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Condos: Board's meetings may violate statute
By Richard White, Special to the Times
Published October 27, 2007
Q: Our board holds fairly regular meetings, which are open to the members. An agenda is provided before the meetings, and the members can speak only about the agenda items. No problem. However, very often, when the open meeting is adjourned, the board will reconvene a closed meeting open only to the directors to discuss confidential business. Is this legitimate in light of the state's Sunshine Laws? A: The Sunshine Laws do not apply to condominium or homeowners associations, but other statutes do. If a quorum of directors meets to discuss business, it must be in the open and conducted as a board meeting. The only exception is to discuss pending legal matters when the association's attorney is present. Changing bylaws Q: How difficult and expensive is it to change our bylaws to eliminate rentals in our single-family homeowners community? We have a few rentals now, which could be grandfathered in, but we would like to stop future rentals. A: Your first step is to determine whether the members of your community will support such a change. Your attorney must be involved at every step of the way, so some expense is involved, and there's no point spending the money if membership doesn't support this idea. If you find you do have member support, step one is for your attorney to draft the proposed change that members must approve. The attorney will review your documents to determine the percentage of owners who must approve this change to your deed restrictions. Then you, the board, must communicate the information to members and schedule a meeting to vote on the proposed amendment. If it passes, the attorney must record it in county records. Then the association should provide a copy of the change to every member. As to the costs, this is just an estimate: I'd say a simple change to your documents would begin at $2,000 to $5,000. No smoking at pool? Q: Does the board of directors of a homeowners association have the authority toban smoking by residents at the community's outdoor pool? A: The statute that covers smoking is FS 368, indoor smoking. I am not sure that an outdoor pool area can be restricted to ban all smoking. I have seen a rule that allowed smoking on one side of the pool and restricted it on the other. You need to confer with your attorney on this one. That said, the dangers of secondhand smoke are pretty widely acknowledged and smokers need to respect the rights of their neighbors. Richard White is a licensed community associations manager. Write to him c/o Community Living, St. Petersburg Times, P.O. Box 1121, St. Petersburg, FL 33731. Sorry, he can't take phone calls or provide personal replies by mail, but you can e-mail him at CAMquestions@cfl.rr.com. Please include your name and city.
[Last modified October 26, 2007, 11:48:15]
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