Page 17 - New England Condominium November 2020

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We thank you and value the opportunity to be your laundry ser- vices provider. 781.894.6600 | 1345 Main Street, Waltham, MA 02451 sales@americanlaundryequipment.com | www.americanlaundryequipment.com For a complimentary laundry room survey, please contact us and at the meeting itself with touch-screen tablets for voting. Shareholders also have the option of voting by paper or electronic proxy, or—new to the co-op this year—by telephone. Electronic and telephone vot- ing uses a secure code unique to each unit that is mailed in advance with the election materials. This year’s annual meeting took place in June as normally scheduled, with some notable changes. There was no lobby vot- ing for the four directors’ seats and a bal- lot question for a bylaw amendment, but online, mail-in, or hand-delivered proxy were still available, as well as telephone voting. For several years, the co-op has had a webinar-enabled virtual component to its annual meeting, wherein the physical meeting is live-streamed for shareholders who are not able to attend in person. With the meeting taking place completely virtu- ally via Zoom this year, everyone had to attend this way, which made establishing a quorum slightly more touch-and-go. But once the requisite one-third of household units was tallied, the votes could be count- ed and the meeting proceeded. After the board and its professionals shared their PowerPoint presentation, shareholder par- ticipants were able to ask questions via the chat function, which made for a Q&A ses- sion that was decidedly more orderly and civil than past years. Many shareholders commented that they preferred the Zoom format to either the webinar or the in-per- son meeting. Hybrid Solutions In some regions, housing communi- ties have developed workarounds to the socially distanced annual meeting conun- drum instead of—or in addition to—the virtual format. Janet Aronson, a partner in Braintree, Massachusetts-based law firm Marcus Errico Emmer & Brooks, explains, “Unless your condominium documents authorize voting by mail-in ballots, then it’s technically not valid, unless there’s a proxy vote attached to it. So what we rec- ommend is that they call it a ‘meeting for a limited purpose,’ and that there’ll be no in-person attendance; the mail-in ballot/ directed proxy will give the voting author- ity to one individual—perhaps the board president or the board secretary—and that person would effectively accomplish the meeting on a particular date and time and count the votes and close the meeting.” Separately, she continues, the board could hold an “informational meeting”—where a quorum isn’t necessary and there is no need to take formal attendance or tally votes—either on a virtual meeting plat- form like Zoom, or somewhere attendees can gather safely and in numbers currently sanctioned by their local jurisdiction (like in an outdoor parking lot), or both. There, board members could provide their usual updates on the financial status and ongo- ing projects of the association or corpo- ration, and unit owners/shareholders can mention concerns and ideas and ask ques- tions. “Now there is another way to actually address this and the time might be upon us to do this,” Aronson proposes, “and that would be to amend the documents to ac- tually allow for mail-in ballots or remote meetings or electronic voting, so that we can accomplish valid votes and comply with the condominium documents.” Of course, amending the documents usually requires a vote of the owners or sharehold- ers, so it’s a bit of a Catch-22. But if the vote can be accomplished by proxy ballot as Aronson suggests, with all of the usual notice requirements prescribed by the governing documents followed, and the required quorum and voting threshold are reached and the vote passes—“typically in Massachusetts based on the percentage interest that’s assigned to the unit,” notes Aronson—then future elections and other votes by the owners could be conducted via mail or electronically. According to Richard Brooks, another partner at MEEB, associations may want to consider such an amendment not just in response to COVID, but in keeping up with the times. “The next generation, they don’t want to go to meetings; they want to text. That’s how it is nowadays. So elec- tronic voting and electronic meetings is what’s happening.” But to accommodate owners and share- holders of multiple generations, says Smil- er, “You also want to be cognizant of the fact that not everybody in the building, depending upon the demographic, is com- fortable going on to Zoom or something like that. They might not have that techno- logical savviness or they just might not be comfortable doing it.” Real-Life Virtual Meetings Dan LeBlanc, a portfolio manager with FirstService Residential who manages eight associations in the Boston area, says that many of his communities postponed their spring annual meetings “indefinite- ly.” As spring turned to summer and now to fall, with the coronavirus still raging on and shutdowns and social distancing still mandated in many jurisdictions, “it was imperative that alternative plans were made to comply with the condo docs and conduct trustee elections,” he says. To accomplish that, LeBlanc developed a set of guidelines so that annual meetings at his associations could take place virtu- ally, using the online meeting platform Zoom: 1. Provide a call-in option for those who do not have computers. 2. Owners are welcome to submit ques- tions/concerns in writing prior to the meeting for the board and management to address. REMOTE... continued from page 8 continued on page 18