Questions concerning Board Actions

I am currently the treasurer on a board in Florida. At our annual meeting in February, a member requested specific information regarding what steps we were taking to pursue monies owed us by the developer. The development was turned over to us in early 2006 and the person asking the questions was treasurer at that time but gave up the position because she was tired of doing it (2 yrs). Because of things I believe I read on this website, I stated we were in discussions with our attorney and thought we were unable to answer any further questions due to confidentiality issues. She has subsequently sent the board an email asking for the name of the developer's attorney and wants to be kept updated on all our actions. We had requested that dog owners pick up their pets waste and now she is complaining about cats. The list can go on and on. Needless to say, we want to do what is right. What are we obligated to advise all owners and what must we not say? This person has everyone intimidated by her constant concerns and has actually informed us it is time to trim our trees, etc. when no other owner questions anything. What can we do and what can we say?

Thank you for your response. She has asked to be CC'd when we contact our attorney to respond to her questions. We don't want to spend money to get our attorney to respond to her questions. We actually have a regular attorney and now we have another attorney who has helped fine-tune the by-laws we are trying to get. He has advised us we need to now hire a collections attorney for the developer which we have not done yet. We are trying to get by-laws in place first. As soon as we mention collection attorney, I know we will be inundated with questions, and I certainly would want to know what was going on as an owner as well, but can we legally provide all the particulars? As soon as we say "Owner Mr X owes over $10000", everyone will know who we are referring to. Is that okay?

Diane,
She no longer is a Board member. Any information between the Board and the association attorney is restricted to members under the "inspection" Statute, in other words, she is NOT privy to that information.

And where does think that she can be cc'd? Kind of pushy I would say. Just inform her that the Board is under advisement from the association attorney that specific information is not available at this time and when it is released for publication, she, along with all other members will be notified. You can tell the members that there are X number of delinquencies which are being prepaired for collection and that the Board will notify her, along with the other members when there is something to publish. She needs to know that she is not more privledged than other members of the association. Just take charge of this no matter how much wind that she blows.

Jackie,

In AZ, that would be a violation of our open meeting law. If CA has such a law I would certainly check it out to see what issues can be discussed in a closed session (confidential matters).

Jackie,

IMO, a member shouldn't be able to ask the PM if a particular neighbor received a violation notice and for what; but that member could ask if violation notices have been sent for the cars seen parked on the street.