New to forum, HOA, and RRs

[Newbie]

Howdy,

As you can tell by the topic title, I'm pretty new to all of this.

Like a lot of folks of a certain age, we downsized and decided to purchase a condo. We've decided we really don't like condo associations, but for now will have to make do.

We are a new association as of the fall of 2017. Our first board of 7 was made up of a kitchen-sink band of folks, many without a clue regarding our governing documents, bylaws, or parliamentary procedures. That group was voted in because nobody really knew anybody else, and we figured anyone volunteering should be OK. That was a fatally flawed logic! During our recent election of directors, we managed to remove 2 of the previous directors. I was elected to the board along with one other new person.

I think in general we have 1 or 2 folks that sort of know some things about RR and meeting etiquette. But as a group, we could be put into the category of "we don't know what we don't know".

Since being elected to the board, I have read "Robert's Rules for Dummies" by C. Alan Jennings, have purchased and been somewhat overwhelmed by Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised, and have recently ordered the "In Brief" version of same. I may also consider ordering the DVD version for its search capabilities.

Finding this forum should prove to be a big help to me as I navigate through various and sundry governing documents, board meetings, and debates on what we can/can't/should/shouldn't do.

Looking forward to learning lots of stuff. I will try to look for various topics along the way before posting new topics. I someone could give me some pointers on how to search for topics with more than one word, that would be great. (e.g. role call vote)

Thanx!

[jstackpo]

Welcome to...

1)  The world of parliamentary procedure (and human interactions in close (i.e., condo) quarters);

2)  This board!

You are under way with a good selection of books, the RONR IN BRIEF (RONRIB) book is probably your best starting point.

I can't help with searches (never figured them out myself); your best bet with this board is to just formulate your questions and problems as best you can and ask away as a "New Topic".

One request: please don't ask us to interpret (obscure-?) bylaws for you - see RONR page 588 instead.

[Chris Harrison]

On the top of the Forum page (the blue section) look at the far right and you will see a search bar.  Just type in the words you want to search. You will need to play around with the wording a bit because depending on if you use quotation marks (meaning you are searching for those exact words) there can be a vast difference.  Taking your example of "roll call vote" with quotes there was 462 hits where without any quotes there was 43,540 hits.

[Richard Brown]

Here is a tip that should make a huge difference when searching the Forum.

Once you enter the search terms that you are looking for, in the section right below where you entered the search terms, you have an option for system to search for "any of the Search terms" or for "all of the Search terms". The default setting is for the system to search for "any of your Search terms". However, using that default setting is going to get you way too many responses, most of which are not at all relevant.

Therefore, before actually running the search, select the option for the system to look for results that include "all of your Search terms".

Try that and let us know if it works better!  Note: you have to change that setting every time you search. If there is a way to change the default setting, I have not found it.

[Newbie]

Richard, thank you for the search tips. They will be very helpful.