Nasty Owners at Open Board Meetings

No, we do not have a policy on conduct at meetings.

We expect those in attendance to be civil (civil as determined by the Board).
Those who are not civil are given one warning and on the second incidence, asked to leave.
If they refuse to leave, we recess the meeting and (since we meet in a directors home) the homeowner asks the individual to leave. If they refuse, the police are called by the homeowner to ask them to leave.

Per Merriam-Webster:

Civil - : polite but not friendly : only as polite as a person needs to be in order to not be rude

Oh, thanks, Barbara--we do post it 4 days in advance (my math error) and no owner has requested US mail delivery. And I'm afraid I made it sound like CA requires monthly board meetings, but it does not. It does require that they be open.

I'm thinking it will be brief, but probably on the flip side of the Agenda.

Right, Tim, I'm aware that we can resort to the activities you outline, e.g., ask them to leave, etc. and could have one of our security offers escort them out of the meeting room if they refuse to leave. We're hoping that a clear outline of what's acceptable will calm them down and, I hope shut them up.

.....I am surprised Davis-Stirling doesn't offer guidelines on how to handle this.......

Seems they do on everything else so why not this........LOL

Here are some links:

Dealing With Disruptive Behavior at Board Meetings

When Is It Time to Eject an Unruly Owner from an HOA Meeting?

How to Tame the Unruly Meeting

Running Effective Meetings with Disruptive Owners

Open Forum From Davis-Stirling (for John )

Kerry...What Jon said was funny.....LOL

At least you have people attend your meetings. We only have 4 quarterly meetings plus an annual meeting. No one shows up for the quarterly meetings and we have to beg enough owners to either attend or give a proxy so we have a quorom for the annual.

With that said, I am thankful that our meetings are not contentious. The board usually are in agreement with actions. The only real issue is with some changes to our ARC rules that were done 2 years ago. A particular couple (she was booted from the ARC committee) and the husband was on the board (but missed 2 of the last 3 quarterly meetings; he said his career was much more important to attend). We followed our established process and approved the changes. This caused the wife to go onto a tirade (not at any meetings but through an email and a flier campaign incuding a media press release). In the end, the changes went into effect and the husband lost his re-election to the board.

Kerry, good luck with dealing with your homeowners.

Thank you, Geno! Along with your insights, i just learned at one of the sites that Tim provided (I think) that at the second Offense--say yakking with a neighbor we're trying to conduct business, One of us directors will ask to note the 2nd warning in the minutes with the name of the offender.

I think this'll work well as our approved minutes now are included with our newsletter to those who receive it online--about 75% of our owners.

Oh, and I get your "troll" remark, too, Geno, but when these women buzz 10-15ft. away from us, we can hear them and they're distracting so, unlike on this thread, for instance, they're impossible to ignore. Other members of the audience have complained to me or 2-3 other directors and the PM between meetings.

I like your quote, Geno: "Constructive input is always welcome but what you are doing is disruptive."

I give up, PitA, what is HOPA?

Got that part JohnC, but our prez is sort of meek; she does use her gavel and does know how to preside. Imo, our VP, a younger male, former career marine and former police officer would only need to say a very few words and all would be well.

We're making progress on our list for the backs of agendas. Our new PM has fine background with a different MC and we're waiting for her input too.

Thanks, Jon, you may be right. I do think this issue, that, as I wrote, other owners complained about is easily solved. Just seeing if there were any additional actual ideas out there.

It is surprising given the generally courteous conduct of the Owners in attendance. Guess we were spoiled.

2012

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There's a fine line between owners' voicing their opinions and disrupting an HOA meeting or offending other owners so much that those owners see no point in attending future meetings. Here we discuss how you can determine when it's time to eject an owner from a meeting at your condominium or homeowners association.

Booting: It's a Last Resort

There's no question that evicting owners from an association meeting is a tough call. "I don't know there's any hard–and–fast rule," says Samuel "Sandy" Moskowitz, a partner at Davis, Malm & D'Agostine PC in Boston who represents 30–40 community associations at any given time.

It's also something you should consider a last resort. "It's an extreme remedy," says Raymond Daniel Burke, a principal at Ober Kaler, a law firm in Baltimore, who represents an average of 20 community associations. "There probably isn't any clear answer because the grounds for ejection are whether owners are being disruptive of the meeting process or abusive of the audience—and those are judgment calls. That's usually a matter left to the discretion to those in charge of the meeting."

What are your options for handling out–of–control owners? Here are a few suggestions:

•Use the rules of order to your advantage. "I've seen situations where there was a very contentious meeting, and the board called for a vote not to eject anyone but to close discussion," says Burke. "That's one means of ending a discussion without ejecting someone. You're not required to sit there interminably to listen to someone. Try to use the rules of order to handle the problem."

•Create a visible security presence. "For years, I attended an annual meeting of a 400–unit condo association where there was always a very vocal minority," says Moskowitz. "Usually, it was two or three unit owners who'd come and make outlandish allegations and be very disruptive to the point where the association began to bring in off–duty police officers. If a person got out of control by screaming and being disruptive, the president would say, 'We don't want to ask you to leave, but we want to continue the meeting. If your behavior continues, we're going to ask the police officer to remove you.'
"If that didn't work, usually if the police officer would go over and ask someone to leave, that person would leave, and he'd leave loudly," adds Moskowitz. "But nobody went to court to challenge the ejection. If owners were to challenge that and you were able to establish that they were so disruptive that you couldn't accomplish the business of the meeting, I think the court would ultimately support your having the owners removed."

•Take a good look in the mirror. "I've been to meetings that are total, total chaos," says Matthew Zifrony, who advises homeowners and condo associations at Tripp Scott, a Ft. Lauderdale law firm, and who's also served as the president of a 3,000–home association. "One association I've represented for over a year has me come to the meetings because there have been instances where the police have been called, and otherwise nothing gets done.
"I'm not saying I have a magical way to run meetings, so hire me," Zifrony adds. "But often I find that those running meetings don't know how to do it. I maintain that in 99 percent of these instances, the reason for the disruption is the poor way the meeting is run, and the board needs to fix that."

Zifrony recently ran a meeting at which an owner stood and screamed at the board. Board members whispered that Zifrony needed to shut the guy up, but he whispered back that it wasn't necessary—other owners were about to take care of the problem. "More and more people in the audience started telling him to sit down and even said, 'If you don't sit down, we're going to make you sit down,'" he recalls. "Once that person saw he was completely outnumbered, he sat down. You have to watch what's going on with everybody at the meeting, and I saw how people were reacting."

Ultimately, you may have to adjourn. "You may have to stop the meeting, take a good look in the mirror as to how the meeting was conducted, and take steps to make sure it's not run that way again," says Zifrony. "I'm not condoning a person's screaming. But what told that person he could act that way was how the meeting was run. Take a course in running a meeting and then if you still have to hire security for the next meeting, you'll know it's not how the meeting is run, but this one person."

Kerry, I think that should work (hopefully). I like all your points. You will have to keep us all posted if, once you send this notice out, works at your next scheduled meetings. And if Mabel shows up again to disrupt your meetings.

Hi Kerry,
I am wondering if you should add a statement along the lines of "If an audience member needs to have a private conversation with another party during a meeting then they will excuse themselves and exit the meeting so as to not cause distraction/disruption to the other attendees".

Housing for Older Persons Act (of 1995 ?)

Said act 'gutted' the Fair Housing Act of 1968 by permitting age discrimination in housing providing certain HUD guidelines were followed !

HOPA is what permits 55+ communities.

Yep, fact is stranger than fiction.

John they actually do: http://www.davis-stirling.com/MainIndex/OpenForums/tabid/1295/Default.aspx#axzz3ZZfjp0dx