Nomination for Election to the Association Board of Directors

Our Homeowners Association has a rule that nominees who wish to serve on the board must meet the following qualifications: attend (4) out of (11) board meetings in the past 12 months and have (5) homeowners signatures backing their nomination. Is this a valid rule?

Charlene

I have never heard of such a rule. A BOD can make Rules and Regulations pretty well as much as they see fit to do. What they cannot do is make one(s) that override the Covenants/Bylaws.

I suggest you look up in your docs the qualifications for becoming a BOD Member. That will be the controlling document, not the R&R's.

David, does that apply to all candidates (including sitting Board members running for reelection)?

What do your Bylaws and/or CCRs say? That's always the first place you should look for answers. If it's not in there, the rule might be valid if the Bylaws/CCRs allow the Board to adopt additional rules, provided they don't contradict what's in the governing documents.

Personally, I think the five homeowner support is unnecessary - at a minimum, I think a homeowner who (1) has his/her assessments paid up and (2) isn't involved in any litigation involving the Association should be eligible to run for a spot.

As for the attendance, does the interested party have to attend at least four meetings before becoming eligible to serve? If so, I can see the rationale behind that - you get to see how the board operates and hear details behind various decisions, but it's also a tad unreasonable. After all, one should be able to read board meeting minutes to get an idea of the Association's current issues and it may be someone hadn't been able to attend because of other commitments, but now has the time to devote to Board work.

By the way, as an added note, according to standard parliamentary procedure, a nomination doesn't even require a second, let alone the support of a specified number of members. The election process itself takes care of that, so such a rule doesn't even make sense. If you don't have enough votes to get elected, you don't get elected. If you have enough votes to get elected, you certainly would have enough support to get nominated. Such a rule is unnecessary and silly.

Tim,

Yes, that applies to all candidates including current board members running for reelection. With over 800 homes, 25 signatures are pretty easy to get. I just hung around our clubhouse on a Friday evening and asked folks for their signature as they came in.

Dave

Bruce,

That's quite a charge - that we are behaving like children - when you know little or nothing about our situation.

Our HOA does alot to permit our members to inform themselves on the qualifications and agendas of those running for the board. We publish the candidates' biographies on our website and mail them to every member of the association. We hold a "meet the candidates" informal social gathering and also a "candidates forum" where the candidates who chose to participate answer questions from the audience. Therefore, it makes sense for us to keep the total number of candidates to a manageable number. One way we do that is to require that a potential candidate have an indication of at least minimal (less than 3% of members)interest among the membership. If a potential candidate is not willing to put in the modest effort to obtain the signatures, they are unlikely to become the kind of active, hard working board members our self managed community needs.

Our election procedures, prior to our first election of homeowners to replace the developer's appointees, were reviewed by the League of Woman Voters (LOWV).

A good deal of thought, debate and open discussion went into the development of our election procedures and they have served us well. If, with this information in hand you still think this means we are acting like children, then there is not much room for further discussion.