Florida HOA Right to Speak at BOD meeting

Our HOA association documents gives members the right to attend meetings but not to speak unless invited to by the board. So, someone wanting to speak, has to petition the board.

In July 2011 the HOA statute was changed to say this:
(b) Members have the right to attend all meetings of the board. The right to attend such meetings includes the right to speak at such meetings with reference to all designated items. 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.

Struck from §720.303(2)(b)in the statutes was the requirement that a member had to petition the board to speak.

Since the state statute does not require a petition am I correct in saying the state statute trumps the HOA documents so members do not have to petition to speak?

Charles,

We have an "open forum" period at every board meeting where any homeowners in attendance are invited to speak on any subject. The president will usually limit comments to about 3 minutes, unless the comments start a productive discussion.

The open forum is usually scheduled after the business portion of the meeting, so that homeowners have the opportunity hear all the current issues and plans, and don't waste time speaking to things that we already plan to cover.

The president must recognize people who want speak before the have the floor, but no one needs to petition the board in order to speak.

Thanks to all who have posted!

Question for LawrenceC1:
Is your open forum 3 minutes for all the topics you want to talk about or 3 minutes per topic?

Our board has open forum at the beginning of our open (regular) meetings every month on just about any topic. Guidelines are on the backs of agendas, e.g., no more than 2 minutes per h'owner; no maintenance issues unless they're not being dealt with; one topic per h'owner until all have had a chance to speak and then we can start over with those who've already spoken.

At the end of the business portion of the meeting, we have a 2nd open forum. H'owners sometimes give their opinions about decisions we directors make and actually we directors have reconsidered and overturned two decisions in the past year due to h'owner feedback in these 2nd open forums.

Some HOAs permit member participation during the business portion of the meeting, i.e., on every agenda item. We are considering that, but tend to think it would be waaaay too time-consuming even though only about a dozen members attend each month.

For more about how to do open forum, Charles, go to "search" on this site and you'll see quite a lot on the topic.