Board decision/event log?

Skip to the bottom for a tl;dr

Something I thought might be useful for our association members is an easily referred-to list of decisions made by the board so that those that can't or won't review the minutes can easily see the decisions made affecting their community.

I'm thinking that it would include at least the results of decisions/motions and when directory or officer changeover happens using simplified language.

It might look something like:

For further information on any of the following, refer to the meeting minutes for the date shown.

2019/01/01 - First homeowner board selected.
2019/01/15 - Board meeting
Bob's Uncle selected as Chair/President
Virginia Moneypants selected as Treasurer
Fred McNoteTaker selected as Secretary
First City Awesome Bank chosen for the HOA accounts
2019/02/15 - Board meeting - no business conducted as quorum was not present
2019/02/28 - Fred McNoteTaker resigned from the board
2019/03/15 - Board meeting
Blah McBlahdeblah selected to fill open board seat
...
and so on.

I'm sure some will respond "they should just read the d**n minutes" and while I might agree to some extent, once you've got a few year's minutes to wade through, many people will just stop even trying. Having a concise history like this would be helpful to more than just the lazy as not everyone will remember when particular decisions were made.

tl;dr:
Is a decision/event like like my example above, a *bad* idea. If yes, why?

Looking at our December meeting minutes:

1) We made 5 decisions after discussing items in executive session
2) Approved 1 ACC request
3) Approved 8 vendor bids
4) Discussed but took no action on 5 additional items

So the log that you are suggesting would contain 14 line items of decisions that were made. If you included items that were tabled, it'd contain 19 line items.

Our meeting minutes for this meeting are 4 pages long. Each topic is bolded and it literally takes less than a minute to understand what discussed during the meeting.

I think what you are proposing is fine if someone on the Board is willing to maintain the log, publish it to your website, and keep it accurate. I don't think it is required for your Board to function, and if your Board is like most, you'll spend all of your volunteer hours doing those things that you "have to" and time available to "nice to have" things is minimal.

I'd focus your time on writing the best meeting minutes rather than trying to maintain two types of documents that cover the same thing.

What Henry said.

It's not a bad idea, but even with a log, there's no guarantee people will read it either. If your minutes are relatively simple to begin with, there's no point in making more work for yourself. ACR approvals or denials should be in each owner's file kept by the association anyway.

I advise against this. An event log may be inaccurate. Even an event log with a disclaimer on it such as "Please read the Minutes to get confirmation of this event log" is dangerous. Why? Because what if the event log accidentally fails to include a certain vote? Jane Smith goes to the event log to see when a certain vote took place, and the event log does not list it. Jane then thinks the vote never took place. But the Minutes actually do show the vote took place.

The Minutes are a lawful record of the (hopefully) lawful votes a Board takes on motions. The wording of the motions is important. People looking for what a Board did should do their own review of the Minutes.

You might want to to it for your own records, Michael. IMO, keeping a similar doc -- a Board Policy Log or a book of resolutions is a very good thing. A previous PM started one here a few years ago that was well maintained, but our current PM hasn't maintained it.

The reason some records should be kept is that sure, board decisions are in minutes. BUT it's hard to remember WHEN a policy (not Rule) decision was made to look it up to make sure "it" is being done correctly etc.