More ideas needed…

You might see if a local church has a community room available for use. Perhaps a board member would be willing to open up his/her home for a meeting. The property management company may have a room available for use without charge. If your community has a pool area, that is an option for warm weather months. You might also check to see if the community center or library offer discounts or free room use for nonprofit organizations. In California, HOAs are nonprofit mutual benefit corporations so the HOA would qualify. Finally, a homeowner may have a membership at a club with a social room or meeting room that could be used. Good luck and congratulations on your board appointment!

In our comminity, Public Libraries allow meeting to be here at their libraries, as a community service.

I give you all credit in taking over after a bad situation.

We prefer to have our meetings on-site, rather than at a distant location. People tend not to attend meetings if they have to drive to the local library, firehouse, etc. The same holds true for someone "opening their home" for the meeting. We tried, that too. People felt it made the meeting feel too "private" and were intruding on someone's personal space. Initially a lot of people are very gung-ho about attending meetings, yet over time the numbers will dwindle....we often have meetings where only the board members and the P.M. are present. So we have our meetings on our property. We have a small room (used to be a laundry room) that we've set up with a six-foot table and several chairs. It works fine. During the summer we have our meetings pool-side. We've even used the wide, open, covered breezeway where our mailboxes are located. Make use of your common areas. It sounds casual yet we keep the meetings professional and the owners here enjoy "seeing" the board meet,right at their home. Good Luck!!!

I could not agree more than what ANNA D said. Getting people to attend meetings is a problem particularly when a quorum is desired. Most Condo areas has an office of some type and a pool area so that is the best place to hold meetings... One of the major ideas of the Board is to save money anyway and having a meeting(the meetings) on site is more desireable to get the attendance AND to save money at the same time.

Hi Tara:

WAY TO GO!!! Good luck!

Do any of your homeowners have a hot tub they could loan for a board meeting?

JPM

Help me. What is a quorum?

It isn't always a majority. Also note that a quorum may be different for a members meeting than for a board meeting. Ours for example is 10% of the membership for Member meetings and a majority of board members at a Board Meeting. I would check your By-Laws.

Melissa:
How/what are the ways to get around the quorum business???

I can see a POSSIBLE problem with Proxies... many people will just use proxies rather than attending meeetings... The main or should be importanace for a Board is to hear input and if proxies are used, it would defeat the purpose but.. such is life

The "intent" of the quorom is to make sure that the majority general membership or board opinions are heard. It's a "stop gap" so that power hungry stealthy boards are doing what they are supposed to do. That is represent the overall opinions/directions of the members.

Honestly, what I did to get around this issue since 95% of the time, there would be no "quorom" present at any given meeting, was to solicit opinions. I basically would go around to the members outside and even in the meetings and present an idea to them. Whatever majority opinion was given, I would then present it at the meeting for a vote. If there was no quorom at the meeting, I would ask the people who were in attendance if they would agree to this idea and support it. I let them know that it was an idea that was discussed amongst other members not in attendance. Believe me, many of my ideas did get shot down despite being the president. I presented many ideas that weren't my own to shop around opinions on.

Many here may not agree to my "methods" but it got the job done. I had no choice. Ironically, it was because of my methods of free sharing of ideas, that no one attended my meetings. They felt they had already discussed the issue with me and had no need to attend meetings. Many times I would be the ONLY one at a meeting because I had discussed any issues amongst the owners prior.

If your HOA wants to run "properly" and by the rules strictly, it may cheat itself out of some decision making. Clogging up the wheels of progression. I am not saying that a quorom shouldn't be abided by. I would suggest that listening to the neighbors/members throughout and between meetings may allow the HOA to move forward. A HOA is in existance to make sure the homeowner's live by the rules they want and generate.

We used only licensed and insured vendors for any work that needed done. Other members could suggest a vendor/contractor but they had provide us proof of insurance and a license. That protected not only us but the contractors as well. You also don't know your dealing with a bad contractor until they do a bad job. Calling the BBB is good only if they have a complaint on record at the time of inquiry.
We have monthly meetings and elections once a year. It's still impossible to get a quorom together. If you run the HOA like I did, the members weren't interested in showing up because I talked to them all the time. Business still had to be conducted. Someone had to do it. If I ever did it wrong, I would get called out for it. For the most part, the members trusted me to get the work done. They knew I would act in their best interest. It was my property too.