Fairly new to this

Any advice will be greatly appreciated. I am fairly new to my BOD. On Tuesday we have our annual meeting. 3 member of our community have done nothing but cause problems from day one (2005 or prior). Some of the things this group wants is:

1. Fire the property manager
2. Fire the BOD's
3. Take over running the s/d themselves.

A little background:

One of these 3 (we will call him "Roy", was the board president in 2006. He was not re-elected because he tried to change covenants to suit himself (ie: allowing flags/man made lawn ornaments, ets...)so he would be in compliance with the covenants.

The second of these 3 (I will call her "Pam") has retained an attorney (her son) who sent us a letter of representation alleging mismanagement of funds, among many other allegations (all untrue). She has gone to our property manager twice so far to copy more than 300 invoices from 2007 (trying to find mismanagement of funds) and is going back this week again to make more copies. BTW, this attorney's letter is asking us to resolve the issues before he brings a lawsuit against every board member, past and present, including Roy...who is actually her buddy and was with her both times to demand to see and copy records.

The third one (I will call him Jerry)is also part of the "group". Although not as bad as the other 2, he loves to try to get the homeowners riled up over nothing. Jerry has run for the board several times and has yet to be elected but constantly interrupts meetings.. It is RUMOURED that Jerry and Roy lived in the same s/d in Fla and fired the property manager. The s/d went into bankruptcy.

At the last annual meeting, Jerry nominated Roy to run for the board, and then Roy nominated Jerry. Then Jerry stood up and withdrew his nominatin and asked all memebers to instead vote for "Ron", who is Pam's husband. Then Roy stood up and withdrew his nomination and announced for everyone who was going to vote for him to please vote for Ron as well. Needless to say, Ron did not have the majority and lost to an existing board member. At the end of the meeting, both pam and ron accused us of tampering with the votes, even after we allowed them to count them (just to shut them up!)

Jerry, Roy and Pam have been going door to door all week to:
1. collect proxies for the annual meeting (one elderly homeowner was told by this group that her proxy was needed to vote for a "beautification" project (no such thing) and another was told her proxy was needed because the board was going to raise the annual assessments. )
2. tell the homeowners the managment company needs to be fired and the board needs to handle the day to day operations (we have 18 months left on the contract)
3. spreading lies about the current board.

Two of the 5 board members were elected. The other 3 were appointed within the last year because this group has run off a total of 5 members in the past 12 months. 2 of the positions are up for re-election and both board members are running again. We have received no other nominations (we got one, but he withdrew after seeing how this group acted). Our president is not strong, doesn
t understand Roberts rules of order (although I gave him a copy) and speaks in very heavily accented english which makes him hard to understand.

Our property manager (whom we all like and respect and was hired by Roy in 2005) has advised us to announce at the begining of the meeting that this meeting is simply an informational annual report to the homeowners and no motions will be accepted from the floor, other than nominations for the 2 available positions and subsequent vote. No proxies have been submitted to us or the property manager to verify in advance(because I don't trust them to have gotten them legally) so we will not accept any at the board meeting (and this was noted in the annual meeting notice that went out to all of the homeowners).

I guess my question is: Can the meeting be handled this wasy? How do we go about shutting down this group? I know it will be a free for all, as it almost became last year until our (then) very strong president shut them down (he has since been chased away from the board like so many before him. We plan on having a sargeant at arms to eject anyone who is unruly.

Any advice you can give me is greatly appreciated. This is just the tip of the iceberg with what we are dealing with. No wonder nobody wants to run for the board or serve on committees!
BTW, there are 200 homes in our s/d and we are in ga. Sorry for the typos....I just got a new notebook and the keys are very small, and my nails are very long...

We are doing just about everything that you suggest. We forwarded the attorney's letter to the homeowners, so they can all be on the same page. No proxies have been given to us to verify. They will be turned in at the meeting (I am sure)even though it is stated that they had to be returned by 3/1, but we will not be able to verify them at that time/ How we can accept them when we know they were given to them under false pretenses.........

We have hired a police officer to attend the meeting (last year our officer didn't show up). I know her attorney is a bully, and has to take off from his "regular job" to go to the pm's office. He doesn't even work for a law firm...he's just blowing smoke! She is welcome to come in and copy any record she wants, for which our PM charges her .30 per page. She spent $100 last week...... I don't know what she is looking for. For every invoice there is a check..all spent as directed by the board.

The sad part is that nobody wants to be involved because of this handful of people. I just spent several hours searching them online and found out that one has been arrested for theft and battery (of his wife!). It shows you what kind of people I am dealing with. Actually, the same guy physically pushed past me at the last meeting when we wouldn't let him in because the door weren't officially opened yet. He is the biggest bully going, and I refuse to let him bully me...however, I am almost at the point where I will throw my hands up in the air because I have had enough!

Any other advice?????????????

We are currently checking with out attorney, however, GA law requires that the proxy be dated........and we inadvertently left off a place to put the date, so those proxies may not be valid. Hopefully we will hear back from the attorney shortly.

With the short amount of time left before your meeting, you have a very volatile group to deal with. I had a similar situation with my board (in GA) when I was elected to replace the president of the HOA. You have to control the meeting and we did it by:
1. all attendees must be paid in full for all assessments and fines (or they are not admitted as they are not members in good standing)

2. Furnish a complete agenda prior to the meeting and at the sign up table.

3. At the sign in table, as they are validated, include a statement that Robert's rules are strictly followed. (which the must sign)

4. Failure to act accordingly with Robert's rules and those of the HOA will result in invalidation of their vote and will be asked to leave.

Worked for us!