Having to pay for minutes?

Is this legal?

Glen is good at this and he offers proof. However legal it is, at this day and age it is still not good business to charge for something that the board can direct be freely available. If the minutes can be copied, they can be put on Owners section of the management web site, the HOA website, the Boards web site or the secretary can copy the minutes and e-mail them to all owners. In fact that is how they should be handled, the technology is there, utilize it. We post minutes of BOD and committees on web page, owners can copy them, why not?

Susan,
If you are going to establish this kind of logic or making an arbitrary decision, and required this kind of (follishness......in my opinion,) why are you not charging the Board (association) to pay the M/C for coping the original minutes, the copies that are distributed to the Board, to all the M/C personnel that might have a need. How about copies of the minutes that include committee reports, do you charge each committe member? What in the world does your contract with the M/C include, does it say that minutes are so much a page? Are people beating a path to your door clamoring for the minutes. I doubt that, but let some owner that is paying the bills show a little interest and stops by the M/C office to pick up a copy of the minutes to read while he takes his walk and you want to charge him a fee? I don't think you can expect M/C to deliver 1000's copies to each resident, but you sure can foot the expense of handing out copies to those showing interest or if you have a 25 unit condo, let the BOD walk around and slip a copy under the door of each unit. Reason must prevail.

And if this starts something, let's stay on point and stick with charging an owner for a copy of the minutes. If you have anything upwards of 50 units you should have a web site and post them there and solve that whole problem.

Mary,
By your above post, the answer to the OP was : Yes.

Do we want to give that kind of answer, "Yes".

However, now we have the shoulda, woulda, couldas and I quote and you go on with more of them.

A small assoc that has to go to a copy center to make copies can afford to buy paper and have a member copy the minutes on a home copier and distribute door to door.

Hello, if they don't have a computer, you as a neighbor volunteer to be a neighbor and give her a copy or the Board sees to it that she gets a copy. Again how many copies would this cover?

We are not talking about Financial records for some court case, we are talking about the responsibility of the Board to inform the members of what is going on.

I would also pose: How many BOD know how many copies of the minutes are run off and who gets them? Do they also subtract that number from the total sheets of paper that the Board is paying for when they pay for their services as received in a contract with the M/C?

I still consider this a lacking. Not to mention arbitrary. . .why 50? why not 40? or 75?

But anyway, we have 300+ homes.

AND we have a website. We post them on the website.

However, only roughly 10 percent of our homeowners use the web on any regular basis. IF that many.

We include a meeting summary in our post-meeting newsletter, and anyone who wants a copy of the minutes can contact us and we will provide them.

But were we to charge for the copies, having them posted on the website wouldn't matter. We'd still charge for the copies. We don't, however, but we could if we wanted to.

But, Robert, *my* point is that it doesn't matter what the number is, saying, "put it on the website" and then dusting your hands and saying, "well, we've communicated." or at least "lessened the load" is so completely not accurate.

Unless you know for a fact that each and every person has access to and USES the internet, then leaving the communication at that, to me, is inappropriate.

Being a communication professional I know that the difficult truth is that you must rely on multiple channels. That often means duplicating the load, not "lessening" it.

So we send out USPS notices, newsletter updates, AND we post on the internet.

And we make copies when requested.

But my point is, I really am not a fan of "paperless" because it's a myth and it reduces the actual communication to rely solely on internet.

We're just "not there yet" -- and I would bet that the majority of associations or neighborhoods aren't "there yet" either (meaning that they can comfortably state with solid reliance that everyone has access to and regularly uses the internet).

But I *DO* know that everyone has a mailbox. . . .and am pretty certain that most if not all use it daily. . . .

Is $15.00 reasonable? The minutes are only 2 pages?

Sue,

Here's the info from CA statute that Glen posted:

"COPYING COSTS

Association May Charge a Fee. The association may charge the requesting member for the direct and actual cost of copying and redacting documents (including minutes Civil Code §1363.05(d)). However, associations may not charge a fee that exceeds the amount necessary to defray the costs for which it is levied. Civil Code §1366.1 Also, the association must inform the member of the cost before copying the requested documents. Civil Code §1365.2(b)(1)

Management Company Fees. If the copying is done by a management company, the company is allowed to charge fees that exceed the amount necessary to defray costs. In other words, they are allowed to make a profit. Brown v. Professional Community Management

Updated by ADAMS KESSLER 8/7/2008"

In answer to your latest question: "No!" if the copies are being provided by the BOD; "Perhaps" or even "Yes" if the copies are being provided by a PM.

In AZ (by statute) the assn cannot charge a fee of more than 15 cents/page -- regardless of who makes the copies.

And, to answer your original question, "Yes, it's legal to charge a fee in CA". Regardless of what anyone on this site thinks, if it's legal in your state then, the board can do it whether you or anyone here likes it or not. Should a board charge a fee? is what has been primarily discussed, but doesn't answer your question.

MaryA,
My opinion; I think you are bring a tad dogmatic about the whole thing. I thought we aqreed we would give opinions. My opinions is I think that any board that has anything to do with allowing an employee of the association to charge any member of the association a fee of $15.00 to copy 2 pages of minutes, that in my opinion the board should see they are provided for nothing, then, the conclusions of my opinions are: the Board is not following the Declarations and intent of the Organizational structure of the association. Further, to hide behind reason and declare they can do it because they can do it, is again, IMHO, they need to have an attitude adjustment.

I know exactly why you are saying what you say, and I agree, the Board should have a broad brush to paint with, this is just not the time for that kind of logic.