Parliamentary procedure 101

The President of the Board seems to be under the impression the 'meeting' on Friday night accomplished something. It did not.

Stipulating that it was an actual and valid Special Meeting of the unit owners (and I also reject that, but that's for later), there were exactly (0) votes taken, and nothing was passed.

The President of the Board misunderstands what a proxy is. A proxy is not a vote. Repeat that! A proxy is not a vote.

A proxy is a request to the Secretary to cast votes on the absent owner's behalf. If you doubt this, you can look it up in Robert's Rules and in a dozen different manuals on parliamentary procedure. Heck, it even says this on the proxy forms the Board mailed out.

Stipulating the Secretary had been given by 62 owners valid proxies to cast a vote on five motions on their behalf, those motions were never brought to the floor, and no vote was taken on any of them. I was there, and recorded the meeting. Even if it were not standard parliamentary procedure, Florida Statute explicitly states, as does our Declaraction of Condominium, that unit owners present at the meeting must be given the opportunity to vote in person. We were not given that opportunity. No votes were held at the meeting.

Correct procedure would have been to bring each motion successively before the floor, discuss and possibly amend the motion, and then vote on each, the Secretary casting the vote of the proxies after we had taken a vote of the assembled owners present in person. But the Secretary did not cast those votes, because there was no opportunity given to do so.

I'd be upset, if I were the sender of the proxy, to say nothing of those at the meeting who participated in the counting of proxies. I think the Board may have the impression that because we conduct Board elections by written ballot, we can hold votes on items before Special Meetings that way. Alas, it isn't so.

I've informed the Clerk of Brevand County Circuit Court of these and other issues, in case the Board stubbornly tries to file the Amendments to the Declaration of Condominium that we never voted on.