CAI-NJ January 2021

VIRTUAL MEETINGS

During a Global Health Crisis By Robert DeSantis, Director of Operations Associa Community Management Corporation of New Jersey, AAMC

S ince March 2020, our world has been turned upside down. As community managers, we have many night meetings for which would normally attend in person. This all changed as clubhouses, and all other facilities were shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our first challenge as a state, finding toilet paper and paper towels, followed by how to manage our private life and

accounts may be needed? How to efficiently schedule these meetings? Following these and many more questions, the next task was familiarizing managers, board members and residents with this new method of meeting. In some communities, an increase in attendance was seen. In other communities, such as our age-restricted communities, there were challenges, as not all residents had the technology needed to participate. Annual meetings, as we all know, can be a challenge in the “normal” world we knew. Elections have many moving parts, including multiple ways to submit your vote. The virtual world quickly limited these options. Additionally, during this time the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs (DCA) issued new regulations pertaining to elections. This added another interesting challenge to the annual meeting in the virtual world. How would these new regulations, such as the requirement for the ballot counting to be viewable by the membership, be addressed in the virtual world. For smaller communities, voting could take place the evening of the meeting. For larger com- munities, a separate meeting may have had to be scheduled

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work-life as they were forced into one space. The next step was to quickly figure out how we could still con- duct meetings, given the new environment.

“As an industry, we have stepped up to this challenge and written the handbook to operate within a pandemic.”

Association attorneys were contacted for recommendations on conducting virtual meetings. Most attorneys recom- mended adopting a resolution that would allow boards to conduct business virtually. Management companies, as well as managers, then needed to figure out: What platform to use? Who was covering the cost? How many

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