BOD meeting efficiency

All,

I am fairly new on the board (Jan 2019) and have to say that the most eye opening experience thus far have not been complaining neighbors, but the inefficiency during the BOD meetings. We meet monthly (ByLaws state at least every 4 months, so happy its at least monthly) and alteration requests as well as violations are dealt with via email throughout the month. We recently had our first reserve study done and we definitely need to work on the finances. There has been a lot of other important things going on needing the boards attention, but the meetings are mainly focusing around one or two neighbors, rather than the community issues and someone always rails off topic and talks about something else, the past or their experience about it 25 years ago. Ugh.

I was wondering whether it may make sense to assign two board members or so to do research and prepare documents on certain topics (2 for the reserve study, 2 for storm water management, etc.) and then just assign 30 minutes during the meeting for those two to present what they found and a remediation plan to the board in total and then during the next meeting to vote on it.

Has anyone had any experience doing this? And if so, did it go as planned or not?

Thank you so much

Inefficiency was a big issue for me as well, and so, like you, I decided to do something about it.

We also have our share of directors who, either by design, or they're just being themselves, will go off on some tangent and divert the discussion to something totally different. If you don't get things refocused quickly you lose time and those in the audience lose their patience. It's up to the President to conduct the meeting and keep things moving along. If this isn't happening, I will step in and attempt to get things back on track.

With respect to your projects not going anywhere, that is another responsibility of the President, but it can be caused due to lack of support by committee members, Chairpersons, or again, the President. Each of our meetings involves reports by each of the Chairpersons. Don't be afraid to ask questions and shed the light if things aren't getting done. Bring up with the President as well to let them know directors are watching.

We would send background info ahead of the meeting for everyone to review so all that had to be done at the meeting was to ask if anyone had an issue or changes to make.