Committee

I looked up Committees in Search and only found very old posts so I am reposting a question regarding committees...

Parking issues came up at our Annual Meeting a few weeks ago. We have had ongoing parking issues in our development for many years. Board was not diligent in enforcing all due to a board member not abiding by the rules (mostly only the more serious). We now have a new management company and a new board member who is willing to be more aggressive.

Our board attorney suggested at the meeting that we form a Parking Committee and homeowners can sign up for it. Two residents (one who lives here and one who rents) signed up. The homeowner who rents has one of the most serious parking issues - his tenant is operating a car service from his unit. We have been working with our attorney and zoning on the issue Although the township may allow it our bylaws do not allow it. Zoning will allow him to apply for a "light home occupation" and allows his Class 5 sprinter to park outside our gates on township property. We sent in a "Right to Know" and so far no application was received or approved. Zoning manager said he is contacting the homeowner asking for an application. We will be sending another "Right to Know" at the end of January to see if an application was applied for and approved. Once that happens we are having our attorney send a letter to the landlord and we may need to go to our local court of common appeals.

ANYWAY, my question is...when the committee meets should it be with just the manager and homeowners or should Board Members also participate in the meeting. Our manager said it needs to be "general" and not go into anything with the resident landlord regarding his tenant.

Any advice on how to manage this meeting would be appreciated. This is the first time we had board and homeowners meeting on a committee.

I say it is well within the rights of the BOD that when they establish a committee, that committee members must be owners.

yes, I have served on the board since 2008. I am currently the President.

The very definition of: oxymoron.

? What part of Home Owners Association do we not understand ?

The only committee that our Board allows to have non-owners on is our Social Committee. All residents here may attend social events. I do not think renters should have a voice is forming policy or, for instance, approving architectural changes.

We have a document called Guidelines for All Committees, which makes the board president and our Property Mgr. (PM) ex officio members of all committees. but this Guideline also does not give them voting rights on the committees--their roles are strictly advisory. This doc also says every committee must have a board liaison if there are no directors on it. But we haven't enforced that because the PM does attend all committee meetings.

No board member on any of our committees is, to quote Melissa, some sort of "higher power." Committees may recommend anything to to the board that they vote on, but the Board, of course, has the final say via its members votes at an open meeting.

PA is not required to have open meetings. Are your board meetings open to members, Maureen?

Our bylaws say the president is ex-officio a member of every committee and that the committee chairs must be members of the HOA. Other than that, we have a hard time getting people to serve on our committees and we welcome tenants who volunteer for our committees. In general, our committees do not have the authority to expend any funds and all reports and recommendations from the committees have to be approved by the board. When the owners are extremely apathetic we welcome those willing to contribute time and energy to the association.

Committees are advisory - so pull in "experts" who may have expertise in the area that the committee oversees, homeowner or not, who can volunteer their services.

The Board should, of course, have given the Committee a mission statement or guideline to follow and a member of the Board can act as liaison to the Board from the Committee.

Keep minutes and run your meetings using Roberts Rules. Make monthly reports to the Board.

Maureen

From the get go be sure committees realize they are for BOD advisement only. They do not run the association The BOD does.

They are appointed and they can be unappointed just as fast.

Your association sounds a bit too formal for me.

Typically, when we ask for help it's because the Board simply doesn't have the time to investigate an issue. This also means we don't really have time to become invested in committee meetings or who the committee chair would be. If we had that time, we would have dealt with the problem ourselves.

When we appoint committees, we also appreciate the perspective from the membership (vs. the perspective of the issue from the Board). Therefore, as I pointed out earlier, although the Board technically appoints the members, we have never told anyone they can't serve on the committee (because it's simply too hard to get volunteers and, as pointed out, the Board doesn't have the time to do the work of the committee). A Board rep will attend the first meeting to explain the expectations and any legal requirements (minutes, meeting notice, reports to the Board, etc.) and then we leave them alone. Since it's the committee that has to work together, we let them choose their own chair. Since it's the committee that has to work together, we let them sort out meeting dates and appointment of committee officers (secretary, vice-chair). Typically, they don't make formal appointments, they simply ask who will take minutes.

We do ask for reports if we don't get them and we do ask questions of the reports.

However, we let the committee be the committee.

Our Mgmt. Co. (MC) gave our board the Guidelines for All Committees long ago. It was 3 pages long. Boards over time have pared it to one page, but we always have kept that the board appoint committee chairs, which is found in Robert's Rules of Order. We've never turned down any committees' rec for a chair and we never have rejected or "fired" a committee member.

We, too, leave them alone and have a PM right now who takes their meeting minutes for which the committees are grateful.

Another important function of committees, at least in our HOA, is that they are pipelines to future Board service.