Civil Code 4926 permits 100% virtual meetings as an alternative to solely in-person or hybrid board meeting formats. Here are some ideas your board may wish to consider as you update your HOA\u2019s written meeting rules.<\/p>\n
Platforms: There are many virtual meeting software platforms available. Read reviews to compare the various choices, including Dialpad, Google Meet, GoTo Meeting, RingCentral, Microsoft Teams, WebEx, Zoho Meeting and Zoom.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Remember: All votes in fully virtual board meetings require a roll-call vote, meaning that each director\u2019s name is called and their vote announced and included in the minutes. Board meetings at which ballots are to be counted may not be purely virtual. Membership meetings are not permitted to be virtual.<\/p>\n
Who\u2019s there: Require that participants identify themselves in meetings, listing their names and addresses. Those unwilling to confirm their membership should be excluded.<\/p>\n
Members only: Only HOA members have the right to attend board meetings. The rules should reiterate this to prevent someone from giving the meeting link to a tenant, Realtor, or someone else not entitled to attend HOA board meetings.<\/p>\n
We see you: Participants should be required to have their cameras on, which helps confirm their identity and right to attend. Also, consider banning visual displays by an attendee of anything other than the participant\u2019s location \u2013 visual message displays, inappropriate background material, distracting behavior or inappropriate attire should not be permitted.<\/p>\n
We hear you (and don\u2019t want to): Participants should be muted unless they are called upon to speak, so set up the virtual meeting so that all participants are automatically muted and only the meeting administrator\/host can unmute attendees.<\/p>\n
What you say won\u2019t be used against you: Make it clear that virtual meetings will not be recorded and that the HOA does not consent to making recordings from the virtual broadcast. Members should not be subjected to the pressure that their comments might be recorded and shared with others. The bottom line is that recordings should not be permitted. Remember, HOAs are neighborhoods, not public agencies, and the board members are not politicians but unpaid neighborhood volunteers. They shouldn\u2019t need to be trained to deliberately and carefully choose every word \u2013 that\u2019s what lawyers are trained to do. So, just as with live meetings, prohibit any kind of audio or video recording. Disable or eject AI chatbots.<\/p>\n
No chat please: People often write things in a chat that they wouldn\u2019t say out loud in a meeting. That can create some obvious issues (and conflict) in a community. Since homeowners aren\u2019t allowed to argue back and forth during live meetings, the same rule should apply to meeting chats. So, consider a policy that the chat box will be disabled. Open forum should be oral, not through chat notes.<\/p>\n
Pardon the interruption: A policy should make it clear that, just as with live meetings, someone disrupting the meeting or otherwise violating the written rules will be warned and then will be removed from the meeting.<\/p>\n
Adopt written meeting rules to embody these policies, to ensure your virtual board meetings will be productive. (I am sure there are policies I haven\u2019t considered for virtual meetings, so let me know.)<\/p>\n
If your HOA pursues purely virtual board meetings, make them an asset for your community, not merely a convenience.<\/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":"Civil Code 4926 permits 100% virtual meetings as an alternative to solely in-person or hybrid board meeting formats.…\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-267321","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\/267321","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=267321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267321\/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=267321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}