Annual Meeting Follow

Annual Meeting Basics

In the states of Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Missouri, Nevada, Oregon, and Texas, it is a law that all cooperative corporations and condominium associations meet one time a year in order to conduct an annual public meeting. This meeting is open to all unit owners. The board essentially is dissolved for this meeting and all owners have equal participation. Usually, one member of the board is appointed the "Director" in order to coordinate and manage the meeting. 

Annual meetings require more advanced notice than regular board meetings. Written notice must be mailed, posted, or delivered to all Unit Owners, giving no less than 10 days and no more than 30 days notice of the time, place, and purpose of the meeting. However, it is highly advisable to send an initial notice well in advance to solicit nominations for open board positions.

Unless explicitly stated in the Declaration, twenty percent of the membership constitutes a quorum at the meeting unless the bylaws, articles, or community instruments indicate a lesser amount for all association with 20 or more units. Smaller association should refer to their bylaws for the specific quorum standards.

Minutes for the annual must be recorded and kept. Please keep in mind that these are only approved at the next annual or next owners' meeting, whichever comes first.

Most associations restrict voting to 1 vote per unit per candidate. While most townhomes and planned communities have an equal vote between units, condominium and some townhome associations use weighted voting by percentage of ownership. 

Some associations also use cumulative voting. Please check the Declaration/Bylaws to determine if your association utilizes cumulative voting. Under that scenario, unit owners are allowed as many votes as there are candidates and may give all to one candidate or varying numbers to several.

Annual Meeting Prep
 

Establishing a Meeting Date & Nomination Form

The first step is the most basic but given the length of prep time it takes to run a proper annual meeting. Ideally, you should give yourself 2 months of lead time, especially for strict associations. PM's should always check the Declaration & Bylaws to determine approximately when the meeting should be held. There is usually a window wherein the annual is required to be held per the Bylaws. PRO TIP: Use the Calendar function in Vantaca to calendar out two months before the annual meeting so you can begin prep work.

Keep in mind that some associations may be off-schedule from their original annual meeting date. Managers should check with the board to see if they would prefer to keep the current date or to realign with the original date noted in the Dec/Bylaw.

Once you have a date, use the Annual Meeting Docs Generator to produce a Meeting Announcement. You can then edit the text as needed, download as PDFs, and distribute. Enclosed in the notice is the Board Nomination Form. Unit owners who are interested in joining the board can fill out the form. An email notification is created and submitted to you as the manager of the Association. In Meeting Announcement, please indicate the date in which you would like Nomination Forms to be submitted.

The form requests the following information:

• Association name (drop-down list)
• Documents you would like to generate. See explanations below.
• Association full name. This value is used to populate the various forms (proxy form, election ballot, meeting announcement) with the proper name of the Association. It is not important that it exactly matches the Association's legal name; it should just include the portion of the name that reflects the type of association it is (Condominium Association, Homeowner Association, etc). This will help the text of the documents generated read smoothly.
• Meeting date, time, and location. Used to populate the forms and name the documents appropriately.
• Quorum percentage. Used to populate the vote tabulation sheet and included in the draft meeting announcement.
• Board positions to be filled. This is extremely important. The number of positions to be filled determines how many votes each person can cast. The number is also used on the proxy form and on the ballot. If you don't know this, you should find out before completing this form and generating this document.
• Cumulative voting. If you don't know, check the condo Declaration and/or previous years' election ballots. If you can't figure this out, select "Yes" to indicate it is allowed (it usually is, but not always).
• Candidate names. You may include up to 9 candidates.
• URL where docs are stored. For every meeting of the Board or Association, you should create a folder on the Association's team drive, in the Meetings subfolder. The new folder should be titled using the format 10-27-2020, and should reflect the date of the meeting. Once that folder is created, copy-paste the URL from the browser bar (or select the down arrow next to the folder name, then select Get Link > Copy Link). This will be the folder where your new documents are created.

Send Candidate List & Proxy Ballots

Once you have the nominations forms submitted from the potential candidates, you are ready to send out proxy ballots to all unit owners. Again, please use the Annual Meeting Docs Generator and select "Proxy Ballot" and the "Vote Tabulation Ballot". The form will generate a ballot which can be filled out by each unit owner prior to the meeting. Please send out the proxy ballot to all unit owners. Indicate on the ballot when earlier voting will close, which is usually a day or two before the meeting. The ballot should include the Association's dedicated email address, indicating to unit owners where to submit their completed form.

Once you start receiving proxy ballots back, please input the information into the Vote Tabulation Ballot. Ideally, you can have quorum confirmed and established prior to the meeting even beginning and even have an idea of the potential board. For the tabulation sheet to work properly, the Association must have the correct % of ownership entered on Association Ownership Percentage Sheet.

Please remember that candidates not on the ballot can still declare themselves at the meeting. They just won't have the benefit of potentially receiving votes during earlier voting.

Post Notice

Please remember that notice does need to be posted even if you have sent the meeting announcement previously. Again, 10 to 30 days prior to the meeting date to all unit owner. Please use the Meeting Notice form to post notice prior to the meeting.

Annual Meeting Process

Meeting Process

When it is time to actually hold the meeting, the easiest way to guarantee a smooth meeting is to utilize the Annual Meeting Script. Importantly, managers should update the script prior to the meeting as appropriate for the association. The script can than be provided to the "Director" of the meeting, who is usually a board member, commonly the board president. The Director can utilize the script during the meeting to guide the association through the process.

If you are having an in-person meeting, please make sure that you utilize the Annual Meeting Docs Generator to produce physical "Ballots" for the meeting. If your meeting is virtual, you can also create the ballots for on-line distribution during the meeting. 

Vote Tabulation & Announcement

It is important that you take your time when tabulating the votes for an election. Feel free to step away from the meeting or turn off your screen in order to finish calculations. To learn how to use the vote tabulation sheet, see this help center article. If it does not, please contact a member of the CAM leadership team and request that it is updated.

Once complete, please relay to the director for confirmation and an announcement. Please do not display the breakdown of voting. Unit owners are allowed that information but only upon formal request.

Post-Meeting

It is recommended that after the Director closes the meeting, you should recommend the board immediately open a quarterly board meeting. While you can certainly discuss other association business if needed, the board should nominate and appoint the various board positions, i.e. president, treasurer, secretary.

Common Issues
Uncontested Election

When you have the same number of unit owners interested in being on the board as you do open seats, there is no need for a formal election. This is called an election by acclamation. You simply need to confirm that each of the individuals accept the nomination. If all parties accept, the new board can be recorded in the minutes.

Tied Voting

Whenever there is a tie for the last position, the easiest option is to simply ask if one of the candidates will step down. If both refuse, there is usually not a strict protocol. The best course of action is to perform a run-off election for the remaining seat with only those two candidates on the ballot. You will need to set a new meeting date under this scenario.

Lack of Quorum

Should the association lack quorum at the meeting in order to move forward with the election, the election will need to be re-scheduled in most cases. If there is a concern that the association will not be able to achieve quorum with a subsequent meeting, then proceed with the election with those in attendance or submitted proxies. 

Lack of Candidates

If you do not have enough interested unit owners to be on the board, move forward with the candidates that are interested first. At a later time, the board may nominate and appoint another unit owner to a board member position to fill the vacancy. 

Sources:

CO: Annual Meeting Requirements

GA: Annual Meeting Requirements

IL: Annual Meeting Requirements

IN: Annual Meeting Requirements

MO: Annual Meeting Requirements

NV: Annual Meeting Requirements

TX: Annual Meeting Requirements

WI: Annual Meeting Requirements

CAI: Planning and Conducting a Successful Annual Meetings

Chicago Cooperator: Meetings 101