Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 9, 2015 16:17:27 GMT
During the December 7, 2015 monthly board meeting the newly-elected president, Charlotte Mizzi, declared that these monthly meetings were held for the board to conduct the association's business, and that they were not intended to be landowner meetings. She further stated that from now on landowners would only be able to speak once during one of the two three-minute landowner input periods (but not both), unless asked to speak by the chairperson. I understand her motivation for this due to the unruly behavior of some landowners (and board members) in past meetings, but the policy does curtail each landowner's participation in their association's government to only three minutes.
What would you think about landowners conducting their own monthly meetings, open to all landowners and board members, to be held at least 17 days ahead of the next scheduled board meeting so that issues could be raised, discussed and action plans developed to present to the board as an agenda item if enough landowners are in agreement. Requests for agenda items must be made at least 15 days in advance.
It seems that doing this will give landowners a greater opportunity to be heard and it will provide an orderly and organized approach to addressing the board, and have it backed up in writing and part of the official record.
Please add your thoughts below...
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marks
New Member
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Post by marks on Dec 9, 2015 20:19:31 GMT
Chris, I wish I had a good answer. As a both a board member and landowner, I find it discouraging that the board can't get through a complete agenda in a single meeting of reasonable length. In each of the last 4 months, I've seen agenda items where I thought it very important to have a decision, only to see the topic tabled and then disappear because of meeting length. (Sadly Ross's phone was dying late in Monday's meeting, so after a couple of minutes of hearing nothing, I bailed out.) On the other hand, it's also important that the Landowner's get to voice their views and have their thoughts and ideas heard and considered. In our government systems (city, county, state, national) the stakeholder input is channeled through direct meetings between voters and their representatives prior to votes (and yes, that doesn't seem to be working very well these days...). Your idea looks good but has some drawbacks. In particular;
1) board members are already committing lots of time to GLA matters and adding another (particularly monthly) meeting significantly increases the burden,
2) Including such discussions as part of the official record may have legal consequences with respect to opening up avenues for lawsuits, (If you check out some of the on-line advice about home owner's association meeting minutes, the general advice is to keep them short and limit detail.) and
3) the level of vitriol largely (but not entirely) directed at board members makes their participation in additional meetings unlikely.
Were the divisions not so extreme, I could see having a "member's meeting" with one or two board members present every couple of months so that both the landowners and board members were aware of concerns and some of the related ideas under discussion.
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Post by leokeeler on Dec 13, 2015 3:57:58 GMT
I think there are many benefits to having more Landowner meetings that Board members may attend as Landowners if they desire. However I wonder where and how such meetings could be held, and how they would operate.
If Members met and discussed concerns they have and ideas for resolution, then both the idea and solution could be presented to the Board for processing, either by a Board vote or Member vote depending on the issue. I would hope it would reduce conflicts and the workload the Board has now.
Where to hold such meetings and how to include non-resident landowners is the first and biggest question. I also see problems with participation as Members may come, offer input to solutions of concern to them, then once the Board actions on the issue, they may not attend again. Considering the high number of Landowners in the area, I'm surprised there are not more attending the Board meetings.
I am very concerned about the 100+ e-mailed and complaints sent to the Board that are still considered "PENDING ACTION" by the Board. I wonder if Members getting together would be an avenue to identify and consolidate their concerns and develop resolutions that can be commonly agreed upon. If there is unity among the Members and the Board recognizes it, they would have difficulty in not fulfilling Members desires, i.e. solutions offered by Members. That is unless the solution violates the Governing Documents, which should guide Members as they do the Board.
How would an outreach to determine Landowner interest in these meetings be done??
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