When during a Board meeting for Open Forum?

We're about to get monthly Board meetings going, and one of the regular items on the agenda will be an Open Forum to give any Member-Owner the opportunity to address the Board for up to three minutes (and just once per meeting).

Where I've seen this done (city council), it's been at the front-end of the meeting before any business. Someone has suggested having it later in the meeting so that those who speak have demonstrated a genuine interest by sitting through the business as they wait to speak.

Any thoughts on when the best time would be for this?

Is this something required by your by-laws or state law, or something that you are doing to be considerate?

We do not have an open forum session in our board meetings. Unlike city council, we are volunteers who spend our personal time working on HOA business. I listened to one school board meeting and the open forum was a waste of the school board members time. More importantly, as volunteers, we get to choose what we work on. A homeowner who has an idea that they would like the Board to consider should bring a proposal including an offer of their personal time to see the project happen. If they do have a complete proposal, we can put them on the agenda and the Board can authorize the expenditure if their proposal makes sense.

As volunteers, you do not want to be put in the position where homeowners express opinions and takes votes on how the board should spend their Saturday afternoons.

Our meetings are open to homeowners, but except for my wife, we have none that choose to attend. I like it that way.

We do ours at the end.

Although I admit our meetings are pretty informal and people can speak on the topic being discussed

All good input here - thank you.

I'll note that Ohio HOA law (https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-5312.04) says, "(F) No owner other than a director may attend or participate in any discussion or deliberation of a meeting of the board of directors unless the board expressly authorizes that owner to attend or participate."

To that end, and because not only do I personally value transparency but there's also some serious trust issues here that need addressed, I've gotten at least one other Board member to agree to allowing Owners to attend for the purpose of observing and to the Open Forum agenda item. It's my opinion that this meets the "expressly authorizes" requirement of the Ohio law.

Needing a security officer to hang around? My, the more I read, the more I appreciate how comparatively small my challenges are - lol.

I think many associations would prefer to put the open forum at the end so that it doesn't end up interfering with board business.

-- I am with others who say, yes, have an open forum segment at every board meeting.

-- I believe the conventional wisdom on the net is that open forum segments at board meetings help owners have more trust.

-- I agree that the Board has the right to recognize whomever and let her or him speak. If one form this takes is a designated meeting segment where owners are allowed to speak on anything HOA related, then I think this is great.

-- I agree with having a period at the beginning and a period at the end where owners are permitted to speak.

-- Owners at times to raise legitimate issues which a board might want to either (1) add to its agenda for the next meeting or (2) have its manager troubleshoot right away.

-- Rules should be set for the open forum segment. Like time limits; statements must be HOA related; please be prepared to cite the sections of the governing documents that support any claim of yours; civility always.

Having a time for an owner to speak/ask questions is a sign of transparency and the right thing to do. We do not have a published BOD Meeting Agenda so we cannot hold someone to speak to an agenda item. Typically people want to speak to get something off their chest or ask questions about something. Regardless of when you let the speak, never feel the BOD must/does have an answer. If unsure about an answer just say the BOD thanks you for the information and we will consider it.

At our Annual Meeting we have an open Q&A session at the end of the meeting.

Sigh--it's not that I'm SO busy, just slow. We experience none of th problems that Henry imagines his HOA would have. IMO, key is a clear agenda with no other topics permitted. And clear guidelines for Open Forum. Henry's state actually is Washington and I don't know if open forum is required there.

As in many states CA requires that board meetings be open and that there be an Open Forum at every board meeting. Our 200+ unit condo towers sees about 30 Owners attending every month. We hold Open Forum at the beginning and at the end of open meetings.

Some might say, "but the 2nd Open Forum is too late--decisions have already been made!" Still about once a year, an Owners will state why the decision seems misguided or perhaps missed something important. hat Owners or another will ask the board to please "reconsider the decision." this sometimes has led to a board member motioning to reconsider and the Board agreeing. A new discussion ensues and sometimes, a different decisions has been made

Agendas are required in CA to be posted 4 days ahead of board meetings. The Board, per CA state, may not discuss or decide on anything else unless the Board determines it's an urgent matter. Agendas also are available online. On the back of the agenda, there is a Conduct outline for board meetings. These also are handed out at in-person meetings. Currently, our meetings are hybrid with both in-person & Zoom.

We originally composed it because 2-3 women attendees sat together & constantly buzz-buzzed amongst themselves. Very annoying. This handout stopped the behavior. It's mainly useful for Open Forum. The Prez allots 5 minutes for Open Forum and the rarely last that long.

Because of it, we have no problems of longwinded or whiny Owners. As advised by syndicated columnist, K. Richardson on HOA matters, All Open forum remarks are asked one after the other; directors take notes. The prez closes Open Forum and the relevant director or PM responds to each owner's remarks in turn. This totally avoids the back & forth that can occur between an Owner & a director or the PM.

BOARD MEETING CONDUCT

We welcome homeowners as observers of the Board of Directors meetings. During the discussion and votes about agenda items, only those at the conference table may speak. Please remain silent so that we are able to hear one another and conduct our community’s business.

We invite your comments about the Board’s agenda items or other related topics at the beginning of every board meeting during our Open Forum. We hold a second Open Forum at the end of the board meetings for your additional input.

During Open Forum:

Raise your hand to be recognized.

State your name, unit # and tower.

Express your topic in concise, clear terms.

Convey only one topic each time you’re recognized to speak.

Limit your remarks to two minutes.

Never interrupt others while they speak.

As A Reminder:

Ideas for improving XXX or concerns about Board policy are acceptable.

Berating any individual director, homeowner, or manager will not be tolerated.

We ask that maintenance items be reported to management outside of meetings.

Please realize that the Board or Management may not be able to respond to your Open Forum remarks without research. Board deliberation or votes on non-agenda items, per Calif. Civil Code 4920, cannot occur on the spot. The Board will consider these for a future agenda.

Thank you for your interest in our shared community!

Kerry,

No, open forum is not required during our meetings by either our CC&Rs, by-laws, or state law. We do take comments by e-mail and if anyone sends these in they are distributed to all board members for review prior to the meeting. If pertinent to the meeting agenda, written comments are shared during the meeting.

We had open forum last fall during a major debacle over an issue that blew up, because I felt that homeowners needed to know that we listened to them. We did but the meeting ran long and the verbal comments were no more valuable than the written comments but took 10x longer. After then I realized no more open forum and I created a new meeting format that runs more efficiently.

Homeowners are welcome to attend our meetings. I don't discourage it. However, the demographics of our community are different than yours. For one, we are single family homes and not a condo. More importantly, many of the people in your building are retired and maybe are more interested in attending meetings. Most of the adults in our community have children at home and are busy driving their kids to sports games, making dinner for family, laundry for a big family, or the like...so meeting attendance is low priority for them. My perception is that as long as we do a good job and make the right decisions, no one has a desire to attend our meetings.

I have mixed feelings on whether I want homeowners there or not. The downside is that we talk fairly freely about our community and having homeowners there would stifle the conversation as we can't talk as freely with homeowners present. The upside is there would be more appreciation, and perhaps more volunteers, for the work we do if people sat through a meeting to listen to our discussion and decision making.