Open Meeting Law

We are a small HOA (22 units) with a five-member board. Our by-laws assign to The Board the obligation to maintain the exterior of the units and the grounds. With this in mind we meet monthly to go over maintenance proposals and contracts, and take a majority vote on the proposals. We consider this a working session and keep a written record of the meeting and inform the membership of maintenance in progress. In addition to the monthly meeting we have an annual membership meeting. Are we in compliance with the "open meeting" law?

Barbara, our association has an annual meeting as well as monthly meetings. We set a tentative schedule of the monthly meetings at the beginning of the year and advise all homeowners in writing of the tentative dates and location of the meetings. Not often do homeowners attend the monthly meetings, but we encourage homeowners to contact a board member before attending in case the meeting schedule had to be changed. The meeting begins with homeowner input, if any are present. Although they can stay during the entire Board Meeting, items that would not be shared beyond the Board (confidential issues such as naming homeowners who are late paying their dues) need to be discussed at the end of the meeting without homeowners present. Also, our association banking is done locally and we hold our monthly meetings in their conference room. I hope this helps.

There is a misconception, I believe, about "open meetings" definition. I don't think that is a good word for it, but in board of directors' meetings, homeowners can attend the meeting, because they are the membership--the reason for even having a board. The board meeting (if the chair chooses) can allow members/homeowners to speak about something (usually best to get on agenda or sign in and state you need a few minutes, etc.), but normally a board meeting is a board meeting and an annual meeting is for members. However, most boards have an executive session before or after their board meeting where they discuss (and ONLY are allowed to discuss) confidential matters that the members should not hear, i.e., who might be having financial difficulty and cannot pay their dues, etc. Everything else that a board meets about is OPEN to the members, but maybe not for them to speak at such. It is my understanding, and somewhere I have a law which states, that NOTHING that concerns MEMBERS of the association except finances of another member can be discussed in a closed meeting. The members may not be able to speak, but they are allowed to KNOW what is going on. Even a motion or a policy that concerns members cannot be made in closed/executive sessions. That is the way it is supposed to be, but getting some boards to comply with this because they don't want members to know what THEY are doing, is another matter.
EdR

I am in Illinois...and our current 'condo laws' here cover only single family Community Associations that are Planned Unit Developments (and condos of course).

We are not a PUD, so we are exempt from open meetings except as specified in our CCR's. Our CCR's state we must have one open annual meeting. I am currently working with the rest of our Board to make them see that although not required, we should have more 'open meetings' than one per year.

Lisa