AZHOC - Arizona Homeowners Coalition
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Executive Mtg

The Board of Directors held an executive meeting to discuss a light repair proposal and a Management agent addendum. The Mgmt agent contract addendum deals with a negotiation between the Board and Mgmt agent regarding the contracts termination clause. The Mgmt company was to be paid their monthly fee for the term of the contract (1yr) even if the contract was terminated. The Board apparently negotiated and came to a decision at the mtg. I have read the open meeting law and believe an exec. mtg was not warranted for these items and the Board is in violation of the open mtg law ARS 33-1804. If this is a violation, would any decisions made during the mtg be null and void? Also, they typically email meeting notifications to homeowners but that didn’t happen for this mtg.,instead it was posted on the community’s event calendar. One of the Board members, on a public platform, indicated they didn’t break any law and could discuss contract negotiations in an exec. mtg and provided ARS 38-431.03 as a reference. I know this doesn’t apply to Planned Communities but was alarmed this seasoned Board Member did.

1 Response

  1. Dennis Legere

    Kathy,

    You are absolutely correct in your understanding of the open meeting law, the action of the board are not authorized in the planned community open meeting laws, and the public body laws cannot be used to supersede specific requirement of the planned community act. Even if the board received advice from an attorney during that meeting, they had absolutely no authority to take any action based on that advice in closed session. All actions by the board can only be taken in open session in both the planned community and public body open meeting laws. Unfortunately, the current law has no enforcement provision that invalidates any action taken in violation of open meeting laws. I plan to correct that in proposed legislation that will; be introduced this year. With the help of the members of this coalition I hope to be successful in the passage of this bill.

    Dennis

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