Condo Media - December 2017 - 52

The Region

NEW HAMPSHIRE

A Year Later

Common Questions About the
2016 Condo Statute Amendments
[by Dean Lennon, Esq.]

The wholesale changes made to
the NH Condominium Statute-
NH RSA 356-B-courtesy of House
Bill 353 continue to raise many
practical questions from clients.
As of this writing, the bill has reached
its first birthday and board members
and managers are having difficulty
interpreting and implementing some of
the new requirements. This difficulty is
not at all surprising since many of the
provisions are confusing and subject to
differing opinions amongst lawyers. The
purpose of this article will be to discuss
some of the common questions and issues that are consistently popping up.
BUDGET RATIFICATION
Questions on passing a budget are
easily the most common. Almost invariably these questions relate to "owner
ratification" of the budget. While the
2016 Amendment does use the word
ratification, the text of the statute does
not actually require owner ratification-rather, it requires owners to have
veto power over the board's proposed
budget. Veto versus ratification sounds
like the same thing, but really, it's quite
different in practice. If there is no veto,
the budget is ratified.
Let's assume a board passes a budget,
sends the proposed budget to the
owners, and then has a meeting on the
budget within 10-60 days, all as now
required. At the meeting, only 15 of the
100 owners show up and this amount
is far short of our hypothetical condo's
quorum requirement of 34 owners.
Here, a vote should be taken to comply
with the statute, but the budget will

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CONDOMEDIA

automatically become ratified since
two-thirds of all owners must vote down
a proposed budget. The two-thirds vote
simply cannot be achieved by the 15 percent of the owners in attendance. If the
statute truly required ratification, the
failure to achieve a quorum would make
ratification impossible. But, as you can
now see, the owners did not need to ratify the budget; rather, it became ratified
by the owners not vetoing the budget by
a two-thirds vote.
MEETING NOTICES
One of the virtues of the 2016 Amendments was that management can now
send all notices, including annual meeting notices, to the ownership via email,
regardless of what is required in the
condo's governing documents. Whereas
ABC Condo may have required certified
mail in the past for notices-a huge
expense for any condo-now that same
condo can send annual meeting notices
via email to the ownership. If an owner
does not have an email address, or
chooses not to provide one, management can send notices via regular mail
or hand-delivery.
To acquire the email addresses for
all owners, associations should send a
census form out each year (or when a
new owner moves in) requesting basic
information from each owner, including
an email address. Boards may consider
affirmatively asking owners to choose
email or regular mail as their default
method of receiving notices or, alternatively, make email the default method
unless the owner opts out by checking
a box. Notice via email is a huge time

and money saver for management and
associations alike.
QUARTERLY MEETINGS
The 2016 Amendments require an open
meeting of the board at least once per
quarter. At such meetings, owners must
have a reasonable opportunity to comment on association matters. This does
not mean that an owner can stand up
and unleash a 15-minute verbal tirade
on the "evil" board, but it does mean
anyone who wishes to make a statement
or ask a question about association
business should be given the chance.
The term "reasonable opportunity" is
open to interpretation and is very factspecific. If 20 people are lined up to say
something at a meeting, it is simply not
practical to give everyone 10 minutes,
but all should be given the opportunity
to speak. Limiting the time given to
owners is reasonable. If not, it would
result in incredibly long meetings.
Some attorneys interpret the quarterly meeting requirement to mean
that all board meetings must be open.
The idea is that if the board only meets
four times per year, they all must be
open, but if the board meets 10 times
yearly, all 10 must be open. Attorneys
interpreting the section this way key in
on the words "at least once a quarter."
However, my interpretation of this section is that unless your condominium
docs say otherwise, only four meetings
per year-once each quarter-must be
open to the ownership. The remainder
can be closed.
Additionally, the same section of the
statute (37-c) provides an out for boards
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