Should the HOA board give notice of meetings?

Visitor Question: Some of my neighbors and I are having an issue with our HOA. They are threatening to make new rules that pertain to only the six or seven of us that face the public road before people actually enter our development. They want to make rules about our front facades more stringent than the rules that the owners whose houses face inward have to abide by.

In our case it will likely cost us upward of $1,000 to put up and maintain the flower boxes, flagpoles, and fancy mailboxes they want us to have. We don't think this is fair.

Even beyond that, we are insulted about the way they approached this. We were not notified that this was being considered, and we only heard about it because the spouse of one board member told us.

Shouldn't we have the right to know about and attend board meetings if we want to? I am not asking for a vote; I am asking for the right to observe what the HOA board is considering and what their arguments for making these new rules are. Regardless of this personal issue I am having, I feel like all property owners should be able to understand what is happening in the HOA if they want to inform themselves. What do you think?

Editors Reply: I agree with you. In some developments, the members, who are the property owners, vote on everything, and the officers are only elected to function in the traditional leadership roles of president, secretary, treasurer, and so forth. In those situations, there is a newsletter or mailer that informs people of when the meetings are, or sometimes when a whole year's meetings are scheduled.

It seems to me that increasingly, though, HOAs rely on a board of directors for most or all of the decision-making, and that it is becoming more and more frequent that HOA members (also known as the property owners, remember) don't even know when the meetings are occurring and are discouraged from attending or even prohibited from being present.

I think this invites trouble and recriminations against leaders when their decisions are unpopular. Why not hear from everyone who wants to express an opinion? Then if the master deed reads that the board makes the decisions, let them do so, but I think they should be discussing and voting right in front of the interested property owners.

In your case, it seems especially obnoxious that they are thinking about making a decision that affects only a few of you, and yet you would not have known this was happening at all except for one in-the-know person telling you. Regardless of that, I would lose no time in notifying the board members individually of how you feel about this proposal. Send them each an email, printed letter via the post office, or certified letter, depending on your personal style and customs where you live. Explain that this proposal makes a financial demand of you that is not expected of the other HOA members, and that you do not think that is fair.

Depending on what you want to do, you could ask them to vote down this proposal altogether, give each affected property owner notice of a meeting where this would be discussed, or have the HOA itself pay for these amenities that others are not required to install. Each of these options has some merit, so the most important thing may be securing agreement from all of the affected neighbors to request one particular form or relief.

If you are ambitious enough, make a fuss throughout the entire development. If you have email addresses, send out a mass email message. Maybe you will want to hand deliver flyers if the development is reasonably small. In some way you can make this behavior known to the entire HOA membership, and call attention to the fact that next time, they might be the ones facing an unexpected expense and hassle arrived at in secret by the HOA.

Along the way, you may want to call for open, publicized meetings of the HOA board as well. I'm sure you would not be the only one to support such a measure.

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