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THE ANNUAL MEETING ---- THE ONE NECESSITY
By
Eric Glazer, Esq.
Published
January 20, 2014
Many owners in both condominiums and home owner
associations are surprised to learn that the Florida Statutes
really don't require your Board of Directors to have any
meetings at all, other than a meeting to pass the annual budget.
Other than that, as long as the association's documents
don't require a specific number of Board meetings, the only
meeting that is required is the annual meeting.
So what is the annual meeting?
For one thing, it's not a meeting of the Board of
Directors. It is a
meeting of the Unit Owners.
Typically, the Board of Directors still sits in the front
of the room and tries to maintain control and decorum, but the
meeting should be
run by the President of the association.
Most of the time the President appoints counsel for the
association to chair the meeting and to keep things moving
forward.
Of course, the main event at the annual meeting is the
annual election. In
an H.O.A. however, there may not be an election if a quorum of
owners do not appear either in person or by proxy.
In a condominium however, a quorum only matters when
addressing items on the agenda, OTHER THAN THE CONDOMINIUM
ELECTION. To be
clear, in a condominium, a quorum of unit owners is not required
to have the election. For
the election to be valid, the only requirement is that 20% of
the eligible voters participate in the election.
So, if you do not have a quorum at the condo's annual
meeting, you still can have an election, but you can't have an
annual meeting. The
legislation we are attempting to have passed this upcoming
legislative session would allow the HOA election to also
continue if 20% of the eligible voters participate.
The annual meeting is also the time when people voice
their grievances and the Board and management address the
community with their concerns and give a description about the
challenges that lie ahead in the coming year.
If there is anything I learned in 22 years of attending
annual meetings --- the single most important things to have at
the annual meeting --- without exception ------ the one thing
that must be present ---- the one crucial item whose attendance
is simply mandatory, the absolute one necessity ----- is ----
FOOD.
There's
no question in my mind, a well fed audience, is a happier
audience. The more
lavish the spread the less likely there is to have all out wars
at the annual meeting. I'm
not recommending alcohol however.
You will need that when you get home from the annual
meeting. Don't
get me wrong, even with the food, there will still be screaming
and yelling --- but on a far lesser scale.
Trust me my friends, after attending these meetings each
year since passing The Florida Bar way back in 1992, this is the
best legal advice I can possibly give today.
It's not always about the legalese, sometimes it's just
about experience.
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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 is currently entering his 20th year as a
Florida
lawyer practicing |
community association law and is the owner of
Glazer and Associates, P.A. an eight attorney law firm in
Orlando
and Hollywood. For the past two years Eric has been the host of Condo Craze and
HOAs, a weekly one hour radio show 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 6,000 Floridians. He is certified as a
Circuit Court Mediator by The Florida Supreme Court and has
mediated dozens of disputes between associations and unit
owners. Finally, he recently argued the Cohn v. Grand
Condominium case before The Florida Supreme Court, which is
perhaps the single most important association law case decided
by the court in a decade.
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