Q: It appears that during the pandemic, state law changed to allow HOAs to hold board meetings by Zoom. That was reasonable at the time. Is there any movement to return to in-person meeting requirements? It would be nice to be in the same room when they discuss items of interest.\u2014 R.K., San Clemente.<\/p>\n
A: Civil Code Section 4926, effective since 2024, allows for purely telephonic or virtual meetings as an option for board meetings. Boards can choose to either meet in person, use virtual platforms, or meet in person, with attendees also able to participate virtually. My preference is for boards to meet in person, but also allow homeowners to attend virtually. I find that directors are more focused and engaged when physically meeting together, and so in-person meetings result in more effective deliberations. However, virtual platforms such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Webex and Google Meet (to name a few) can enable homeowners to observe their HOA board meetings when traveling, disabled, or otherwise unable to attend personally. So, my preference is \u201chybrid\u201d meetings, in which the board meets in person but homeowners can log in and watch the meeting on line.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One important caveat- board meetings at which member ballots are counted cannot be virtual, per Civil Code 4926(b). This is consistent with Civil Code 5120, which requires members to be able to observe the vote counting. Also, note that the Davis-Stirling Act does not provide for virtual membership meetings.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Q: Our management company was recently acquired by a larger national company and the new manager wants to hold meetings virtually. The board does not and there is no reason to do so. Any suggestions on how to handle this situation?\u2014T.B., Cardiff By The Sea.<\/p>\n
A: The decision of whether to meet in person, virtually, or hybrid (board present but attendees able to virtually attend) is the board\u2019s decision. I understand why often overloaded HOA managers would prefer to meet virtually but the choice is the HOA\u2019s to make.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Q: Our HOA meetings are only on Zoom and one board member only calls in to the meetings by phone so that he can\u2019t be seen on the Zoom at the meeting. Wherever a vote is called it\u2019s difficult to know who is voting and what his vote is unless it is called out.\u00a0 Should he be required to appear in person on the Zoom screen like the other board members?\u00a0 I know that he has a computer available and could do this but for some reason he only uses the phone.\u2014F.B., Coronado<\/p>\n
A: Civil Code 4926 does not specifically require that directors have their camera on when participating in virtual board meetings. That is something that could be a board policy decision as to whether to require board cameras to be on. Attending homeowners should not have to guess how each director voted, because Civil Code 4926(a)(3) requires that all votes by the board in virtual meetings must be by \u201croll call\u201d vote \u2013 meaning that the secretary or chair must call each director\u2019s name and ask how they vote, so the minutes will therefore reflect how each director voted on each motion.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Read California law at www.leginfo.legislature.ca.gov<\/a> .\u00a0<\/p>\n Richardson, Esq. is a fellow of the College of Community Association Lawyers and partner of Richardson Ober LLP, a California law firm known for community association advice. Submit column questions to\u00a0kelly@roattorneys.com<\/a>. Past columns at\u00a0www.HOAHomefront.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Q: It appears that during the pandemic, state law changed to allow HOAs to hold board meetings by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26913,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[387,2087,74,76,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-255671","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-business-columns","10":"tag-san-diego","11":"tag-san-diego-headlines","12":"tag-san-diego-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}