The annual meeting, run by volunteers who have done it twice

The short answer: settle what the owners will decide and the count you need four weeks out, send the packet three weeks out, and chase only the missing doors after that.

Most annual meetings fail weeks earlier, at the kitchen table, when nobody can say what the owners will be asked to decide. The meeting itself is the easy part. Elect directors. Adopt the budget. Hear the one big question the board has been carrying. If a fourth decision appears, it should be because the year demanded it, not because the agenda was a drawer emptied onto a table.

Owners judge the association by this hour. They will forgive a plain room and a short agenda. They will not forgive discovering the budget at the meeting, or an election run from memory.

Week four: settle the decisions and the count you need, from your documents. Week three: the packet goes out, budget on one page, candidates named, proxy with a return path. Week two: remind the doors still missing, by name, not the whole list. Week one: the room, the roster, the count sheet. After: minutes drafted within days, adopted by name, posted where owners read them. What notice periods and voting rules bind you is your documents' question. General information, not legal advice.

• Week four: settle the decisions and the count you need, from your documents
• Week three: the packet goes out, budget on one page, candidates named, proxy with a return path
• Week two: remind the doors still missing, by name, not the whole list
• Week one: the room, the roster, the count sheet
• After: minutes drafted within days, adopted by name, posted where owners read them

The meeting record in Hoavik holds the agenda, the packet, the proxy count, and the minutes owners read afterward, on the same roster as the dues. The next board inherits the count, not a story about the count.