Abusive members

The board creates: reasonable rules for board meeting attendance; a procedure for addressing violations of these rules; and a fine schedule (if allowed by state law et cetera). The board gives all owners say 30 days notice of this rule (unless the covenants/bylaws/statutes say more time is required). Then per the procedure, formally warn the owner. If the owner continues, fine (per the procedure).

Some HOAs hire a security guard and let owners attending that they will be escorted out of the meeting if they disrupt it.

Also offer an "open forum" segment at the beginning and end of the board meeting. The rules for civil behavior still apply, but this open forum might help owners to feel they are being heard.

Does your board meeting agenda now have a time when owners may contribute? Or do they raise hands, at any time during the meeting and are permitted to speak? If the latter, that's the cause of this problem. At least two state permit ownrs to speak to any and item thy wish. Does Minn require this?

It's important to remember that we're talking about meetings of the Board -- owners are present SOLELY as observers.

But if they've been permitted to yak at any time, the first thing to do, with agreement by the Board, is to allow owners to speak only at at certain times. Some states require this open forum period. Does Minn.? I've long written here the value, imo, of 2 open forums--one at the beginning & one at the end.

Make this an agenda item at your next meeting. Normally this would be under New Business, but since that comes late on a meeting's agenda, the meeting chair should ask the board for its OK to deal with it first. Then:

"I move that owners may participate during board meetings only at an open forum at the beginning [or the board's choice] of our open board meetings." "Second"; "all in favor," etc. . After it's passed, the meeting chair should then say, "We shall have a handout prepared for the next open meeting about owner conduct during the meetings and during open forum."

If you'd like to see the Meeting Conduct rules that we have on the backs of every meeting agenda, I'm happy to paste it here, which I've done in the past.

My & Tim's post crossed. His approach looks very good to use especially if you need to meet before you can put together formal meeting protocol.

We've never had to do anything like that, but our various meeting chairs have a few times over the years singled out attendees who are "whispering" to one another to stop as the behavior distracts the Board while it's trying to conduct the business of the community. I have no doubt that in every case, the chair would have instructed the attendees to leave if they persisted.

I have definitely had a few very vocal owners attend our meetings that I presided over, mostly these were in my Ca. days. If you give them a chance to speak one at a time and once their time is over the president takes back the meeting and makes the point that any additional comments will have to wait till the last open comment section at the end of the meeting. I always like to have one at the beginning and the end, so people have a second chance. It is the board president who needs to take control of the meeting. If this person is not up to the task, then they should be removed, and the right individual should be given the role. I have always found that if you let them rant for the 3 minutes or less and then thank them for their comments whether they are good or bad they feel heard.

I appreciate all of your responses. Yes, we have an open forum portion of our meetings, she hijacks this portion of the meeting and also hijacks the portion when the board is conducting business. She does this by yelling over the top of every other voice. We cannot do zoom meetings because 50% of the people who live here don't have computers. I have thought of calling the police and now that I am president, perhaps I will. Minnesota law requires that homeowners are allowed at most meetings.