Florida Condo Association E-Mail

I don't like the idea of individual emails for board members - what's wrong with setting up ONE account accessible to all board members so there's no confusion as to what was said and how it was addressed? That's how our association does it - in fact we had our management company set it up this way for precisely that reason.

I prefer ONE EMAIL for ALL Board members. This way, everyone will have access, even if there are changes in officers or board members. You can always change the password for security.

If you insist on separate emails for the officers, you'd better have some rules on how they should be handled. Only use it for association business. No sending or receiving instructions that conflict with the documents or board decisions made during board meetings. No disparaging homeowners, fellow board members, or any hint of people conspiring against others. Executive session proceedings are not to be discussed via email AT all.

There may be more things you'll need to consider to ensure transparency as well as privacy on individual homeowner information. Talk to your association attorney and perhaps your master insurance company for suggestions so all of you minimize personal and association liability risk. This includes a policy regarding preserving those emails as appropriate, so thing d9nt get deleted - or deleted on purpose.

You will still need a general email where homeowners can send questions, comments and suggestions. Have one or two board members monitor it to ensure things that need to be referred to a committee placed on the board meeting agenda or referred to the property manager. Better yet, the property should already have an email where maintenance requests and such are sent.

At one point our board had separate emails devoted to association business. I was board treasurer and whenever I had to speak to our association attorney about delinquent accounts, I copied the board members so they knew what was going on. No decisions were made via email - we discussed the matter during open board meetings and voted on what to do. Our board also had access to the attorney's client portal where we could see what was happening with every account in real time.