Owner participation periods

Owners have a right to speak, but not to an unlimited floor

Every open board meeting has to stay open to the people it affects. That means owners can attend, and in the states researched here, they can also address the board, not just watch. California requires the board to let members speak and to set "a reasonable time limit for all members of the association to speak to the board or before a meeting", without naming a specific number of minutes.

California requires the board to set "a reasonable time limit for all members of the association to speak to the board or before a meeting."

Source: California Civil Code §4925, Davis Stirling Common Interest Development Act, California Legislature

Notice what the statute does not do: it does not say fifteen minutes, or two minutes per owner, or any other number. That gap is filled by the board's own reasonable judgment, or by whatever the association's own rules say. Check your bylaws and any adopted meeting rules before assuming a specific time exists.

Some states set an explicit floor, most do not

Washington is the outlier researched here: it sets a specific, mandatory minimum. Its Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act requires the board to open the meeting with dedicated owner comment time, before any vote is taken.

"The board must provide at least 15 minutes at the beginning of each meeting for unit owners to comment about agenda items before the board votes."

Source: Revised Code of Washington §64.90.445, Washington State Legislature

Washington also sets a per-owner minimum of ninety seconds. Florida takes a narrower approach: it gives members "the right to speak at such meetings with reference to all designated agenda items", tying the right to the agenda rather than to a clock. Do not assume your state matches either of these. Most states researched outside California, Florida, and Washington have not been checked here at all, so ask whether your state's common interest community statute sets a floor, and read your own bylaws either way.

What the board still controls

A participation period is not an open microphone with no rules. The board can generally limit comment to the agenda items on the table, hold to a reasonable time limit, and keep the discussion moving. If the meeting is held by teleconference, the open comment right does not disappear, California requires the meeting to "be audible to the members in a location specified in the notice", so a remote format has to stay genuinely open, not just open to the directors on the call.

Disruption is a separate problem from format. Washington's statute explicitly authorizes the board to remove a disruptive individual from the meeting; this specific authority is confirmed only for Washington in this research. Elsewhere, a board's authority to remove someone comes from its own adopted rules of decorum and whatever its state law allows, not from a general assumption that boards can eject anyone they find difficult. If you are not in Washington, check your governing documents and your state's statute before treating removal as a settled power.