HOA Executive sessions

Simon,
I know of no place either in the HOA 720 Statutes and the Not For Profit Corp Statutes 617, under which we are Incorporated that state or use the term "EXECUTIVE" meeting. All meetings of the Board are required to be open to the membership except------ (from 720;303 a & b)

a) A meeting of the board of directors of an association occurs whenever a quorum of the board gathers to conduct association business. All meetings of the board must be open to all members (except for meetings between the board and its attorney with respect to proposed or pending litigation where the contents of the discussion would otherwise be governed by the attorney-client privilege.) The provisions of this subsection shall also apply to the meetings of any committee or other similar body when a final decision will be made regarding the expenditure of association funds and to meetings of any body vested with the power to approve or disapprove architectural decisions with respect to a specific parcel of residential property owned by a member of the community.

(b) Members have the right to attend all meetings of the board and to speak on any matter placed on the agenda by petition of the voting interests for at least 3 minutes. The association may adopt written reasonable rules expanding the right of members to speak and governing the frequency, duration, and other manner of member statements, which rules must be consistent with this paragraph and may include a sign-up sheet for members wishing to speak. Notwithstanding any other law, the requirement that board meetings and committee meetings be open to the members is inapplicable to meetings between the board or a committee and the association's attorney, with respect to meetings of the board held for the purpose of discussing personnel matters.

But several of your discussions that you want to have would fall under a closed meeting for the Board. Greivances and fines are done with a meeting by the fining or enforcement committee if you have one,, as well as policy. Those are open meetings. When discussing delicate issues such as delinquent or non compliant members, we give each case a reference number so that the members names are not openly discussed before the attending membership.

So, in Florida all meetings must be open to the membership and there is no such thing as a executive session? I ask only because we have some board members that are not kept abreast of all legal issues and can't be openly discussed in front of the homeowner's. Therefore, should we number all of our legal cases, fines etc.. and then just refer to them by case number? What if we are in the litigation process with them but do not need the lawyer at that time to discuss the case with him? Alot of these homeowners already know the offending parties and the lawyer says not to give out alot of information, he really offers us no solution except to pay for a conference call involving himself.