Minutes from Board Meetings

Here's the problem. We have voted to have our minutes stored with the managers and taken off a Condo webside (in our community) and these Board Meeting Minutes minutes
will be distributed, to co-owners upon request to the Managers. I don' think our co-owners will like this change and I know I don't.
the problem is we all voted for this as we each had different interpretations of what this meant. I thought it meant we would take all the older minutes off that have not been "cleaned up" which means removal of opinions, names, judgemental comments etc. It has been quite a process to say the least. So, I thought out co-owners would still be able to get on our website and look at minutes from the meetings from the past year forward and see what has been happening on our Board. Wrong.....this vote was for ALL current minutes and ALL ones in the future.

I am beside myself and think our co-owners will not be happy with this plan and they should have a say in one of the benefits they have enjoyed for probably 25 years. This Board is not really interested in what the co-owners think.

What do you guys think? Is there some law or rule that says we (Board) can't do this? I have tried to change the motion to no avail. My husband is the Webmaster and is stalling, but we are running out of time. Is there anything we can do?

Thanks so much!!You guys are always so helpful, especially AugustinD!!!!

Lou

Legally, I don't believe you can clean up former minutes that have been approved by the board as the official meeting minutes for the meeting. They are a permanent record.

Lou,

Two comments:

1) As Aug posted, nothing is preventing you from make a motion to post the minutes to the website.

2) As Greg pointed out, I think it's difficult for a board to simply clean up past minutes. If desired, they should be rewritten and voted on by the existing board. Those minutes should include something along the line of:

Approved as amended by the board on mm/dd/yy

Mind you, If you needed said minutes for a legal issue, the first question that would likely be asked is "why were the minutes amended x months/years after the fact?"

Weren't any of you paying attention when the motion was made? It's one thing to vote on something like " we'll keep a year's worth of minutes on the website at any time (the oldest month would drop off) and older minutes will be available upon written request" vs. "we'll remove inappropriate language from the minutes" - and as others have said, you shouldn't be changing the older staff because minutes are supposed to be an accurate reflection of what happened during the meeting. If you weren't sure what the motion really meant, why didn't you speak up before the vote was taken?

You've written about your minutes before and by now, you know opinions, name-calling, and that stuff shouldn't be on there at all, but if we're talking about older minutes, it's probably too late to do anything about them now, because they were officially approved, as others have noted. The time to review and correct the documents is during the meeting in which they're up for approval, and then you would indicate the minutes were approved with corrections. No one should be coming back to those minutes two or three months after the fact saying "uh, I just realized I said X about so and so, and I'd like that removed from the minutes."

At this point, you'll just have to state the board recognizes that some of the minutes written before X date may not reflect proper formatting. Going forward, minutes will only reflect the decisions the board made during the meeting - if you have specific questions on an issue, please contact a board member.

On the other hand....was there an issue with storage because you have several years' worth of minutes on the website? If so, it would probably be easier to keep up the last year's worth and anything older than that would be dropped off, but still available upon written request. At your next meeting (not three or six months from now), y'all probably need to revisit this issue again and this time make sure everyone's on the same page as to what you're going to do going forward. And for heaven's sake, read (again) older posts on this website or Google "board meeting minutes" so whoever prepares them will understand what's expected. Better yet, write a board resolution to that effect and vote on it, so there's no question on what's appropriate.

As Always....perfect answer! Thank you!

Lou

Can't remember exactly, I think it was simple, like ....move to remove all minutes from the website and give them to co-owners upon request....I think. Why does this matter? Thanks!

I can't understand the arrogance of some people who run these HOA's.

To me it is more of a problem, time, and effort to respond to one requesting a copy of the Minutes then it is to post them to your web site for all to see. I say post them.

I agree this is worth a try. Even better, perhaps try a Motion to Amend. As interested, see

http://www.rulesonline.com/rror-06.htm

https://www.dummies.com/careers/business-skills/roberts-rules-for-rescinding-or-amending-something-previously-adopted/

LouH1, thank you for the kind words.