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YOUR ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING AND THEREAFTER
By
Eric Glazer, Esq.
Published November 16, 2020
So now that your election in your community association is over
and you know who the members of the Board are, the first
obligation of that Board is to have an organizational meeting to
determine which directors will hold which Officer positions.
Every association must look in their bylaws to determine when
the organizational meeting is to be held. What is important to
know however is that the organizational meeting is a meeting of
the Board of Directors. It is a meeting that is separate and
distinct from the annual meeting which is a member’s meeting.
Therefore, the directors should not be selecting the officers at
the annual meeting, but rather at a subsequent properly noticed
Board meeting. Often times the association will post a notice
of the Board of Directors Organizational meeting 48 hours in
advance of the annual meeting and indicate that the meeting will
start immediately following the annual meeting. Perfectly
legal.
It is important to note what Officer positions are required by
the bylaws. Most associations require a President, Vice
President, Secretary and Treasurer. Some documents allow for
several Vice Presidents or assistant secretaries or treasurers.
Some bylaws will allow the same person to hold more than one
officer position, some won’t.
When it’s time for the directors to vote for the officers, under
the condo and HOA statute, this vote can be done by secret
ballot, but I find it to be very uncommon. By the way, although
the law allows the vote to be done by secret ballot, it does not
mean that the Board members get to leave the room and take the
vote privately, out of sight. The vote must still take place in
front of the unit owners.
From that point forward, the condo Board is set with no other
immediate duties under the Florida Condominium Act. However,
the same is not true for HOA directors. HOA directors must be
aware that their governing documents could expire if not
properly preserved within 30 years of the document being
originally recorded. As a result of this very unfortunate
experience happening to many associations across the state,
Florida HOA law, Statute 720, states:
At the first board meeting, excluding the organizational
meeting, which follows the annual meeting of the members, the
board shall consider the desirability of filing notices to
preserve the covenants or restrictions affecting the community
or association from extinguishment under the Marketable Record
Title Act, chapter 712, and to authorize and direct the
appropriate officer to file notice in accordance with s.
720.3032.
To every director who gets elected in the next few months, good
luck and thank you for volunteering to serve your neighbors and
your community.
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About
HOA & Condo Blog
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Eric Glazer graduated from
the University of Miami School of Law in 1992 after
receiving a B.A. from NYU. He has practiced community
association law for more than 2
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decades and is the owner of Glazer
and Sachs, P.A. a seven attorney law firm with offices in
Fort Lauderdale and Orlando and satellite offices in Naples,
Fort Myers and Tampa.
Since 2009, Eric has been the host
of Condo Craze and HOAs, a weekly one hour radio show that airs
at noon each Sunday on 850 WFTL.
See:
www.condocrazeandhoas.com.
He is the first attorney in the
State of Florida that designed a course that certifies
condominium residents as eligible to serve on a condominium
Board of Directors and has now certified more than 10,000
Floridians all across the state. He is certified as a Circuit
Court Mediator by The Florida Supreme Court and has mediated
dozens of disputes between associations and unit owners. Eric
also devotes significant time to advancing legislation in the
best interest of Florida community association members.
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