Problem with Minutes

Board did not want to review and approve minutes, has not done so for 6 months of monthly meetings. A new board is in place, it is very difficult if not impossible to reconstruct what happened. What can be done now about not having final minutes for so long?

You could try to talk to the former board members - between all of them you may be able to piece together what's happened. If you have a property manager, he or she might also be able to assist, as there should be a record of contracts/work orders and/or legal matters (such as writing off an account) that should have been approved by the board. Using the dates, you might be able to estimate when something happened at a specific meeting. If there's any email traffic, you may want to look at that too.

If the former regime balk (because they were voted out?), remind them that without proper records, the lack of them can come back to bite them in the ass (PERSONALLY) if someone were to sue over something and there's nothing written to document what was done and when. The prospect of being sued within an inch of one's pocketbook can be a good motivator to straighten up and fly right.

If none of this works, you'll just have to start from square one and do things correctly. Make sure your board understands that the minutes are considered official Association documents and record the board's actions. For example, if the board decided to approve a budget, the minutes would show when that was done and you would then have an idea as to whether this was done according to your documents.

You should designate a secretary to keep minutes and there's information all over this site and elsewhere on the Web that provide great tips on how to put them together. It wouldn't hurt to get some tips from your association attorney to ensure inappropriate information doesn't get in. Remember, homeowners have the right to request and review minutes upon request and you don't want inflammatory statements, name calling and that stuff written. Good luck!

Are you on the board, Betty? Or, were you? Is the new board entirely new directors? How many directors should you have?

Did you see anyone writing minutes assuming you attended meetings? Who wrote them?

From your OP it sounds like minutes were written, but not reviewed and approved. Is that correct? If so, in Calif., any draft minutes that are more than 30 ays old an be reviewed by any owner upon written request.

And any draft minutes can be approved by a subsequent board at a meeting as Glen suggests.

To see more about minutes in CA, go to davis-stirling.com

So the minutes don't exist at all?

With no minutes of the meetings, did anything officially happen?

If there are existing draft minutes, I agree with Glen: Make a motion to approve/accept as written and move forward.

If there are no draft minutes, you may simply have to say that there are no minutes and hope that there is nothing that occurred during that time frame that may be challenged in the future (as there is zero record as to what was or wasn't approved). Take it as a lesson learned and move forward.