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Posted By KerryL1 on 07/03/2023 2:36 PM
LIW, these Monday meetings are, indeed, illegal. You may not even discuss board business let alone "decide!" Your board meetings must be open to owners who must be given the xx-hour notice that you wrote in your last post. That the chair phones directors one at a time, or your idea of "workshops" similarly are NOT legal workarounds. Owners must be able to see and hear the board's decision-making processes.
The workshops (well, only one workshop) were open to the Owners, and Owners did attend, and even participate in the one and only workshop that was held.
I don't know about Oregon, buy typically, you're on your own to try to persuade the rest of the Board to follow the laws. If your Board and HOA attorney get along well, s/he may be able to persuade the Board to stop acting illegally by having secret, hidden meetings that Owners cannot see and hear.
That way, the monthly meetings wouldn't go on for hours and hours. Your Board's or chair's excuse for breaking the law is: "That way, the monthly meetings wouldn't go on for hours and hours." Why would monthly meetings last so long???? Does your HOA have a lot of complicated items?
We have had a TUMULTUOUS last couple of years. Lot's and lot's and lot's of issues. Managed by an external 3rd party so-called property management company, and it was a nightmare. We ended our contract with them last month, and are trying to get back to our prior management model (internally hired, live on-site, management team).
You have about 100 homes in your HOA, but no community manager (here called property mgr. or PM). I suspect that's one of your problems.
We now have an on-site property management team back on-site.
Please tell us about the kinds of amenities and common area items that the HOA is responsible for. Pool? clubhouse? playgrounds? parks? Who manages, say, the landscapers? The pool guy? In other words, why do your meetings need to be so often?? Is it because directors do all of the work?
Pool, very small playground. We have a maintenance man, maintenance helper, landscaping contractor, and hired staff of cleaners (38 of the units participate in a 'rental pool' for short-term vacation rentals), as well as our newly hired hotel manager husband/wife team.
Who collects owners assessment payments? Who puts together a report for you directors every month about your expenditures to review at board meetings ? Do you have a web site for Owners? Are there any committees? Who makes architectural request decisions? Who sends notices to owners if they violate the rules?
Much like the 3rd party 'management' organization that was brought in for the last two years, management of HOA fees, assessment payments, reports and expenditures was also outsourced, an Owners on-line 'portal', etc., and that didn't go well either. Wrong company, just like the wrong management company. So this Board has been trying to 'right the ship', and there have been monthly meetings, which were just not enough to be able to make all the decisions that had to be made in a short 90 period of time (the length of time we had to provide to the prior management company to not renew our contract with them). We have a budget committeee (now), but that is the only committee at this time. We are a 100 year old property, and no architectural requests other than the maintenance of our current historic design. (We are not yet on the Historical Registry, but that is being discussed.) Violations were supposed to have been addressed by the prior 3rd party, but were not, so that will have to start back over again with the new on-site management team.