ARS 323-1248 Meeting Notice
Hi, our regular monthly board meetings are held the 3rd Wednesday of each month, unless otherwise notified of a change or no meeting. As of Tuesday, 4/16/24 no “paper handwritten notice” was provided at the community bulletin board. No emails were received or sent by the Property Manager as usual.
Under ARS 33-1248 should 48 hour notice be provided? I understand in an emergency situation 48 hour notice may not be feasible, but this was a regularly occurring meeting. Some homeowners “knew” about it, some didn’t. What am I missing?
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Pamala,
Notice must be provided by the board prior to every board meeting, but the law does not specify how that notice is provided. It could be provided on a web site or a bulletin board as a scheduled meeting every first Wednesday of every month at a specific location and time. This one time posting can be acceptable for all routine meetings. Then if some special meeting is required other notice options would be provided. Somehow you are aware of the normal meeting schedule so that had to be provided to you somehow. But unless the notice is not actually provided in some form the association cannot rely on “we always did it that way” as satisfying the law. It has to be posted somewhere that every new homeowner can find the notice and be aware of the meeting. There is a bill awaiting final passage in the legislature that will require that the agenda for the meeting be provided to everyone in advance of the meeting as well, so more active notification techniques will have to be utilized by the associations relative to meeting notice and agenda publications.
Dennis
Dennis,
I think the original poster raises a very good point. A.R.S 33-1804 and A.R.S. 33-1248 both require notice of a meeting by newsletter, conspicuous posting or any other reasonable means as determined by the Board of Directors. Many HOAs do not have a community bulletin board in a central common area (a conspicuous place) where the majority of owners congregate to inform owners of upcoming meetings. In your experience, where do master associations with no central common area facility or designated office post a conspicuous notice of a meeting to adhere to the statutes? I think it would be beneficial to all owners if the statutes were revised to require electronic (e.g. e-mail) notification (for those who opt-in to receive e-mail notifications) to all owners of Board meetings. Even if an HOA has a central gathering place, not everyone visits these central gathering places regularly to check for meeting notices, but a great percentage of people have e-mail.
Would you be in favor of suggesting to legislators to add verbiage in these statutes requiring electronic notification to owners of all Board meetings?
Nick,
The reality of statute is they have to apply to all association large or small in the state. There are many associations in the state that are very small and self-managed. I live in one of those and we receive notices via e-mail. But in an association of 5,000 people would you have me mandate that each owner provide and maintain their e-mail address to association? While anyone is free to do that if they wish they are also free to withhold that information from the board. I will not impose on that freedom. So does that mean that those members will be excluded from notice of meeting based on that legitimate choice. The law allows the association the total freedom to use whatever process that they believe will provide everyone notice for their meetings. I know that many people would like to get their notices via e-mail because they don’t want to have to look on the bulletin board or the web site, but I simply never see that actually happening based on the capabilities to actually provide everyone notice of those meeting by that mechanism alone.
Sorry.
Dennis
Hello, Nick-
If I were on the BOD of my community, I’d make sure to properly notice meetings in multiple ways – just to cover bases. (Emailed, posted on property management portal, posted at bulletin board etc.)
In my HOA’s case, just recently, there was not proper 48-hour notification of the board meeting – but the meeting was still held and action was taken during that meeting.
We typically receive an email from the Property Manager 48 hours in advance, in addition to a paper posting on the bulletin board. We have 124 units. Some folks in my community don’t have a computer and/or an email account (even board members). Since our meetings are not always held the 3rd Wednesday (it has varied), owners have come to rely on the paper postings and email notifications alike.
I am very happy to report that my BOD and PM said they will create a sort of “calendar of meetings” to be posted and left posted at the bulletin board. (Thank you Dennis for your great feedback in educating me of options!!) Now, if our PM has any future email server/technical difficulties, the entire schedule of meetings is posted/published in a conspicuous place – next step would be to get this out to homeowners ahead of each year and posted on our PM portal.
I’m going to suggest the “meeting calendar” be included with the Annual Meeting packet we homeowners receive by mail ahead of the election. Perhaps this could be an idea for your community?
All the best, Pam.