Videotaping Hearing & Member Access to Violations and fines.
I am sorry for bothering you again.
1. Regarding a possible In Person Violation Appeal Hearing (they have been doing Zoom exclusively for Board Meetings for a while now to avoid owners) Is there any way to insist that they Videotape rather than just Audiotape? They pulled this at the Annual Meeting and just did Audiotaping and forced Owners Videotaping to Stop. Has there been any Court Case Rulings on this issue?
2. Our management company has refused us access to financials that show fines, late dues etc. They have been sending Violations to owners without any notice to owners and no records of such on our online documents. Do we have the right to ask for documentation regarding violations that have been imposed, absent owners names, so we can evaluate if they are doing fair and equal enforcement, or is that considered confidential information.
Thank you in advance,
Cindy
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Cindy,
In fact nothing in law allows the use of zoom meetings for these communities. But neither does anything explicitly prevents them from. As you have stated they have become widespread across the state because it allows the board to more easily censuring homeowner participation. The fact is no matter what system is used the law still stands and applies. Any member present at the meeting must be allowed to speak to any issue before the board prior to the board voting on that issue.
Relative to recording the law states video or audio recordings. If the board does one but not the other any member of the community can still use the other recording vehicle that they want. We are a single party state and anyone can record anyone else without their permission if they are directly there in person. Most remote meeting programs have recording options but the meeting host has to enable that function for the members on the meeting. Start by asking the association to direct the meeting host to enable the individual recording capability for participants. I suspect that your community in recording the meeting and demanding that any member not that they often have technical difficulties and coincidently fails to actually get a recording or that any contentious portion of the meeting mysteriously goes blank for no understood reason. Just like what happens at any community where the association records the meeting.
Fines and violations are not “personal of financial” information as used in the statute. Violations are all public information and fines are applied by the association to enforce the rules. As such they are all public records of the association with a valid purpose for disclosure. While I believe that assessment delinquencies would all fall within g the same classification but the general feeling is that is assessment delinquencies would qualify as personal and financial and thereby be excluded from public exposure.
It has always been my position that violation notices including homeowner names nd property identification is public information be cause anyone can walk around the community and see exactly who is violating any specific provision of the governing documents. The association does not want to release that information not to protect homeowner but rather to protect their selective and distorted enforcement of the rules.
Any and all cited violations are public I for,action for any other member of the community.
Dennis