HOA Board Power Struggles Questions

Started by MichaelC4 • 3 replies • 2129 views

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MichaelC4 (Nevada)
Posts: 4

Posted:

Hello all,

I have recently been elected to the board of an HOA in Las Vegas, NV. We have a bit of a power struggle going on and I need some advice on certain things are being done.

First, is cumulative voting the norm in most HOA's? We currently have cumulative voting, which means you can cast all your votes for a single candidate. I was elected by a landslide and now the old board members are wanting to change the bylaws to remove cumulative voting. I don't think this is fair, but I would like to know what is normal.

Secondly, our current Treasurer was not reelected. I have volunteered for the position, but again, the old board is using a clause in the bylaws that says only the President and Vice President are required to be directors. I would think the only time you would have someone besides a board member be an officer is that if you didn't have enough officers, or if you didn't have any qualified and no one objected. So I ask, do other associations have officers that are not elected board members?

I appreciate any help you all can give.

Thanks,
Mike.C

RogerB (Colorado)
Posts: 5,067

Posted:

Michael, most By-laws prohibit cumulative voting. Most associations select Board members to be the officers; some require it. Meanwhile, many By-laws allow for other than the Officer to preform their duties. For example we usually handle all accounting and take minutes at meetings of the HOAs we manage.

BrianB (California)
Posts: 2,820

Posted:

we do not allow cumulative voting.

we have an accountant, appointed/paid, who is not on the board. However, she does not hold the position of "treasurer".. that is held by someone who actually does nothing except hold the title, really. the board member/treasurer changes every election or so (or would, if we ever had any), but the accountant has been the same for six years.

RandalR (Tennessee)
Posts: 98

Posted:

If cumulative voting means residents are given a ballot and asked to "vote for 3 candidates" and they write the same persons name down 3 times then I think there's an issue with that. The method would allow a small group to stack the deck by having all of them do cumulative voting while the remainder of the membership is splitting their votes among the candidates.

The more I study the Bylaws of different HOAs the more I realize just how vague they're all written! Procedures for voting, as well as the use of proxies in such need to be clearly defined. I've been butting heads with some of my fellow Board members of late so they pulled a slick one during the past annual meeting. Rather than send out proxies asking for members to vote for candidates, they send out a proxy asking for members to grant them the authority to "vote on all other matters", which included board elections. Fortunately they only received 33 proxies back out of a membership of 263. I obtained 22 of my own. In the end the membership replaced all the incumbents up for reelection (President, Secretary, and me). It was a real shock to the other two!

For officers, from what I read, most have a President, Vice President, Secretary, and Treasurer, beyond that anyone else is a Director at Large. If you don't have a Board that large I wouldn't think there would be an issue with appointing a qualified individual to serve as a non-voting officer in a position. After all, they weren't elected. You start pulling double duty it's just a matter of time before someone will call it a conflict of interest or start making allegations, especially if there's money involved in any of it. Don't set yourself up to be accused of something.

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