HSVPOA Board Changes Meeting Policies

HSVPOA Officially Declares their Videos to be Official

By Cheryl Dowden, April 16, 2020

At the HSVPOA Annual Meeting on April 15, 2020, the Board passed Governance Committee recommended revisions to the Board and Committee Meeting Policies.

Board Director Nancy Luehring read the following proposed revisions to Chapter 1, Article 26, HSVPOA Committee Open Meeting Policy and Chapter 8, Article 3 HSVPOA Board of Directors Open Meeting Policy.

• Luehring: “The following statement will be read by the attending Board Member or other designated individual prior to the beginning of all official HSV Board and Committee Meetings. ‘Official recordings, videos, or transcriptions of HSV Property Owners’ Association Committee Meetings and/or Board Meetings will be done by authorized personnel only and can be viewed on the HSV Property Owners’ Association YouTube Channel and Explore the Village dot com. Any other recording, video or transcription of HSV Property Owners’ Association Committee Meetings and/or Board Meetings is not considered the official record of the HSV Property Owners’ Association Committee Meetings and/or Board Meetings.'”

• “Unless granted in their charter, standing committees, derivative sub-committees, and ad hoc committees have no decision making authority that binds the association and instead serve as advisory committees.”

Chair Erickson opened this motion up for Board discussion

Director Medica: “There is so much going on about Facebook and Google and if we ever had any lawsuits come up over that, is that one of the reasons we’re addressing this?”

Director Luehring: “We’re addressing this to clarify what is ‘official’ and what is ‘not official.’ Other social media sites could possibly be edited. Although maybe they’re not. I don’t know. But as far as marketing, people should be able to get the facts from an ‘official’ document created by the Property Owners’ Association.”

Medica: “I agree with that. What concerns me is there’s stuff, if stuff gets up on say Facebook or some of those others out there that I don’t even know about or ever use. They could be changed or something. I could understand why we want to be ‘official’ in this. If somebody wants to know something they should go to the POA website and not necessarily to an outside entity. Reviewing that, it could be bad. You know, if it was changed somehow.”

Erickson: “Very good. Thank you.”

Erickson: “Diana”

Podawiltz: “How do we do this? How do we implement this? How do we mark something ‘official’?

Luehring: “We mark it ‘official’ by stating this to begin with. If it’s recorded, it will be recorded by the POA. If it’s recorded by someone else, that ‘official’ disclaimer will be stated before the committee meeting or before the Board meeting.”

Luehring: “We’re hopeful that it also will be included in every charter for every committee.”

Director Campagna: “You know, Diana, we could easily put a line at the front of every video that could be edited into it, that this is the ‘official’ recording of the POA.”

CEO Nalley: “I was just going to say, our YouTube channel- the POA is the only person that uploads the video. And our YouTube channel says, ‘official.’ That’s how we mark it. We don’t mark each individual meeting video. But we only upload it to the official YouTube channel.”

Luehring: “And that was said a while ago.”

Podawiltz: “So is what this is saying is that if I’m the Board Member of a committee that before…so they call a meeting to order and the first thing I am supposed to do is read this statement, at every meeting?”

Luehring: “Yes. You or possibly the staff or possibly the chair. It’s, you know, a designated person or the Board Member.”

Podawiltz stated that ONLY the POA has the capability to upload POA committee and Board meeting recordings to the Official HSV POA YouTube channel or Explore the Village Website dot com. No one else can upload to those venues.

Campagna: “I don’t think it’s that we think someone is going to hack our channel and put their own personal recording up there, which could be of this or anything else. I think it’s to make sure that when people, which are allowed to come in and record these meetings if they so choose, want to put it on their own website or their own channel if they have one. It’s particularly not an ‘official’ document.”

Campagna: “Now to your point about saying it every meeting. First off, we are not recording every committee meeting in the first place. We don’t have people to do it and there’s not enough reason. And secondly, you can make some commonsense that if nobody is there recording anything, how important is it to say it.”

Luehring: “Unfortunately, that is not really what it says.”

Campagna: “I know that’s not the way it is written and it says it should be said.”

Luehring: “Because of transcriptions. Because they could be recording on their cell phone in their purse or whatever. So you know all of the documents should be officially done by the Property Owners’ Association.

Podawiltz: “I just think we are already doing it.”

Campagna: “Well, I see I think that… Here’s where I would disagree. People take things out of context. I am not pointing at anyone in particular because I can’t say that. I am saying in general. You see it in the news all the time. They take things out of context. Then they write editorials around it and that ends up on Facebook. It ends up on websites all over the country. It ends up on Nextdoor. It ends up on Facebook. They are [indecipherable]…First off, they shouldn’t be saying and if they are, they are misrepresenting it, that their comments are authorized by the POA. But there is no downside to this. We aren’t restricting anybody from doing exactly that, if they chose to do it. What we’re saying is though, this is our only ‘official’ document and recording.”

Luehring: “As an example, have you ever searched and found fifty different websites that say the same thing, but none of them are really the ‘official’ website? You could be going into [indecipherable word] land. I love that ‘official’ that is right next to Amazon or Lowes or Home Depot or any other website. In turn, this is the official document of the Property Owners’ Association as opposed to any other that’s out there.”

Campagna: “You know, you make an excellent point. It scares the devil out of me when I get these emails that says ‘C I T I,’ says there’s been fraud on your account and the reality is if I click on it, there will be fraud on my account because it is not Citibank.”

Podawiltz: “This is addressing a YouTube channel that the only way to put it on is if we put it on. It’s addressing the Explore the Village dot com; the only way to get into that website is through our access to it. Nobody else. We already have security devices on there that prevent other people from getting on to it. It just seems like, here is another rule. Here’s another regulation. And, I just think it is overreach.”

Campagna: “What’s the downside?”

Podawiltz: “I just think that it is a real PITA.”

Campagna: “It’s a real what?”

Podawiltz: “It’s a PITA, which is a pain in the you know what.”

Campagna: “So it’s a…I’m not trying to argue with you. It’s a pain in the fanny because we think our own recordings should be what’s the ‘official’ recordings?”

Podawiltz: “No. Because you got to make sure that…one other thing that you got to do before you start a meeting is you got to make sure you read this statement. I mean, that is required. If you think somebody sitting in that meeting that may be recording audio, video, whatever, you’re going to have to read that every time or you’ve violated the Bylaws or the Policies. And if you’ve violated the Policies and the Bylaws as a Board Director, you could be removed from the Board.”

Campagna: “I think that’s overreach.”

Podawiltz: “That’s what I said. It’s overreach.”

Erickson: “Any other conversation on this? Discussion?”

Luehring: “No. I think we’ve reached an impasse.”

Erickson: “Okay. Very good. So I am ready to call for a vote. The motion is to approve revisions to Chapter 1, Article 26, Hot Springs Village POA Committee Open Meeting Policy and Chapter 8, Article 3, Hot Springs Village POA Board of Directors Open Meeting Policy, as presented. All those in favor say yes. Those opposed. The motion passes 3 to 1. Thank you.”

Diana Podawiltz was the sole dissenter.

***

The Board holdovers wasted time on this issue at a Board meeting and changed our Governing Documents to force a statement to be read at every official meeting stating that this is an HSVPOA official document/recording. Absurd!

The simplest solution would be to insert four or five seconds of the HSVPOA logo at the beginning of the video along with a caption that states, “Official HSVPOA Document.”

Hot Springs Village People has not edited content from HSVPOA Board or Committee Meeting Videos except for one time when Arkansas State Representative, Richard McGrew asked us to beep over his personal telephone number. Other than this, all of the meeting recordings posted by Hot Springs Village People have been unedited.

Director Campagna and I recently had a telephone conversation and I told him that we do not edit videos (except for one exception which I mentioned above) and Tormey Campagna said he believed me.

Some of the Board’s conversation at the April 15, 2020 meeting appeared to reek of hypocrisy. We know that in the past, the POA has refrained from publishing a couple of their “official” videos.

Also, Director Luehring, seemingly irritated during a Let’s Talk Meeting, ordered the ‘official’ photographer to shut off the camera and didn’t have the recording restarted until I challenged her on this subject.

When the POA doesn’t publish a video or orders the camera to be shut off because they don’t like part of the content, would this be considered to be “editing” of a sort as they are controlling the narrative and withholding information from the community? Who is really doing the editing here?

We have the utmost confidence in the newly elected Board and know they will be transparent.

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Just for the record, this is not an HSVPOA official article, nor have we ever claimed that any of our comments were authorized by the HSVPOA. 😉

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