Effective May 14, 2021, North Carolina Governor Cooper’s restrictions on the allowable number of people for indoor and outdoor meetings and social distancing requirements were lifted. For HOAs, this means that in-person board and member meetings may now be held with no capacity restrictions, social distancing or mask requirements. There remain some mask mandates, mostly for schools, prisons, child care, and certain public transportation and health care facilities, but not for private venues. More information can be found here: https://www.nc.gov/covid-19/staying-ahead-curve.
As we mentioned in a previous blog, there is a bill pending in the North Carolina Legislature that would allow the virtual meetings utilized during the pandemic to continue permanently. The bill has been referred to a House committee for further study, but hopefully, we will see the passage of it sometime this year.
Unlike in North Carolina where “virtual meetings” became the norm, South Carolina HOAs and condominiums were operating with pre-COVID requirements, although many chose to voluntarily implement safeguards to protect residents. The South Carolina Governor, Henry McMaster, had issued a state of emergency in March 2020, and counties and municipalities could piggyback on the Governor’s order to implement restrictions, resulting in different restrictions on a per-county and per-city basis. As of June 6th, the Governor’s order expired (although rollbacks of COVID-19 restrictions had begun months earlier), eliminating the final government-mandated COVID-19 restrictions statewide.
The original article can be found at https://www.offitkurman.com/blog/2021/06/15/restrictions-on-indoor-and-outdoor-meetings-lifted/