Condo meetings, votes, and board accountability in Washington, DC

Board power in the District runs through meetings the statute keeps open. Under D.C. Code § 42-1903.03, the association must meet at least annually, owners must receive at least 21 days' notice of any annual or regularly scheduled meeting and 7 days' notice of any other, and, subject to reasonable board rules, all meetings of the association, its board, and its committees are open to every unit owner in good standing. The board must set aside a designated comment period for owners at each regularly scheduled meeting. Executive sessions exist, but only by motion and recorded vote, only for enumerated subjects (personnel, contract negotiations, litigation and legal consultation, individual owners' violations or delinquencies), and any action from a closed session must surface in the open minutes. A board that decides real business in private email threads and ratifies it later is inverting the statute's design.

Voting mechanics are equally concrete. Proxies must be dated and witnessed, are void if undated, and terminate automatically at the final adjournment of the first meeting held after their date, no evergreen proxies that quietly govern for years (§ 42-1903.05). The board may authorize electronic voting with appropriate security, and ballots can accompany meeting notices. For owners in new or converted buildings, § 42-1903.02 puts declarant control on a clock: the developer's right to appoint the board ends no later than the period stated in the instruments, capped at 2 years for most condominiums (3 for expandable ones) from the first conveyance, or when three-fourths of the common-element interests have been conveyed, whichever comes first, and owners are entitled to elect at least 25 percent of the board once a quarter of the units have sold, and a third of it at half.

Removing directors

The Condominium Act leaves mid-term removal mechanics to your bylaws, so read them first: most DC bylaws let a stated share of owners call a special meeting and remove directors with or without cause. If your association is also incorporated under the D.C. Nonprofit Corporation Act, § 29-406.08 supplies a default: members may remove a director they elected, with or without cause unless the documents require cause, at a meeting whose notice states that removal is a purpose. Between the bylaws' own machinery, the open-meeting and comment rights, and the minutes and books you can examine, a DC owner group that wants a board gone has the tools to do it lawfully, and on the record.