and ensure that the committee/GM recommendations and suggested motions have been documented and to see if we have missed anything. If we have, and this is usually the case, they will be added at a fixed point in the meeting when the Chair asks for additions and corrections to the agenda. We do provide copies of the agenda to all meeting attendees.

For many of the reasons you have alluded to, our system is far from perfect. Even though we hold meetings every other month, information seems to always come in at the last minute. The Board at one point put its collective foot down and said it would defer any proposals that were put forward at the meeting itself.

Another problem is that the agenda in itself is not very informative. A line item that says "landscaping addition and replacement" might not alert people to the fact that Operations has proposed a major expenditure which might also involve an unplanned use of our replacement reserve. It occurred to me that instead of the agenda it might be more useful to do a web-posting and e-mail that summarizes the major business items that we know will be addressed.

Do I think this will help attendence? Not really. In our community people like to be informed about what is going on, but generally seem more than content to let the Board and Committees figure out the details.