The board of directors of the Toronto Community Housing Corp. will hold a publicly scheduled meeting on Thursday. It held its last publicly scheduled meeting in December.

In between, there were at least two important meetings it told no one about.

The board of the city-owned landlord had a secret session Tuesday night to discuss an investigation into allegations of improper conduct by CEO Gene Jones. Nine days earlier, on a Sunday, the board gathered in secret in the office of a Bay Street law firm to discuss the same subject.

The board gave the public no indication that either meeting would occur. And it didn’t have to.

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The secrecy of the recent deliberations highlights a little-known difference in the transparency provisions governing most government boards and those governing city corporations such as the TCHC.

Under the City of Toronto Act, council and its boards are allowed to close their meetings when discussing certain sensitive matters. But even then, they have to declare that a closed meeting is being held — and identify the “general nature of the matter to be considered.”

When the TTC board wanted to fire chief executive Gary Webster in 2012, Webster’s critics had to call a public meeting and say they wanted to “consider a personnel matter.” Jones’s fate, conversely, could be determined at a meeting nobody knows about.

The official “shareholder direction” from council to the TCHC says “advance public notice” of board meeting agendas “is required.” But TCHC lawyers say this command doesn’t apply to confidential meetings, spokeswoman Sara Goldvine said.

Nothing stops the TCHC from providing such notice. Goldvine, however, argued that this would not make sense.

“Giving public notice of an in camera meeting and its agenda is inconsistent with the board’s duty to discuss a limited number of confidential and sensitive matters in private,” she said.

Board member and councillor Maria Augimeri disagreed. She said even she did not know about the Sunday meeting: An invitation was sent to an address not connected to her phone at 7:21 p.m. Saturday night.

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“Because we are a public body, because we are public housing, it is incumbent upon us to be as transparent as possible in the public eye. So some sort of announcement must be made every time we have a meeting,” she said.

“I understand that when it comes to personnel and real estate matters, citing only two examples, we must hold our meetings in camera; we don’t have to give the details. But the overall subject matter must be stated publicly.”

The meetings were led by TCHC chair Bud Purves, who did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

The Thursday meeting will be held at 10:30 a.m. at TCHC headquarters. Purves said the board will discuss the Jones matter again then.

“We’ll be issuing a statement when we get around to resolving these facts that are coming before us and a course of action is taken,” Purves said in brief Tuesday comments to reporters who found out about the meeting.

Purves retained the law firm Cassels Brock to investigate two allegations. The board appears most concerned about the allegation that chief operating officer Kathleen Llewellyn-Thomas did not resign, as the TCHC had claimed, but was forced out by Jones and given a severance payment. The board is supposed to be involved in the hiring and firing of senior officers.