Owners, it’s time for a lesson on how to get what you want out of your Condo or HOA board.
Have you used this one? “I HAVE FREE SPEECH RIGHTS” (implying that gives you carte blanche to be a bully or disrupt an association meeting). Well, it doesn’t.
There has been a lot in the news lately about the difficulties of “town hall” meetings in the context of informing constituents about pending legislative issues. A “town hall” meeting can be a great forum to discuss issues and collect gems that help to discover problems, and solutions. Or the meeting can be a melee, out of control, where people get hurt and nothing gets accomplished. (Maybe you have seen “Parks and Recreation” ion TV with Amy Poeler, very funny and sad at the same time – although she tries hard and keeps a stiff upper lip, it’s challenging to put yourself out there in front of a crowd that is less than satisfied with local government.)
The Constitution guarantees the right to “free speech” but for every rule there is an exception. With regard to these kind of rights time, place and manner restrictions can be imposed (ever wonder why you have to get a parade permit?).
Be advised that an HOA or Condo board can set reasonable time, place and manner restrictions too. Although California law requires boards to allow homeowners to speak at board meetings, it also allows the board to impose reasonable restrictions, such as when a “homeowner forum” will be held (before, during or after the meeting, or interspersed with action items) and allows boards to use an egg timer to limit time.
Bullying your way through claiming it’s your “Constitutional right!” is not a way to get what you want. It’s a way to get a meeting shut down and prevent others from exercising their rights. I recently did an E-newsletter on how to deal with bullies at meetings and otherwise – the E-News is free, and all editions are published on my website in the E-News Archives.
You can also check out my other blog – California Condo & HOA Law Blog. I just put up a blog about getting what you want without suing (which often turns out to be a complete waste of resources!).
What is the process for recalling HOA board members eg.: list of problems with the board and reasons to recall, content of a petition to recall, Percentage of owners to sign the petition ,time frames to gather HO’s signatures, what do we do once we get the signatures, etc, thank you
I am glad you asked, but it is complicated – in fact, about 40-50 pages complicated. That is why I offer a “Recall Guide” in my publications options on the Guru website for fifty bucks!
What if the disruptive association member is a board member/board member’s family? The board always read us the speech ahead of time about how disruptions will not be tolerated but almost always a board member/or her spouse will start ranting at a homeowner during the course of the meeting, tempers will flare and the meeting will shut down with very little productivity. Agenda items that we want discussed are always at the tail end of the list of business and when productivity is shut down, people walk away and our agenda items never get discussed. Then the next homeowner’s meeting/board meeting is held months down the road. How can the rest of us homeowners control these circumstances and get some of our items discussed?
This sounds like a very unproductive situation – the best remedy is at election time to elect new board members and whoever wrote the email, to lead the charge! Encourage neighbors to come and see what the board isn’t accomplishing; it seems it would be smart of other owners to step up to the plate. Owners don’t have much control unless they are sitting on the other side of the “table”.
How can we control these from happening? What are things that vitally needs to be discus?
I am not sure what you are asking for feedback on. It would help to know what perspective you are looking from (board member, manager, or owner) and what specifically in the article you are referring to when asking the questions. For example, if you are asking how to control or address people who unreasonably argue their offensive conduct is justified, that is one question. If you are asking how far one can go to act – with the Free Speech defense available, that is another. Asking about what things vitally need to be discussed could relate to a large myriad of openings. Can you be more specific in your questions?
Another home owner and I applied for use of our multi purpose room to hold an open forum for HOA members to discuss whatever they wanted. The application was approved and an e-mail blast was sent out announcing the time and place. When the Board heard about this four of the five members instructed the property manager to contact us and advise us our application was being denied.
We have asked for a written explanation and told we would get one but have not as of this writing.
As you might imagine, there are many more details regarding this issue and we would like to know what our inital costs would be.
Thank you,
Darrell White