HOA forum - should the board participate?

Michael -

I am the past President of our HOA and coincidentally also the webmaster of our HOA website that does contain a members only forum.

When I was the President, I did participate in the forum and represented the position of the Board. However, I only represented positions/opinions of the BOD where such positions had already been established by a BOD resolution or vote. I did not offer either personal or speculative opinions on what the BOD might do. As such, you could consider what I did to be "retrospective" rather than "prospective".

I agree with what he said ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

Daniel - you did bring points I didn't realize. Thanks a lot!

There are HOA monthly meetings where the board members participate. Any homeowner can attend this meeting and ask the board any question. The notes are taken about anything that was said. So how is this any different from the board answering questions or making statements on the forum in comparison to those monthly meetings?

As we know monthly meetings have extremely low attendance. The forum, on the other hand, will have very very few (if not zero at all) who are not signed up.

In regards to the attorney, the best interests of the attorney is that no homeowners attend the meetings - even less evidence!

Thanks again the for opinions!

"At an open forum, where there is back-and-forth discussion, and let's say a Q&A segment, any misspeaking or miscommunication by one board member can be cleared up or corrected immediately by some or all of the other board members present."

So this is even more for the advantage of the online forum. It is very easy to miscommunicate, and it is hard for other board members to catch someone who misspeaks. One the other hand, when a board member prepares a written statement he has plenty of time to think and to make sure his statement is accurate. And it is much easier for other board members to review his statement and catch an error if it is in writing. Yes, it might be a longer process but it better serves both the board and the homeowners, doesn't it?

"When you have a board member making statements on a public forum that, in effect, "represent" the board (in either position or mindset), something can easily be taken out of context or misunderstood and the clarification may not make it to the people who need to have it or the faux pas could well end up in court."

This again comes to the same "attorney advice" - the less evidence the better. Let's don't communicate with the homeowners at all.

"That's also one of the reasons why we do not allow individual members of the board to communicate by email to the homeowners."

I absolutely agree that individual members of the board should not communicate with individual homeowners. The board (as a whole) should. This is what this topic is about - the communication of the board (as a whole) with the homeowners, online.

Daniel,

you mentioned that not only you but several other board members wanted to open the online channel with the homeowners. And the lawyer said "No".

Basically, even all homeowners had voted "Yes" on forum participation (say, in my case it's a real vote - this is the only thing I am proposing in my platform), the lawyer's "No" would block it - with a single finger.

In my HOA until recently the management had participated in online discussion on the forum. They answered all questions, many times directly related to the board policies and actions. It was great, many people got involved. But when the homeowners started asking "tough" questions, the management suddenly stopped answering. Then I was told via e-mail that "we stopped monitoring the forum" - with a very lame excuse. Now I am pretty certain this was "recommended" by an attorney. So in our HOA even the management company is not allowed to discuss anything with the homeowners online.

What should the board of directors put first: the best interests of the homeowners, or an attorney opinion about them?

Well,
Here we go again!

I am not disagreeing with the lawyer. I am saying is there another way to get the job done. Why does someone have to represent the Board to have a discussion, you may be a board member but you are first and foremost an owner and member of the association. Is there some law that says if you are a Board member, you can't have an opinion. On this site there are disclaimers, why not a disclaimer on the talk site of a HOA, why not guidelines, why no post with a false name, why not a lot of things. I think the question might be is how an HOA with a website can run a open talk site?
I think the open forum has merit, it is certainly not unique and if some blowhard wants to get on there and condemn the world, how long do you think his credibility would last? Sure it will have some problems getting started and tempers will rise, but after a period of time, I think things would settle down. Have you noticed there is little problem with this site, anyone can post, and we don't kill each other.

As far as wanting a Board opinion, go to a meeting and ask for one.

At this point, our Board is not willing to indemnify Board Members who post. Basically, the HOA lawyer advised against it, a Board Member decides to post anyway, his words get used in a lawsuit and the HOA is supposed to pay to defend and back him up. No way: if you are a Board Member and you post something that turns into a lawsuit, leave the HOA out of it. We're not going to pay for a Board Member to shoot his mouth off. So, the Board (as a group) does not want to defend J. Random Board Member from whatever fool thing that he posts. So, most Board Members don't post because they don't want to assume the risk.

So, perhaps our real policy is: we officially forbid Board Members from posting on the forum but, if you ignore us, you are off the reservation and must fend for yourself for anything that you say.

One other slight twist on this topic is that, assuming Board members are owners/members of the HOA, they do not give up either their privileges nor their obligations as individual owners.

As such, I believe Board members should be able to post on open forums as an individual owner IF they clearly identify their post as such AND if they disclaim their post as not representing the view of the BOD.

In fact, I see this as helpful to other voting owners as it provides additional insight into the personal views of the Board member. This should allow owners to consider this information if/when this BOD member once again runs for the Board.

As John suggests, I think that clearly identifying posts with a sort-of disclaimer does help reduce the amount of exposure.

My HOA briefly tried this and it worked fairly well although it had its own caveats. We discontinued it after a month or so, though.

Board Members could also "shill" through family members or other owners, I suppose. That's probably even better than a disclaimer, though a questionable practice.

Michael,

I would like to discuss this topic offline. My email is [email protected].

People seem to get twisted in their own knickers on this subject. Why?

Forums are a discussion using the internet as a medium. Some people elect to participate; others don't. Some of the most important discussions in an organization occur at the coffee machines. The forum is an internet "coffee machine".

The court rulings do not hold the organization sponsoring the forum liable for what is written by participants. The appropriate disclaimer re accountability is good practice. Terms of service (civility, discuss issues not people, no personal attacks, etc.) are also good practice. A method to flag abuse, such as a "Report Abuse" internet link, is also good practice to help members make the forum self-policing.

Individuals posting to the forum are accountable for what they write. What people write is fair game for criticism, but without personal attacks. If individuals comply with the terms of service, they would likely not have any legal liability.

Board members are members of the owners association and should be able to contribute their views. Care should be taken to ensure that the views are represented as the views of the member who is also a board member.

Postings by the board may be helpful in clarification by providing excerpts from meeting minutes including the votes on the actions that may be excerpted. No extra effort is required. Likely, any board member could provide the excerpt. If the board doesn't act on an issue that has been defined in the forum, nothing should be posted by the board. If the board acts, then post the excerpts.

There always seems to be an effort to have a board speak with one voice. Nonsense. The board has multiple members precisely to obtain more voices. If only one voice is needed, then have a board of one person. However, board members must abide by decisions of the board. That doesn't mean that they can't speak out against a board decision that they believe is unwise and to seek to rescind a prior decision.

Management guru Peter Drucker is a strong advocate that good decisions require disagreement because the disagreement leads to a better understanding of the issues and consequences. Disagreement may exist long after a decision is made by the board. Trying to suppress disagreement is poor policy in my opinion. But board members must agree to abide by decisions until they are changed.

Some attorneys always seem to say, "Don't create any records." Documents are necessary in conducting business. It isn't the documents that may create legal liability, it is the actions taken or not taken. The advice I have received from attorneys that I respect is to properly conduct the business of the organization with documentation as necessary to achieve that objective. Properly conducting the business includes rounding out any document that may have unfavorable implications.

From the residents' point of view forum is a great source of information, and more importantly - accountability of the board to the homeowners who elected them. The residents can simply set a poll to determine the overall job approval rating of the board.

As I mentioned in the other post, HOA has two dimensions: a business and a government. From the point of view of PMs and HOA attorneys, HOA is strictly business - there is no such thing as accountability to residents. The board is to serve the interests of the property, not the residents. An election time is a real problem for them - the uneducated residents might elect board members who might put their interests first, not the property. This is why they do anything to keep membership participation to a minimum. Quorum is easily resolved by proxies, but multiple candidates - this is a disaster. Coffee machine meetings like forums are working against it, so they find any argument to block it. Scare tactic (you might get sued for what you write on the forum!) works the best.

From the residents point of view, HOA is their home, the board is their government, and they mistakenly expect it be accountable like any other government. Some participate in the meetings mistakenly believing they are about community interests.

My point is: there is a major flaw in the way HOA model is designed - its governmental side. The forum is the best way to deal with it. It takes a responsible board that voluntarily chooses to be accountable to the residents, despite the strong opposition from the PM and the HOA attorney.