Forwarding E-mails

Real world situation, details have been changed.

At Board meeting, Board discussed repurposing a section of common area. One owner suggested a shuffleboard court, another a community garden.

Two days later, an owner who was not present at meeting sends me an e-mail writing they heard an owner suggest a shuffleboard court. Owner opposes shuffleboard court and comments it's "low class geriatric." I respond to owner with non emotional reasons why I oppose shuffleboard. I made no reference to subjective adjectives. I then forward owner's e-mail along with my non emotional, logically based response to all other Board members, since I think they should be aware of owner comment.

How do you handle an unsolicited owner e-mail only sent to you that has very direct subjective language?

I am with Tim. Why was it up to just you to respond? This was a board issue to address. Should have one representative or email box to respond to such things. Which is that this is still under discussion and you will see it in the meeting notes next month/meeting,.

This reminds me of the ex-president I had to deal with. I sent him an email as we were at the time "friendly". Went to a meeting and had 2 angry owners meeting after a meeting. Seems he manipulated that email to made me look like had called on of them a "female dog". Which wasn't the case... It was a friend of theirs though... So I learned to be very careful about sharing email amongst each other. He was a board member. It was best the whole board saw the original email instead of him modifying it to fit his needs or wants. You have witness and record if you leave it alone.

Are you a Board Member? Your post seems to indicate that you are but it's not blatantly obvious and I don't recall from other posts.

If you are a Board Member are then your emailed reply back to the Owner with your own thoughts (without Board agreement, and possibly perceived by Owner as speaking on behalf of the Board) is more problematic that whatever the Owner had to say.

You should/could have responded back in a couple ways:
1) Acknowledge receipt and give Owner the option for you to either forward that message to the Board or allow them to send another message that you would then forward.
1) Recommend that the Owner send their thoughts to the entire Board in whatever manner that is done in your HOA . . . maybe you have a generic Board email address that will reach all Board Members, maybe input is supposed to be sent to the Management Company.

If you are not a Board Member, then you are free to send whatever thoughts you have to the Board yourself, and suggest that the other Owner do the same. But it shouldn't be your purpose, need, or responsibility to forward someone else's thoughts to the Board unless that is what they asked you to do.

Recommendations noted. I did make clear to owner that my opinions are solely mine and not the Board's as a whole.

You exercised your judgement. Nothing wrong w/ forwarding feedback on a possible capital project and its perception to the dues payer.

Sorry: Boards govern HOAs.

Oh, and I also agree with ND & MichaelS.

The language would have made no difference if the overall message was the same.