BOD versus officers

Our association elects 3 people for the BOD and they call it electing officers. Our by-laws talk about only the president has to be on the BOD and the other officers are chosen by the BOD. Is this the correct way to handle having a BOD? Should all 3 BOD's be officers and noone else from the HOA?

Charles - print the bylaw here that you quote. We can't help out without seeing it.

You can call it anything you like. What it is is what your documents say it is. If your documents say that members elect the directors (or board members) and the board elects the officers, then that's what it is. The fact that the board elects the their own members to be the officers, as is ofen done, doesn't change anything. You can call it electing officers, because in the end, that's what happens, but you are really electing directors.

BTW, I don't like 3-member boards. Mind you, I don't see anything wrong with that and many HOAs function perfectly fine with 3-member boards. I believe the minimum board size should be five members. The problem I have with 3-member boards is that there is no difference between a simple majority and a 2/3 majority. Some bylaws, and Robert's Rules, stipulate that certain actions require a 2/3 vote rather than a simple majority, the rationale being that a 2/3 majority is more difficult to achieve. Since there's no difference with a 3-member board, that concept is lost. With a 5-member board a simple majority is 3 votes in favor, whereas a 2/3 vote requires at least 4 out of the 5 members to be in favor (3/5 is less than 2/3).