two questions about Illinois townhouse assn.

Check your documents - they should state what's necessary to amend them. In many cases you may find a requirement of 75% or 1005 agreement from the homeowners to get it amended. The documents may also spell out what constitutes a meeting and the homeowners' right to attend those meetings.

The working meetings can get tricky because even if you aren't voting on specific issues, you're still discussing Association business and homeowners have a right to listen to the proceedings to understand how and why the Board made its decisions. You're probably better off not having such meetings, otherwise you get into accusations of the board making decisions in secret.

In most cases the only time the board should be having executive sessions (meetings where ONLY board members attend) is when issues such as personnel matters, lawsuits or discipline against a board member are to be discussed. Your documents may also address these sessions as well.

WE're currently working on amending our CCRs (which we've been trying to do since 2006!) Recently, I attended a CAI (Community Associations Institute) meeting during which one of our attorneys (it was a panel discussion) suggested that one way to change documents is to do it gradually. For example, if limiting renters is the issue, put that matter to a vote as well propose a vote on another amendment that would allow changing the CCRs with a smaller percentage of owners, say 75 or even 51%. Everyone would still have to vote on this (becuase the current CCRs are still in effect), but once you change the approval percentage, it may be easier to get certain changes made. That amendment could even state that voting is limited to owners in good standing (those current in all). Otherwise, your current documents may allow everyone to vote, even those who owe thousands of dollars in delinquencies.

Maxine:

to the question on changing covenants, the answer is actually in your covenants. There should be a clause which spells out the steps and votes needed to change them. Ours say 2/3's of all lots are needed to change.

As to your working meetings, check your state statutes. for example up until 2011 Kansas HOA's werent required to have open meetings so we coudl do whatever we wanted. Now we have to have open meetings and we have to give notice to our members of these meetings. In our case we could still have "workshops" but we would have to notify members and allow them to attend if needed.