Can President spend money without approval of board?

Well it depends on the situation... From my own experience I've found lawyers do charge for various services differently. Those may include consultation, email correspondence, or writing a letter etc.. Not all consultations are free. So could it be that the lawyer sent a bill and the President did not know it was a chargeable situation? Could have been a mistake not understanding how lawyers work and charge. I didn't know it cost me $28 for an email or a phone call.

Well, the bylaws say the president with the approval of the board can spend up to XYZ, anything over XYZ must go to the community.

He spent to the dollar what he could spend without bringing a community vote. But the treasurer said "The check was written as it was the cap limit on what could be written before bringing it to the community and that it was approved by (president). Treasurer did not say it was approved by the board.

If the majority of the board does feels the president is not doing a good job, they can elect a new president. If most of the board is ok with how the president is doing things, most likely nothing will change.

Now, that would be micromanaging.

I think you answered your own question. Lacking majority board approval, no he wasn't supposed to do that according to your by-laws.

Since your board didn't approve the expenditure, the president was wrong, and the Board is wrong to let him get away with it.

sounds like you're not on the board, Gary?

Transparency is always the best way to go. With rare exception, expenditures are approved by board vote. The exceptions are calls for service when something is necessary. As president, I want the board to be aware of, and approve, money being spent.

Did the HOA or did the Board make a motion? Unless I am wrong, the community doesn't vote at Board meeting, Board members do.

I see where people want to vote on something that is already in a budget. Let's say you a $10K line item for legal, would you want the Board or community to approve a $500 expenditure for a lawyer?

Currently, an HOA I manage is going through a series of repairs, which have a line item in their annual budget of $30K. The Board had a $1000 limit on any expenditure I can approve without a Board vote. If the repair is over $1K it gets approved at the monthly Board meeting, under that, I approve after informing them.

ALL financial information involving any of my HOA's is available to the Board 24/7 through each association's secure web portal.

Don't know, as there is issues going back and forth between the Board approving something and the community. Someone needs to get a grip, anything over $75.00 would require a community vote in Gary's opinion. Count me out.

Ours is set at 500.00 by the boards approval. I think that it should be lower.

The board somehow manages to have around 9000 in the bank account at all times.

But I'm just working this backwards, I'm convincing people not to pay the voluntary fee & that way the board will realize since they do not help us with our deed restricitons , we wont help them with their "requests for free money"..

Every place is unique so if a low limit spending cap on the president works for you then that's great. I'm in a 100 home HOA and the association owns considerable common property. We have detailed accounting and financial procedures that were written by a former owner who was a CPA. The board approved them about 5 years ago and we've been adhering to them ever since. Are they perfect? No, but they're comprehensive and workable.

Every expense has to fit into one of our budget categories and there are 3 different kinds of expenses, not including emergencies. The president has the authority to spend up to $3,000 without board approval so long as the money has been budgeted in advance. Between 3 and 5 thousand requires 3 board members to sign off on. Anything over $5,000 that's not a recurring expense has to be approved by a board majority at a meeting. By and large we haven't seen a need to updated the spending thresholds.

The president earlier this year circumvented the procedures by splitting a pet project up into individual parts each costing less than $3,000 and then personally approving each expense. This was despite clear wording in the procedures that forbids doing exactly that in order to get around the limits. In any case, that person is no longer the president because of unrelated circumstances. Most worrying: Despite the clear violation of the spirit and the letter of our procedures, no one really cared that they were being violated.

If we required the board to vote on every expenditure over $75 our meetings would be 4 hours long.

(Not sure if I should start a new thread, but thought it would fit into this discussion so here goes...)

We have an incorporated cooperative association. Our president went to the attorney without getting a board vote and ran up a $700 bill. The board didn’t even know about it until the Treasurer was asked to approve payment. The bill was paid to avoid getting taken to court, then the other board members removed him from office and appointed someone else to serve as President. He is not being cooperative regarding reimbursement, so how do we get the shareholder’s money returned to them? Our documents are silent on the matter of expenditures and expenditure limits (they are 30 years old).

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

Your documents may grant the president authority to handle certain business matters that cost up to a certain threshold. Also...what's common sense in this case? Is the board investigating a matter and the $500 fee gets the whole board the answers it requested of the president? If so......

Whether allowed or not, in my experience, it's best to call a meeting or await the next business meeting to handle HOA business so people have the option to observe and offer feedback. Make that effort and your dues payers will, at least, respect your approach even if they greatly disagree on the policy.