How can I get minutes approved???

I am the Chairman of an HOA and have been trying to get minutes approved for a meeting in July last year, one in October last year and 3 more for this year. We can never get them approved. We have adopted Roberts Rules of Order and I have stressed how we need to have in our minutes things that were done, not said. I have also stressed they are legal documents. It doesn't seem to matter, each meeting we spend the majority of time disagreeing about what should be included and what shouldn't be. We have voted on some, but it gets to be impossible to vote on every little thing and so it is postponed until the next meeting. I want to just make one bit motion for all of them to be approved with all corrections included. However, they disagree with most of the corrections because they want inaccurate, defaming, embarrassing statements included. I do Not! What can I do? Please help me asap. I literally have spent hours and hours correcting minutes, as our Secretary is terrible. We have tried to put in a new secretary, but that didn't succeed either.

Can we just not approve the minutes outstanding and discard them? Can we include everyones version of the minutes and approve that? What options do I have? Thanks in advance.

LouH1, in my experience the only viable option is to get a majority elected to the Board who feel as you do. Else I think you are looking for magic words to get people to change their minds on an issue that would be hard to fight in court, on account of Robert's Rules not having a lot of power on the subject of what should go into Minutes. There are no such magic words. There is psychology, but even the best psychologists battle to manipulate others. Human nature being what it is.

I guess including everyone's version of the Minutes is another option. Make each director who does not want to agree with the secretary's version type up their own minutes. Take no arguing on the point. Record the vote as something like, "Majority approval was not achievable. Minutes from each director who disagreed are attached."

AugustinD, I am thrilled to have YOU answer a topic question for me. You are such a gift to all of us who want answers that they can trust, are professional and are thoughtfully worded.
So, I caught you at home!! Hurray!! Thanks again, it is perfect!

Ha, I am chuckling here. I think the above is spot on. I believe we are talking threats of defamation lawsuits. I agree with providing these directors with SheliaH's fine elaboration.

LouH1, thank you for the kind words. I am on the road, vaccinated and happily glamping, but I get on the net now and then. Hope you and yours are doing okay in this pandemic.

Totally agree with this.

Allowing everyone to add their own version of minutes could create additional chaos and delay. If people can't agree with the most simple of things (which is what minutes should really only be): decisions that were made, vote counts, and topics that were discussed (without elaborating on the discussion), then there are significantly greater underlying HOA/Board issues than what should be a simple task of creating/approving minutes.

If people absolutely MUST elaborate on things or provide some sort of narrative of events (how they arrived at their decision, why they voted the way they did, what they didn't like about someone else's POV, etc.), then I suggest they do that through email . . . which can be done at any time and would not hold up the process of writing, review, approving the actual minutes. If in the future, an individual needs to prove their version of things, they they can provide/recall that email they sent as "evidence". Further, others can provide/recall that email as "evidence" against the sender . . . so would serve a similar purpose as what Augustin suggested without making the process of writing and approving minutes even more excruciating.

I disagree with this also. Still a bit of a Bully Pulpit. Some may say well as long as so and so is allowed to tell why they voted against, I want my say why I voted for it. Soon 5-6 page long minutes.