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October 14, 2006
Who Has Right To Attend HOA Meetings?
I received this question recently and it is a fairly common one in that it deals with people being barred from HOA meetings:
"I'm a co-owner in a unit of our HOA. I have a power of attorney to represent our interests. The management company rep and the board claim I have no right to attend meetings. If I show up, they ajourn the general meeting to an executive session, which is held in secret at a boardmember's home. In these secret executive meetings, many decisions have been made that affect common use area access, parking, landscaping, etc., without the residents' knowledge, comments, quorum or vote."
There is a lot going on in this question. Owners of units or lots in common interest developments have a right to attend open Board meetings in developments subject to the Davis Stirling Common Interest Development Act, and do not need a power of attorney to do so. Even if an Association's documents had a regulation prohibiting more than one owner of a unit from attending meetings, I would doubt the enforceability of it. There may be extenuating circumstances of course. As always, it would be helpful to hear the other side of things. I can think of a few situations where an owner might be barred from meetings.
Some people consider themselves owners of property based on "community property" laws. Even so, some documents consider "record owners" to be members and someone who is not on title would not be treated as a member, even if in the eyes of the law they were a "co-owner". This might be the case if someone was buying a unit on contract and was not listed on title in the official County records or if someone received an interest in exchange for some kind of consideration.
There may be another explanation. Sometimes an Association will exclude persons claiming to be members (right or wrong) from meetings based on conduct. Abusive tendencies sometimes lead Boards to adjourn the meeting and reconvene behind locked doors to conduct the business at hand. This is a remedy I have suggested in some extreme cases; however, it is not something I would suggest as a matter of course to an association, without examining the facts and circumstances related to conduct, business underway, etc.
I do not know the circumstances behind the situation that lead to the stated questions, and am not by this blog inviting more information on the specific situation, but am saying that if a Board bans members of the Association from attending meetings that are not protected with a veil of confidentiality under Civil Code Sections 1363.05 and following (The Common Interest Development Open Meetings Act), without special circumstances being involved that might justify the decision, there is a problem.
Posted by Beth Grimm at October 14, 2006 9:30 PM