Board Meetings, Legal and Illegal
The State of Nevada has many pages of laws dealing specifically with Homeowner Associations. A portion of these laws address how HOA Board meetings are to be conducted. A careful study of the current law shows that it is the intent of the law to allow homeowners to be present at all meetings of the board with one exception. That exception is when the Board meets in executive session. Executive sessions are restricted by law to a very few topics, such as discussion of possible violations of the governing documents by specific homeowners. So there is no doubt that if a board meets to discuss other issues, other than those allowed in an executive session, homeowners must be given an opportunity to attend. In other words, secret meetings of the board are illegal according to state law. My association, operating with Laury Phelps as the community manager, conducted "workshops" prior to the advertised meetings. I suspect that the reason was to prevent the discussion of contentious issues from being heard by residents, which is precisely contrary to the intent of state law. When I found out about these unadvertised meetings, I insisted that they be stopped and after I put that insistence in the form of an ultimatum to the board that they would be taken to arbitration if necessary, the board agreed to stop the workshops. I thought it rather remarkable that the board could not understand the plain language of the law.
If your board is meeting illegally, outside of the advertised meetings, how can you know that? One way is that if the regularly advertised meetings have little discussion, then the discussion is probably being done at some other time. In my case, the board meetings preceded by a "workshop" were merely ceremonial, with the only significant discussion coming from those who were not on the board. After the board stopped the illegal meetings, the board meetings again came to life with substantial amounts of discussion by board members. If your community manager is Laury Phelps, of Taylor Management, you should be especially alert for this tactic.