Meetings, Agendas, and the Open Meeting Act

What the Open Meeting Act is for

The Open Meeting Act (Civil Code §§ 4900–4955) exists so that association business happens where members can see it.

The core rules

• Members may attend any open portion of a board meeting and must be given a reasonable opportunity to speak (Civil Code § 4925).
• Notice and agenda: general notice of a board meeting, including the agenda, must be given at least four days before the meeting (§ 4920). Executive session meetings require two days’ notice.
• No action off the agenda: under § 4930, the board generally may not discuss or act on any item not on the posted agenda. There are narrow exceptions — brief responses to member statements, requesting staff to report back, and genuine emergencies.
• A “meeting” is broader than it sounds. Section 4090 defines it to include any congregation of a majority of directors at the same time and place to hear or deliberate on association business — including by electronic means. A majority of the board settling a question over email is a meeting held without notice.
• Minutes of open meetings must be available to members within 30 days of the meeting (§ 4950).

Executive session is limited

Section 4935 restricts closed sessions to five subjects:

1. litigation;
2. matters relating to the formation of contracts with third parties;
3. member discipline;
4. personnel matters; and
5. meeting with a member, at the member’s request, regarding payment of assessments.

The board must note in the minutes of the next open meeting, in general terms, any matter discussed in executive session (§ 4935(e)).

Our board’s minutes do carry that disclosure. Each month records that the prior month’s executive session addressed “CCR Violations, hearings, delinquencies and legal matters” — categories that fall within § 4935. What it does not tell members is anything about scale or pattern, which is why the underlying records matter.

The executive-session agendas for 2025, now on file beside the minutes, list what the four words do not. Under “EXECUTIVE SESSION” they carry “LEAK DISCUSSION/UPDATE” (January and February), “INSURANCE DISCUSSION” (March and April), “REIMBURSEMENT REQUEST” (February, August and October), “FEE WAIVER REQUEST Pg. 109-117” (June), “MAIN DRAIN DISCUSSION” (August) and “CONTRACTS” (July through November). Contracts, and arguably insurance, fit “the formation of contracts with third parties”. A leak, a main drain, a reimbursement request and a fee waiver do not on their face fit any of the five subjects, and no disclosure paragraph in the eleven sets of 2025 minutes mentions any of them. § 4935(e): “Any matter discussed in executive session shall be generally noted in the minutes of the immediately following meeting that is open to the entire membership.”

One item went the other way. The open-session minutes of January 16, 2025 record, under the delinquency report, that an “Owner requested a payment plan which was accepted by the Board.” § 4935(c): “The board shall adjourn to, or meet solely in, executive session to discuss a payment plan pursuant to Section 5665.”

Source: the Association's board meeting agendas for January 16 to November 20, 2025, executive-session sections; Regular Session Minutes, January 16 to November 20, 2025, executive-session disclosure paragraphs; Civil Code § 4935, read on leginfo September 14, 2026.

Tested against 2025: every agenda beside its minutes

The rule is § 4930(a): “the board may not discuss or take action on any item at a nonemergency meeting unless the item was placed on the agenda included in the notice that was distributed pursuant to subdivision (a) of Section 4920.” The exceptions are narrow and each leaves a mark. Under § 4930(d) the board may act on an unlisted item on “a determination made by a majority of the board present at the meeting that an emergency situation exists”; on a two-thirds vote “that there is a need to take immediate action and that the need for action came to the attention of the board after the agenda was distributed”; or where “the item appeared on an agenda … for a prior meeting of the board that occurred not more than 30 calendar days before the date that action is taken on the item and, at the prior meeting, action on the item was continued.” And § 4930(e): “Before discussing any item pursuant to subdivision (d), the board shall openly identify the item to the members in attendance at the meeting.”

For 2025 both halves are on file — eleven agendas and eleven sets of minutes — so the rule can be tested item by item. What the pairing shows:

• Two actions were taken with no agenda item. On January 16 the minutes record that “the newsletter draft was approved pending additions/revisions,” on a motion, unanimously; no 2025 agenda lists a newsletter. On June 26 the minutes record that “the Board approved to appoint Greg Atherton onto the Board of Directors”; the June agenda carries no appointment item. The last agenda to carry one was May 22, thirty-five days earlier, and the May minutes record that item as concluded by Georgia Taylor’s appointment, not continued. Neither set of minutes records a § 4930(d) determination or the § 4930(e) identification.
• One subject was discussed with no agenda item. On November 20 the minutes record that “the Board reviewed one proposal for new Bulletin Boards” and “tabled the topic”; the November agenda’s nine items of new business name no bulletin board. No action was taken, but § 4930(a) bars discussion as well as action.
• The violation report was “reviewed” at four meetings whose agendas do not list it — March 20, April 17, May 22 and November 20, where “MANAGEMENT REPORTS” carries only the work order report. Review only; “no action was taken.”
• The insurance renewal was approved somewhere the open minutes do not show. July 17: “No motion was made … the Board will wait for the final bid.” August 21: “the current insurance renewal that was approved.” Nothing between records a vote, and the July executive-session agenda lists “CONTRACTS.”
• Two agenda items never reach the minutes — “Fire Lane bid review” on June 26 and “Landscaping follow up” on October 23 — and “HOMEOWNERS CORRESPONDENCE” is on all eleven agendas and in none of the eleven sets of minutes.
• No vote in 2025 carries a tally. Every one is “carried” or “unanimously carried”, except the approval of the October minutes on November 20, “carried with one member abstaining”, which does not say who. The October 23 approvals of the reserve study and of the 2026 budget “with a 20% increase to the monthly dues” were taken with three directors present.

A minute that says “approved” without an agenda item behind it is what a § 4955 action is for — see Enforcement for what that section does and does not give you. Keep the agendas you receive with the minutes that follow them.

2026 so far. Three 2026 meetings have both halves on file — March 19, May 21 and July 16 — and one of them carries an action with no agenda item. On March 19 the minutes record that “the Board approved the DeMaine CPA engagement letter for the 2026 review/tax preparation”, on a motion; the March agenda’s new business is architectural applications, the annual meeting schedule, balcony repair status, the maintenance process, the reserve study proposal, main drain jetting and the annual calendar, with no review, audit or CPA item. We hold no agenda for the meetings of January 15, February 19 or August 20, 2026, so their minutes cannot be tested.

Source: the Association's board meeting agendas for January 16, February 20, March 20, April 17, May 22, June 26, July 17, August 21, September 18, October 23 and November 20, 2025, and its Regular Session Minutes for the eleven meetings January 16 to November 20, 2025, read side by side; for 2026, the agendas and Regular Session Minutes of March 19, May 21 and July 16, 2026; Civil Code § 4930, read on leginfo September 14, 2026.

Virtual meetings have extra requirements

Our board meets exclusively by Zoom. Every set of minutes we hold, from January 2025 to August 2026, records the meeting as conducted “via ZOOM video conference.”

The default rule is that there is still somewhere to go. Civil Code § 4090(b) provides that the notice of a teleconference board meeting “shall identify at least one physical location so that members of the association may attend, and at least one director or a person designated by the board shall be present at that location.” A meeting held solely in executive session is excepted, and so is one conducted under § 4926.

Civil Code § 4926 is that exception, added by AB 648 and in force since January 1, 2024. It lets a board meet entirely by teleconference with no physical location at all — but only “if all of the following conditions are satisfied”:

• The notice must include clear technical instructions on how to participate — § 4926(a)(1)(A).
• The notice must give a telephone number and email address of a person who can provide technical assistance with the teleconference process, both before and during the meeting — § 4926(a)(1)(B).
• The notice must carry a reminder that a member may request individual delivery of meeting notices, with instructions on how to do so — § 4926(a)(1)(C).
• Every director vote must be conducted by roll call — § 4926(a)(3).
• Every director and member must have the same ability to participate as at an in-person meeting, and anyone entitled to participate must be offered the option of doing so by telephone — § 4926(a)(2) and (a)(4).

Those conditions are the price of dispensing with the physical location. Read together with § 4090(b), a Zoom-only board meeting is in order one of two ways: the notice names a place you can walk into, or it names a person you can call when the link fails.

What our own notices carry

Eighteen board meeting agendas are on file, covering seventeen meetings from January 16, 2025 to July 16, 2026. Every one notices a Zoom-only meeting at 6:00 PM. None of them names a physical location, and none carries an email address of any kind — so neither § 4090(b) nor § 4926(a)(1)(B) is met on the face of the notice, and no notice carries the § 4926(a)(1)(C) individual-delivery reminder either.

What they do carry is the first condition, and clearly: a Zoom link, a meeting ID and a passcode on every agenda. The meetings are noticed in writing, by email, with the agenda — which is more than the assessment statement’s “contact Management for meeting information” would lead an owner to expect.

But an owner who cannot get onto the call has nowhere to go and nobody named to ring, and that is the practical thing the other two conditions exist to prevent.

Two of the conditions cannot be checked from a notice. Roll call can be checked from the minutes, and they record none. We hold minutes for fourteen of the seventeen meetings — April 16 and June 18, 2026 were cancelled, and we hold none for April 30 — and every vote in them is recorded only as carried — “a motion duly made, seconded and carried”, “unanimously carried”, or on August 20, 2026 “All were in favor”. None says how any director voted. Whether the Zoom sessions offered dial-in we do not claim either way; they may well have done without the notice saying so.

Action taken at a virtual meeting that fails these requirements is open to challenge, and § 4955 is how — see Enforcement below. If you intend to test it, keep the notices you actually receive.

When the notices arrive

The four-day floor in § 4920(a) is measured against the meeting, and each of these agendas states its own start time — 6:00 PM, in the header and again at call to order. Six 2026 meetings have both halves on file, the emailed notice and the agenda it carried:

Meeting	Notice emailed	Days before
Thu Mar 19	Fri Mar 13, 12:03 PM	6.25
Thu Apr 16	Fri Apr 10, 5:31 PM	6.02
Thu Apr 30	Mon Apr 27, 2:38 PM	3.14
Thu May 21	Sun May 17, 5:16 PM	4.03
Thu Jun 18	Mon Jun 15, 5:47 PM	3.01
Thu Jul 16	Mon Jul 13, 11:54 AM	3.25

Three of the six are short of four days. May 21 cleared it by forty-four minutes. The two comfortable ones are the earliest two, and the three short ones are the three most recent — six meetings is not a trend, but it is worth watching.

Where they are posted: nowhere

Notice does not have to arrive by email. § 4920(c) routes it through § 4045, which allows posting at a location the association has designated in its annual policy statement. Ours designates one, and it is the only mention of a bulletin board in any document we hold — not in the CC&Rs, the Bylaws, the Rules, the Articles or the Election Rules:

“The location designated for posting of a General Notice is: the bulletin board located by the main pool.”

The sentence is not new. The annual policy statements for fiscal years 2021, 2024 and 2025 — dated November 24, 2020, November 28, 2023 and November 25, 2024 — carry it word for word: the designation has stood, unchanged, in every annual statement we hold, from November 2020 on.

There are two pools, and the Rules give both a name. The Rules and Regulations open their pool section: “There is a North and South Pool, both require keys for entrance and one key will open either pool.” Their site map shows the two of them, one on each side of Gustavo Street — the Amistad Court half and the Amistad Place half. No governing document calls either one the main pool. The CC&Rs, the Bylaws and the Election Rules never use the word pool at all; the Rules are the only one that does, and they call them North and South.

Neither pool has a notice posted. An owner photographed both on August 30, 2026.

At the Amistad Court pool there is no case at all. The one that stood there was empty for the whole time the owner has lived here, was covered over with brown paper for a period, and has since been taken away entirely.

A case survives at the Amistad Place pool. Both its panes are backed with plain paper, and it carries nothing.

Which pool the policy statement means therefore decides nothing. One of them has no board, and the other has a board with nothing on it.

The board has had the subject in front of it once. Its minutes of November 20, 2025: “Bulletin Boards: The Board reviewed one proposal for new Bulletin Boards. The Board tabled the topic.” No later minutes we hold, through August 20, 2026, return to it.

That leaves no posting location in existence. § 4045(a)(5) would allow an association website instead, but only “if designated as a location for posting general notices in the annual policy statement” — and none designates one. So email is the whole of it. If you are not on their email list, there is nowhere you can go to read a notice.

Source: the Association's own board meeting agendas for every meeting from January 16, 2025 to July 16, 2026 — eighteen documents, since July 16 was issued in two versions carrying different Zoom IDs — together with the six emails that circulated them, whose send times are taken from the message headers and converted to Pacific. The designated posting location is quoted from the FY2026 Annual Policy Statement, page 3, item 3, and appears in the same words in the FY2021, FY2024 and FY2025 statements at page 2, item 3, inside the Annual Budget Report. The two pools are named in the Rules and Regulations, page 13, and drawn on the site map at page 22. Photographs of both pool enclosures, August 30, 2026. Regular Session Minutes, November 20, 2025, for the bulletin board proposal, and November 20, 2025 to August 20, 2026 for the votes. Civil Code §§ 4045, 4090, 4920, 4926, 4955, 5310. An agenda is a record any member may request under § 5200.

Civil Code § 4926 does not extend to meetings at which ballots are counted. Under § 5120 those must be counted in public, at a properly noticed open meeting.

Meetings of the members run by their own rules

The Open Meeting Act governs meetings of the board. The annual meeting, and any special meeting of the owners, is a meeting of the membership — and Civil Code § 5000 governs those:

• They must be conducted “in accordance with a recognized system of parliamentary procedure or any parliamentary procedures the association may adopt.” Neither our Bylaws nor our operating rules adopt a system, so a recognized system applies — which is what makes a motion from the floor an available thing.
• “The board shall permit any member to speak at any meeting of the membership of the association.” A reasonable time limit may be set for all members. No time at all is not one of the options.

A members’ meeting held entirely by Zoom carries a further condition. Corporations Code § 7510(f) requires the association to take reasonable measures giving members “a reasonable opportunity to participate in the meeting and to vote on matters submitted to the members” — and, absent unanimous consent or a declared emergency, permits a members’ meeting to be held solely by remote means only where “the meeting includes a live audiovisual feed for the duration of the meeting.”

Enforcement

Civil Code § 4955 lets a member bring a civil action for “declaratory or equitable relief … including, but not limited to, injunctive relief, restitution, or a combination thereof,” within one year of the date the cause of action accrues. A member who prevails “shall be entitled to reasonable attorney’s fees and court costs”, and the court may impose a civil penalty of up to $500 for each violation. A prevailing association recovers nothing “unless the court finds the action to be frivolous, unreasonable, or without foundation.”

Read the penalty carefully. § 4955(b) adds that “each identical violation shall be subject to only one penalty if the violation affects each member equally” — so a notice that failed to reach anybody carries one $500 penalty, not one for each of 192 owners. It still counts separately meeting by meeting, and a late notice under § 4920(a) is not the same violation as a missing agenda under § 4920(d).

§ 4955 does not give a court power to void what the board did. The word does not appear anywhere in the Open Meeting Act. Its twin in the election article does carry it: § 5145(a) says “a court shall void any results of the election unless the association establishes, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the association’s noncompliance … did not affect the results of the election.” Two nearly identical remedies sections, and only one of them has that power. A member can still argue for a declaration that an action taken with no notice is invalid — “declaratory or equitable relief … including, but not limited to” is open-ended — but that is an argument to make, not something the section hands you.

And there is a gate in front of all of it. Civil Code § 5930(a): an association or a member “may not file an enforcement action in the superior court unless the parties have endeavored to submit their dispute to alternative dispute resolution.” It catches exactly what § 4955 authorises — an action “solely for declaratory, injunctive, or writ relief” — and § 5950 wants a certificate filed with the first pleading saying ADR was completed or the other side refused it; without one, § 5950(b) makes the pleading open to “a demurrer or a motion to strike.” The mechanism is § 5935: a Request for Resolution, which the other party has 30 days to accept, and silence is a refusal. Unlike § 5145(c) and § 4515(d), § 4955 never names small claims as a way round that gate, and whether a § 4955 claim can be brought there is not settled on this page.