Jack Bredin offers his opinion at an OGHOA meeting in June, 2010.© Blogfinger photo.
To the Editor:
As a new Ocean Grove Home Owners Association (OGHOA) member who attended my first meeting on Saturday, March 26, I decided to check its website today for the meeting minutes. They were posted and I was surprised to read that neither President Ann Horan nor Vice President Barbara Burns had been there (I’d arrived a few minutes late and hadn’t heard all the names of the people running the meeting). According to the minutes, the President and Vice President were “away on vacation,” so “Secretary Richard Williams opened the meeting…”.
While I was at the website, I decided to read the OGHOA bylaws. I found a couple of things that made me wonder why the March 26 meeting was held at all.
Under Article 3, “Meetings,” the bylaws state:
- General membership meetings shall be held on the 4th Saturday of every month except when the 4th Saturday is on a holiday weekend, at which time an alternate date will be scheduled.
March 26 was the day before Easter Sunday, so the fourth Saturday of March 2016 clearly fell on a “holiday weekend.” According to the OGHOA’s own bylaws, a general membership meeting should not have been held that day.
I also read under Article 5, “Duties”:
- The President shall preside at all meetings.
- The Vice-President shall assume all duties of the President in his or her absence and shall assist in every way.
Probably because it was a holiday weekend, neither the President nor the Vice President was there to preside at the meeting. If the President “shall” preside at “all” meetings, and the Vice President “shall assume all duties of the President in his or her absence,” what happens if neither of them is present? Does anyone else have the authority to preside over a general membership meeting of the OGHOA? The bylaws suggest that only the President and Vice President have this authority.
It appears that the March 26 general membership meeting should have been rescheduled, both because the date fell on a holiday weekend and because neither the President nor the Vice President was there to preside.
At the February meeting, Jack Bredin put forth an important motion, proposing that the OGHOA take the position that the State’s Residential Site Improvement Standards (RSIS) be enforced throughout Ocean Grove, with an exemption for single-family homes only.
I’m not certain when it was decided that a vote on Jack’s motion would be held at the March meeting, but in the month between meetings, did no one on the OGHOA Board realize that holding the meeting on a holiday weekend, and when neither the President nor Vice President could be present, would be in violation of the organization’s bylaws?
To see how often both the President and Vice President miss a membership meeting, I reviewed all the minutes posted at the site (they’re posted back to March 2015); March 26, 2016 was the only time this happened. I also checked the meeting dates and the only one held on a holiday weekend was the meeting on March 26.
Is an OGHOA membership vote legitimate and binding when it takes place at a meeting that itself violated OGHOA bylaws?
— FRAN HOPKINS
Ocean Grove, NJ and Cedar Grove, NJ, April 6, 2016
I’m on the Board of a statewide professional organization, the Association for Women in Communications, New Jersey Chapter (AWCNJ), and we hold dinner-speaker-networking events throughout the year. We’re always careful not to schedule our events during Passover or Hanukkah or on Ash Wednesday or Holy Thursday, as examples. It’s just a matter of being considerate of your members and other attendees.
We wouldn’t schedule an event on Easter weekend, so I’m sure this influences my view that Easter weekend is a holiday weekend. At least a couple of people posted here on Blogfinger that they wanted to attend the meeting, but couldn’t because of Easter-related activities and commitments.
A few comments on Ms. Hopkins’ letter questioning the legitimacy of the March 26 meeting of the Ocean Grove Home Owners Association: The by-laws of the association do not define “holiday”. For many of our members, Passover is a holiday. Thanksgiving Day and Christmas are definitely holidays. The fourth Saturday of each of this coming April, November and December are all in a “holiday weekend”. Should we reschedule those meetings?
The by-laws are silent on the question of who presides at a meeting when neither the president and vice president are available. A general rule of construction is that if something is not prohibited, it is permitted. Thus, the president appoints someone to conduct a meeting in his or her absence.
In most organizations that I have been a
member the President and Vice President
are not unavailable at the same time. Usually
their schedules are coordinated. Your impression
and questions are good ones. I think holiday
weekend is meant as a national holiday.
I think it is time for elections and a new slate
of officers take place.
What denotes a quorum met to hold the meeting.. I believe they operate by Roberts Rules …
I assume that the term “holiday weekend” refers to a federal holiday (Labor Day, Memorial Day, etc). Easter is a religious holiday, not a federal holiday. So it doesn’t appear to be in violation of the bylaws to meet that weekend.