Meeting minutes
Several of the homeowners have asked for meeting minutes, some have asked for minutes for the previous year as to verify previous meetings involving a special assessment issue. Some have received resent minutes from the last two meetings, some requests have been ignored. No one has received anything older going back a few months. Is this an Arizona ARS violation, not keeping minutes available when requested?
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Mike,
Many associations play the word game. You have the right to request any record of the association, but technically meeting minutes are not official records of the association until they are approved at the next meeting. Draft minutes may be available but association refuse to provide them because they are not official records. Any official record must be provided upon request within 10 business days under the law.
Public bodies must have minutes from any meeting available to the public in draft form 5 days after the meeting.
So, when boards and management companies take this position, they are simply trying to hide the minutes hoping that you will go away if you have to wait until the next meeting to get them. Any Association with nothing to hide and respect for their homeowners will provide draft minutes upon request.
So not providing approved minutes when requested is a violation of ARS 33-1805.
Dennis
I saw this citing about 10 days on the site FindLaw.com, but the azoca.gov site and I believe the statues echo … “A public body must make statutorily compliant minutes or a recording available for inspection within three working days after the meeting. A.R.S. § 38-431.01(D). An agency can not withhold a draft of the minutes if requested.”
https://www.azoca.gov/resources/faqs/open-meetings-law-faq/
Let me further elaborate. A records request, for example for copies of architectural requests, are allowed 10 days for a response. Board Minutes however, must be supplied on request within 3 days; whether draft or final minutes.
Henry,
I agree with both your comments on the ARC request but your statement on minutes is relative to minutes for public bodies and not planned communities or Condo’s. There is no current statute that mandates the availability of draft minutes in any way for these communities. I’ve been trying to change that and will continue to do so until we can get the law right.
Dennis
You are absolutely correct with the public body statutes but neither HOA’s or Condo’s are considered public bodies and those statutes for the most part do not apply to these communities, with one exception and that is the definition of the word “meeting”. The public body statute is the only place in statute where “meeting” is defined and because of that any use of the word “meeting” in the planned community or condo statutes will use that definition. Why that is important is because the definition includes email correspondence between a quorum of the board as a meeting and establishes that actions without a meeting by our boards via e-mail violates the open meeting laws for these communities except for emergency meetings.
Dennis