The Most Important Person in the Association

I had the great privilege of being a high school social studies teacher for seven years. I met a lot of really wonderful young men and women. Despite the impression left with their parent(s) from the emotional minefield of the teenage years, many, many were hard-working, passionate, compassionate, willing to learn and filled with a really admirable desire to make a difference in the world, locally and globally, sort of glocally, as we came to call it. I left with the distinct impression that our future in in very good hands.

But in all that time I never met one student who wished to grow up to be Vice-President of anything. None wanted to settle for second best. It's part of our culture. The same holds true for officers in a condominium association. Everyone wants to be President. In the hope of shattering a myth, the President is the least important officer in a condominium association.

The Clerk is, without a doubt, the most important person in a condominium association. Much as the mantra in real estate is “Location. Location. Location.” and the mantra in landscaping is “Water. Water. Water.”, so the mantra in Condo World is “Document. Document. Document.”

The law has examples of associations that have lost their arguments in court because they did not document what occurred at meetings properly, did not have proper references in meeting minutes to who moved and how motions passed, and did not document what decisions were ultimately made by a Board and/or an Association.

Minutes have to be properly taken. And to be sure, taking minutes is an art. There is no set way to do them. Some associations record the meetings of Board and/or Association meetings. That's not a bad idea in theory, but who is going transcribe them, and who is going to ensure the accuracy of the transcript? Unless the Clerk is also a certified transcriptionist, then recording makes everyone feel good, but it causes more problems than it solves. Minutes are not meant to be a transcript. If they were, they wouldn't be called minutes, they would be called transcripts.

Thus, the goal is to accurately take notes of what occurred. They are not meant to be a verbatim reflection of what occurred, but an accurate summary of what occurred. It is never a bad idea to record the meeting, but the Clerk should also take notes and create minutes. In that manner, if there is a dispute, there would be a recording for reference.

Some Associations try diligently to recognize by name and unit every owner who speaks and the content of the point(s) made. This is well and good and can work. But if it is a heated discussion with people getting a bit … passionate about their positions, then it can be very hard to detail accurately who said what followed by whom, especially if the Clerk is one of the verbal participants. Therefore, it is likely best in most situations just to indicate there was a discussion regarding a certain topic, including points made by owners of Units A, B and C, and thereafter a motion was made by D, seconded by E and the motion passed/failed by a vote of X to X.

The Clerk always has the right and hopefully the time to go back and fill in thoughts and morsels after the meeting to flesh out the details.

Also, it is important to note there is a built in provision in the Condominium Act to force the Clerk to detail what occurred at the meeting before his or her memory fades. The minutes of Board meetings must be “made available” to the members within either sixty (60) days of a Board meeting or within fifteen (15) days of their approval by the Board, whichever comes first.

Of course, the best way in this day and age to make the minutes available is either emailing them to all or posting them on the Association's website.

Not only does this force the Clerk to finish the minutes before memories fade, but it helps solve a lot of problems in Condo World. By making the minutes available, either by emailing, posting in a common area or areas (such as in a lobby or at a mail box), or posting on the Association's website, it helps let everyone know what is going on at their Association, quelling concerns before rumors and myths take hold and inaccurate positions become entrenched.

Perhaps unfortunately, the requirement of having meeting minutes completed within sixty (60) days of the meeting applies only to Board meetings. The requirements for Association meetings are different. There is no companion section of the Act that requires the Annual Meeting minutes or the minutes of any other association meeting to be distributed at all. In theory this is because most associations do not meet but once a year, so the minutes from the previous year's meeting are usually included with the agenda, proxy, etc. and then listed as an agenda item to be reviewed and approved.

Despite the long time to prepare and distribute.

So, perhaps the most important attribute of a Clerk is someone who does things sooner rather than later.

Sometimes it's best not to be President.