Meeting Notice Must be by USPS?
My question concerns the latest laws for giving meeting notices.
I belong to two HOA’s. One HOA’s lawyer stated that as of January 1st, 2025, all meeting of the board require written notice to be sent via USPS to all members. This includes meetings where no voting is needed for the members.
The other HOA’s lawyer stated that the only meetings that require written notices sent via USPS are the Annual Meeting and any meetings that require the members to vote.
Which HOA lawyer is correct?
Thank you!
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Cari,
It always amazes me just how stupid some of these attorneys are. The open meeting laws require notice of board meetings at least 48 hours prior to the meeting by any means desired by the board. Nothing requires individual emails or snail mail notices. You could post the notice on the mailboxes if you want as long an everyone knows to look there for association notices. The same applies to a website or a bulletin board. So that attorney does not have a clue of what he is talking about. All it takes is 5th grade reading skills to actually read the law.
The second attorney is half correct regarding the members’ meetings. The notice requirements must be sent by snail mail to every homeowner between 50 and 10 days prior to the meeting, but this does not only apply to the annual meeting, it also applies to any formal meeting of the members. Once again 5th grade reading skills is all that is required to read and understand the laws.
Dennis
Thank you for the response!
I am still confused.
We will have a regular upcoming meeting next month that is not an Annual Meeting of the members nor a meeting that will have owners voting.
Besides posting on the website, sending emails to members, or posting on the bulletin board, do we by law need to send the notice & agenda to all owners/members via USPS mail?
Cari,
Is your meeting a board meeting or a members meeting. If it is a members meeting what are you holding the meeting for? If it is simply an informational town hall type meeting of the members than there is no need to provide notice the written notice. There are two types of members’ meetings annual meetings and special meetings both assume some action is to be taken by the members. Both require formal notification. I’ve no idea what you are doing with a regular meetings of the members ? I suspect that your regular meeting is actually a board meeting. Those meeting require 48 hour notice and all members are allowed to attend but that does not make them members meetings. In these meeting the board conducts their business and no member votes are allowed. Members must be allowed an opportunity to speak before the board votes on any action but they themselves do not vote on anything.
Dennis
Dennis,
Yes, you are correct. The meeting is an informational townhall-style board meeting that we want to get feedback from the members/owners & to keep the goings-on transparent.
I now understand the distinction better!
A) USPS written notification sent for all meetings of the members that have actionable items.
B) 48 hours notice to include email, community board postings, etc required for regular board of director’s meetings.
You’ve got it.
Ignorance runs rampant from members, to boards, to management companies and attorneys. Some attorneys and management companies know exactly what they’re doing when twisting laws especially CAI affiliated attorneys and management companies preying on ignorance pushing unethical and immoral means for profit.
Member Meetings require a USPS notice.
Regular Board Meetings require notice by whatever means the Board deems adequate. You said “You could post the notice on the mailboxes if you want as long as everyone knows to look there for association notices.”
Owning property in a POA (294 parcels) that 65% or more of the owners are completely uninvolved and about 15% live off grid within the association property that is remote wilderness consisting of 40 acre parcels of undeveloped lands.
The POA management company has an owner portal that requires upon sign up the owner agree to terms and conditions with no option to opt out of receiving official POA business by email. I refuse to agree to their terms of use for this and other reasons being they require all kinds of personal information that is frankly none of their business. The HOA for my permanent residence (2600 single family units) in the city has only one term of use, be a resident where you have the ability to opt out of receiving emails, text messages, etc.
For the POA, would it stand to reason that the New Board with a new website would have to initially give notice by snail mail to all owners where they can find meeting announcements and such seeing the source has changed?
Joseph,
Let me start with this no association can force you to provide them your email address for any reason. This is totally your privacy right. If you say no they must still provide you all notices and communications by snail mail but you will see delays in receiving that information. You get to tell the association the mailing address that you want your communications sent to and to change that address from time to time as appropriate. The association must maintain the “address of record” and will send all notices to that address. But beware if you fail to keep up with that official address of record the association is off the hook and you will not get the information is required to provide.
If your POA is providing meeting notices on a bulletin board or web site, they must somehow inform everyone that all official meeting notices will be posted there in whatever form that will get to everyone. That could include email communications to those that have provided email addresses and addresses of record for those that have not.
Dennis