Notifications to the Members of HOA

[Guest Fed Up with Board]

Recently our HOA had an election, the ballots sent out were on postcards and were supposed to be, as described in our by laws, secret ballots. I along with another neighbor decided to run for the board only 2 weeks before the election, after the ballots were distributed. (No nomination committee was formed and they didn't send out a notice to accept nominations, only noted on the ballot that you could right in your vote.) I was told by a property management group that we could type up another ballot and have the neighbors that wanted to vote for us, resend their previous vote, if they had already turned in their postcard. We had great response from the HOA members and received 30 votes, some of which were on the postcard ballot distributed by the HOA and some were on the ballots we created and collected from the neighbors. We have 90 members of our association and to get a quorum we would have needed 45 total voters. I am pretty certain that at least 15 people voted for the current 2 board members that are up for re-election and that we were able to reach the quorum.

Since the board was not using an official secret ballot method we felt like our ballots would be legal and counted. On the day of the election, the current board decided that our ballots were not legal and that they would not count and that we caused the election to be invalid. I am sure that if we hadn't received the majority of the votes they would have just said we lost. The 2 members up for election then used the ballots we collected in which neighbors voted for us to send out their own campaign letter and wrote personal messages to each homeowner asking them to "reconsider their vote." Of course we received phone calls and the homeowners that voted for us were outraged and it back fired on them. Once the board found out we knew about the letters, a letter was sent to the rest of the neighborhood about 5 days later. So unfair and dirty!

So now we are going to have another election. A notice was put on everyone's mail box, posted on the Facebook page and emailed our to about 20 members of the association stating that we had cause the election to be invalid and that there would be another election. Mind you that all of the official members of the association do not actually live in our neighborhood. There are quite a few, I am guessing 10-15 that include rentals, lot only owners and homes for sale of members that didn't receive the notice. Recently, August 17th a notice went out via email and Facebook post that the board was accepting nominations through August 31st. Again, this notice didn't reach all of the members of the association. When I brought this to their attention, they said they didn't want to spend the money to send out a letter. THIS HAS TO BE ILLEGAL, since it says in our by laws that notices have to be mailed. I explained to them that I would be happy to donate the paper, envelopes and time to send out the notices to the balance of members, I got back nothing. This is the same board that spent $450 for a bounce house rental for a neighborhood social this summer for 6-8 children to use. They are great with our money!!!! NOT! I calculated that it would probably cost about $20 in stamps, of which they probably have, to send out the notices and that if they would type it up, I would print and send it out. I am outraged that they are allowed to run the board in this haphazard manner and would be even more furious if I was one of the members that didn't know anything about this current situation.

There are 2 spots open on the board and their term ended July 10th of this year. Our by laws say if we get the majority vote from the neighborhood we can have them removed from the board. By laws also say that the remaining board then votes for their replacements. We definitely don't want to do that because the remaining board is just as negligent and ridiculous as the board members that are up for re-election. WHAT CAN WE DO??????

The 2 members that are up for re-election are asking to be re-elected based on the fact that the HOA is in a current lawsuit about an old water tower that was taken down 3 years ago by a previous board that was actually owned by the developer of the neighborhood (board member from the board that approved this didn't research who owned it prior to taking it down) so the HOA is being sued by the developer for damages. They also claim they are working with the city to get an entrance sign replaced that was damaged during some road construction. The lawsuit is being handled by an attorney, all the board has to do is turn over documentation and the sign is taken care of and will be replaced once all of the road construction is complete. The city has approved payment fort he sign and we are all set.

The current board has recently made some VERY BAD decisions and is on the path to continue to make more. Earlier this year they authorized a homeowner to use common land for personal use, allowing them to extend their drive way and concrete steps to extend over onto common land on top of an easement. The board let this same homeowner dig a drainage ditch on the common land add rip rap rock to keep water from draining on their property. There is no plan in place for maintaining the area and the encroachment including the steps is not safe.

I have sent an email request to the board with a plan for having an official secret ballot election and have received no response.

Please offer some suggestions about what our rights are and what we can do, this is a mess!

[jstackpo]

That much of a mess is more than we, RONR geeks that we are, can take care of in a few sentences.

Best bet is to conatact the National Association of Parliamentarians (parliamentarians.org) or the American Institute of ditto (Google it) and have them recommend a real live parliamentarian for you and your group to consult with.

[sMargaret]

Three things while you get your Parliamentarian:

* Do get a full copy of RONR, and also a copy of the little book - http://www.robertsrules.com/book.html and http://www.robertsrules.com/inbrief.html. If you haven't already done so, fully read the little book.

* "There are 2 spots open on the board and their term ended July 10th of this year. Our by laws say if we get the majority vote from the neighborhood we can have them removed from the board. By laws also say that the remaining board then votes for their replacements". So you have multiple year terms on the board, there were two openings this last July, and the board declared the election invalid? Who is is that you're trying to get removed from the board, the people in those two spots who aren't officially there any more? You can't have them removed from the board - they aren't on the board.

* It's quite possible that this board is all negligent and ridiculous. It's possible that they're volunteers in over their heads, who will still end up being your neighbors. I did like this article: http://www.ptotoday.com/pto-today-articles/article/703-a-tale-of-two-volunteers - just something to keep in mind.