“We hit all our points!”
“We’ve completed all our virtual AGMs now for the year,” said Diane Rouleau, RCM, OLCM and Assistant Property Manager with Freure Property Management Ltd. Diane, a 10-year+ RCM, along with the Property Manager, manage six properties for Freure in the Kitchener-Waterloo area. A seventh property will be added from the developer in June. “Because we take on properties to manage directly from the developers, the whole condominium ownership is an education process for new owners and tenants.”
They began the search for a virtual meeting provider later in 2020 and, after conducting interviews, selected CondoVoter. “Our corporations each created a ‘virtual meetings and electronic voting bylaw’ and these were passed by a majority of units,” she explains. The bylaw will continue to allow the corporations to conduct their AGMs and electronic voting virtually.
When reflecting on all the recently completed virtual meetings Diane said, “It’s been awesome! The moderators were fantastic. All CondoVoter staff have been lovely to deal with. They’re well-versed and keep our meetings on track. Even our seasoned directors love them [virtual meetings].”
In recent months, CondoVoter tweaked several of its features and added new ones to its services. One of Diane’s favourite features has been the Management Portal. “I get to see which units have pre-voted and when I’ve hit quorum. Once I know this, I can breathe easy. It’s a relief.”
She also allows that meeting pre-registration is a great help. “We’ve been able to achieve 75% participation with virtual meetings. Sometimes we’ve only made 25% participation with in-person meetings.”
Diane has been pleased with the ease of use with virtual meetings that help make owner attendance and participation easier. “Some owners I know, especially those who work shifts, have even been able to log-in to attend the AGMs from their place of employment.” To date, Diane has not come across an issue with their older demographic owners not being able to attend virtual meetings. “Last year perhaps only two out of 64 owners at one corporation didn’t have computer access. All our owners are quite tech-savvy.”
She explains a number of other benefits, especially for managers. “As a property manager I find virtual meetings to be a ‘safer environment’. I still recall in horror an in-person meeting when police had to be called,” she adds with a huge sigh. “With virtual meetings there seems to be more control over speakers and less opportunity for expressing anger or negativity.”
“I’ve also found that while in-person meetings have sometimes run up to 2.5 hours, we can complete all the obligations of an AGM in one hour. There are fewer questions from the floor. Shorter meetings, being more efficient, are also great when working from home.”
Lengthy in-person meetings, at least for now, seem like a distant memory. “With the security of CondoVoter as our third-party provider, they keep us on track and we can hit all the agenda points we need to.”
