filling board seats, electing board officers

Hi,

I have been searching for several hours trying to find some authoritative reference to the following question.

when a condominium board has only 5 of 9 seats filled. Amongst those 5 there is no president no vice president no secretary. ( we do still have the treasurer).

And if the bylaws say the vacant seats SHALL be filled.

Is there a requirement somewhere that the board fill the vacant seats BEFORE they elect the officers.

Our board declined to fill the 4 open seats at the meeting this past week.(despite sending a notice that the board would be filling the seats at this meeting) but they went ahead and voted themselves into the open officer positions.
president , vp and secretary.

The parliamentarian even stated that he couldn't find a requirement of filling the seats before appointing the officers, but logically the by filling the vacant seats. the board is allowing all of the future board to vote on officers and also have an opportunity to be considered for an officer position.

The board said, they appreciated his opinion. however. they were going to go ahead and elect the officers . They said, if when we fill the vacant seats at a later date, the board will always have theoption of removing an officer etc..

Your opinion are always helpful and far reaching.

What would this discussion board be without you!

In my opinion no court will force a board to appoint directors that a board majority feels are unsuitable for service on the board.

I think your focus should be on the next election. If the board refuses to run an election, then focus on fixing this.

Personal opinion:

You have a functioning board now.

You need officers now.

Experienced board members are much more likely to know what they're doing than newbies, and thus more qualified to be officers.

In your board's place, I'd name the officers now. The only reason to wait would be if one of the newbies had skills that the board needed, in which case it would make sense to hold off until that person was appointed.

I think you could make a good argument that doing things this way is in the best interest of the association. More to the point, I've never seen language in bylaws that would prevent a board from doing so.

Officer positions are simply job descriptions. Officers don't have any more authority than non-officer directors, they just have more work to do (and blame to catch if things don't go as they should).

No forced labor? 😢

Sorry, but hard to resist ... a board should fill open board positions, if allowed to do so by state and/or bylaws.

But, if there are NOT enough volunteers, this OBVIOUSLY doesn’t work ... and, I don’t think it is possible to force folks to serve.

Laska continues, now, to burn our time.

Laska

A couple here know that you would be a pain in the butt in their HOA's and therefore are treating you with the same contempt.

Nah - this isn't contempt, IMO, this is simply folks who have been exasperated by ankle biting in organizations, expressing their beliefs in this circumstance.

I know how I would respond on my board to Laska's question - I would answer them directly. If the questions continued and they began to be distracting to the business of the board, I would attempt to cut them off. If Laska continued, I would attempt to support another at the next election. I would be clear about this to everyone.

If Laska threatened legal action, I would say I am sorry, but that we would see one another in court.

I'm guessing, but I think the board in question has simply had enough - enough talking, enough interaction with Laska - and, when Laska's actions continued, they sought some mechanism to allow them to continue to manage their association. Maybe the right one, maybe not.

If Laska is serious about continuing these interactions, an attorney should be hired to argue with the association's attorney.

Or, a recall election?

the combination of continued intentional ignorance of some board members and their desire to not have to really think too hard about anything, to me clearly suggests they need to get off the board.

I would volunteer to babysit if I didn't like kids.. geez.