HOA and ORNR

To start with, I don't believe I am familiar with the ORNR Rules of Roder.

I think the acronym is R Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised.

Many HOAs' Bylaws require that members meetings, e.g., the annual meeting and election, must abide by RONR or some other accepted parliamentary procedure. At least one state, Conn. requires them for Assn. board meetings too. There may be others.

I think your Board can adopt RONR for board meetings. But why in the world does the Board want to make board meetings more complicated and boring???? What is the alleged benefit?

I am new to the board and I am now seeing that the board is hiding the notes/funds etc... I want to point this out but according to RONR I cannot.

The by-laws do not state anything about RONR-- we are in Missouri and the HOA is non-profit and the statute does not say anything.

I just want to let the members know we are using the RONR and it was not voted on.

RORN has its benefits, but it also has some things that strike me as complication for its own sake. I also think that RORN doesn't guarantee transparency - any system can be gamed by creative and motivated stinkers.

There are other ways to conduct business meetings, such as parliamentary procedure. I bet many of us have spent chunks of our professional lives sitting in meetings that didn't follow any "brand name" rules but which nonetheless were professional and got the job done. I'm a big advocate of effective simplicity. I also dislike tying a board's hands unless doing so provides some obvious benefit that can't be achieved any other way (or if state law requires it). It's possible to overthink this.

One of the issues with Robert's Rules is that they may conflict with the CC&Rs and By-Laws. For example, I believe that Roberts Rules state that the President does not vote at a large meeting. But for HOAs, the President is also a homeowner and thus entitled to a vote. Following RONR would violate the CC&Rs / By-Laws in this case.

I believe the board had a meeting and voted on using the RONR method. The board did not bring it to the members to vote on.

I assumed the board needs to get approval from the voting members not just the board members

As I wrote way above, the Board can use RONR. This is a simple rule and doesn't need Owners' votes. But, again, WHY does the Board want this complication?

Is the Board's decision to use RONR in meeting minutes? What does the use of RONR, or not, have to do with "transparency?" Were you on the board when this vote occurred?

Often the powers (an obligations) of the Association via the Board and the powers of Owners are in your CC&Rs (vs. your Bylaws).

So other readers won't be misled, it is not correct that RONR states presidents may not vote at a "large meeting." I don't know how MichaelT is defining "large meeting," but RONR refers, if I recall correctly, the "assembly," i.e., in our case here, the Board would need to be large, e.g., more than 12 for the prez to not vote.

Ah Ha! Your Board might be proceeding illegally by discussing and voting on things in a closed meeting (also called executive session) rather than in an open meeting that owners may attend.

But I don't know MO laws on this. Do your Bylaws say anything about "executive session?"

Executive session matters always are confidential and no one on the Board may reveal the contents unless the whole a board approves. There is no need for RONR to make ex. session confidential.

Missouri has not HOA statute.

Missouri's Nonprofit Corporation statute has no requirement that board meetings be open to owners.

If the Bylaws require that board meetings be open to the owners, then this board is breaking the law. But from past experience here with Missouri HOAs, I think there's a good chance the bylaws do not require that board meetings be open to owners.

As for talking about board meeting topics with owners, where board meetings are closed to owners, certain topics may be freely discussed. Others should not be freely discussed.

Andrea, you are getting a crash course in HOA/COA law here. I recommend keeping your questions very specific and quoting verbatim from your HOA's bylaws often. For the bests advice, answer all questions asked of you.