HOA Annual Meeting and Covid

[JamesWhitney]

We are required to hold our HOA Annual meeting by the end of September. The CC&Rs state that to meet quorum we need 60% of the members "in person" at the meeting. Due to Covid, we have many people who would rather have the meeting online and mail in ballots for our Board positions. Up to 40 people can attend our meetings and our neighboring counties (not ours) have mandated no public gatherings larger than 10 people. My question is, can we hold the meeting online and what if someone questions the quorum requirement if we do? Could that invalidate our election process if we do mail in ballots?

 

[quincy]

What is the name of your state?

 

[LdiJ]

We are required to hold our HOA Annual meeting by the end of September. The CC&Rs state that to meet quorum we need 60% of the members "in person" at the meeting. Due to Covid, we have many people who would rather have the meeting online and mail in ballots for our Board positions. Up to 40 people can attend our meetings and our neighboring counties (not ours) have mandated no public gatherings larger than 10 people. My question is, can we hold the meeting online and what if someone questions the quorum requirement if we do? Could that invalidate our election process if we do mail in ballots?

If you got the right tech and tech support involved I bet that you could do a virtual meeting that allowed for immediate voting so that ballots would not have to be mailed. You would still need the 60% present for the virtual meeting.

 

[zddoodah]

Depends on the applicable state law, and one would need to read your by-laws to give a truly informed opinion. That said, I'm confident your by-laws don't contemplate something that the present situation, so you may have to make appropriate allowances.

 

[quincy]

From a review of your posting history, I see you are in Idaho.

Why don’t you do a written survey of all members to get on record who supports a virtual meeting and who insists on an in-person meeting?

How many members do you have? I can’t remember if you mentioned the size in your other thread.

 

[Zigner]

One of the items on the agenda in the meeting could be an amendment to the bylaws to allow "virtual meetings".

 

[JamesWhitney]

What is the name of your state?

Idaho

 

[JamesWhitney]

From a review of your posting history, I see you are in Idaho.

Why don’t you do a written survey of all members to get on record who supports a virtual meeting and who insists on an in-person meeting?

How many members do you have? I can’t remember if you mentioned the size in your other thread.

We have 30 members (counted by household), ~40 attend the mtgs with their spouses. We have 10 members who will try to enforce the in person rule because they always want to cause conflict when they are in front of an audience (yelling disruptive behavior similar to a spoiled child's fit of anger). We have had all mtgs (including Board Meetings) at a public place due to this before Covid but it's no longer possible now. Being outside somewhere on the subdivision is our other in person only choice but those of us who are high risk healthwise would rather avoid that contact as well.

 

[JamesWhitney]

One of the items on the agenda in the meeting could be an amendment to the bylaws to allow "virtual meetings".

Good idea.

 

[quincy]

Good idea.

Now you just have to figure out how to vote in-person on changing the in-person voting requirement to virtual voting.

It sounds as if you can do an outdoor meeting if you wear masks and space yourselves a safe distance apart and, for those who don’t want to attend in-person, they could vote by proxy. You can have three separate meetings.

 

[Zigner]

Now you just have to figure out how to vote in-person on changing the in-person voting requirement to virtual voting.

It sounds as if you can do an outdoor meeting if you wear masks and space yourselves a safe distance apart and, for those who don’t want to attend in-person, they could vote by proxy. You can have three separate meetings.

I thought about that too...and I figured a nice "retroactive" clause might do the trick.

To add on to your idea - an inexpensive bullhorn would make an outdoor meeting of 30-40 people with appropriate social-distancing an easy thing to do.

 

[quincy]

I thought about that too...and I figured a nice "retroactive" clause might do the trick.

To add on to your idea - an inexpensive bullhorn would make an outdoor meeting of 30-40 people with appropriate social-distancing an easy thing to do.

If Idaho requires that no more than 10 people can gather, three meetings should work. The “extra people” who like to attend can perhaps be the proxies for those who want to stay home - or they should just be told to stay home.

 

[JamesWhitney]

If Idaho requires that no more than 10 people can gather, three meetings should work. The “extra people” who like to attend can perhaps be the proxies for those who want to stay home - or they should just be told to stay home.

Idaho is restricting group meeting counts by county. We are rural so our county is not forcing the rules. Just the surrounding counties are.

 

[JamesWhitney]

I thought about that too...and I figured a nice "retroactive" clause might do the trick.

To add on to your idea - an inexpensive bullhorn would make an outdoor meeting of 30-40 people with appropriate social-distancing an easy thing to do.

Bullhorn, brilliant! We do have members who think Covid is a hoax and they will purposely stand close to others, cough, etc. just to unnerve them and cause trouble.

 

[JamesWhitney]

If you got the right tech and tech support involved I bet that you could do a virtual meeting that allowed for immediate voting so that ballots would not have to be mailed. You would still need the 60% present for the virtual meeting.

The Board is tech savvy and fully prepared for everything virtual, however we have old school folks who will demand paper ballots because they struggle with technology. Some can't handle logging into to an an online meeting. Or even calling a conference call number and putting in the meeting code.