Florida HOA Rules & Regulations: Unusual situation?

A few months ago we bought a house in a 100-unit HOA subdivision in Florida. It's our first experience with an HOA and so far, so good. The neighbors are friendly and the Board of Directors doesn't seem to have any power-mad control freaks on it. We have been attending the monthly Board of Directors meetings as a way to learn the ropes, so to speak, and get a better idea about how things work here.

After the most recent Board meeting last week, the head of the Rules committee approached me and asked if I would be willing to join her committee. The committees here in general seem to have trouble getting people to join and participate in the governance of the association. I told her I'd think about it. I spent a fair number of hours last week doing internet research on Florida HOAs and how they go about establishing their rules and regulations. Then I read through our governing documents to better understand exactly what they have to say. What I found was somewhat surprising.

Our HOA allows the members to vote every year on the rules and regulations that the board has established during the previous year. Is this typical for HOAs? From my research, it seems like an unusual arrangement.

My concerns don't revolve around the actual rules so much as the procedural aspects. We were told that 3 years ago an attempt was made to change "the rules" but the members voted against the changes at the annual meeting. It seems to me that allowing the members to vote on each and every rule change is an invitation to chaos at the annual meeting of members. If the package of rule changes is offered up as a monolithic take-it-or-leave-it set of changes then one runs the risk of people voting down the entire thing if they strongly disagree with even one of the changes. On the other hand, if each rule was brought individually before the members for a vote, with discussion and debate for each (as seems to be allowed under Florida law), the meeting could drag on for many hours.

I'm not sure what to make of all this. My first instinct is to not volunteer to spend many hours on the rules committee working on something that might very well be shot down at the annual members meeting next year.

Looking at the bigger picture, it might be more productive to spend time drafting (and getting support for) an amendment to the covenants that gives the sole power of rulemaking to the Board of Directors. In that case, the expense of getting an amendment passed and recorded with the county seems to be not inexpensive, and the Bylaws would also have to be amended since the power of the members to approve the rules at the annual meeting is enshrined in those Bylaws, and not the covenants. The covenants do mention "rules and regulations", but only briefly and in 3 separate sub-paragraphs that have to do with pets, vehicles, and leasing restrictions.

I'm really at a loss here. Was wondering if anyone here had any thoughts or insights about something like a "best practices" way to procede.

(p.s. this is my first time posting here and I hope to learn a lot from the good folks around these parts in the months ahead)

My personal opinion - do not do this.

While you have stated that your experience thus far has been pleasant, you have also stated that it is difficult to get homeowners involved in committee meetings, and I would assume this holds true for general HOA governance, but the membership also has a voice and seems to exercise it at the annual meeting. If the membership is apathetic it is also safe to say that it would be easy to get a not so good board voted in and if that not so good board had absolute authority I would think it could spell headaches for your association.

I'll give you an example. My old neighborhood had a fine voluntary HOA. Involvement was okay. Most were happy. Then came a board. They started changing the rules. They altered the articles of incorporation. Then they worked to rid the by-laws of the super-majority required t pass things. Then with that gone they changed the threshold to pass things, changing it every time they didn't get their way with a vote until it was just a quorom of the board of directors or quorom of those "members in good standing" physically at a meeting.

One of there changes - allow the board to determine an assessment of any time of any amount without input from the membership.

Your annual meeting membership vote is a nice check.

Tim, Kevin, Banks, thank you for your replies. Our subdivision is a proper HOA (FS 720) with fee simple titles. The residences are all single story homes, 30 duplexes and 40 standalones. When I saw the legal document before closing titled "Party Wall Facilities" I thought that sounded like fun! It turned out to be something else completely. Hahaha.

I do like the extra check that the members have on the Board's ability to pass the rules and regulations. And we realize that a great Board this year doesn't guarantee anything about boards in the future. It's not technically an age-restricted community, but aside from a few younger couples and families, most people here are seniors. Many have been here for 20 years and have done their part in years past serving on the Board and the various committees. The reluctance of many to participate these days seems to be more a case of burnout - been there, done that - than apathy. At least that's my take on it after a few months.

I think I'll have another chat with the chair of the Rules committee. She can probably fill me in on a lot of the background. I'll try to get ahold of the minutes for the meeting where the proposed rules revisions were voted down a few years ago. That could also help to shed some more light on the situation.

Another question, if I may, about member Proxies. Our documents permit proxies and what those documents say about proxies seems to be in accordance with Florida law. If each proposed rule change is brought to the floor for a separate vote at the annual members meeting, would it be permissable to solicit limited proxies from the members concerning each rule change separately, and have those rules questions separate from the proxy voting for the election of directors? Has anyone ever seen anything like that? Is it common to get bombarded pre-election with different people all soliciting proxies to advance their own agendas? I don't think that happens here, but I won't know for certain until after the first annual members meeting next year. A shame we missed the one this year by about 6 weeks.

Thanks again for your help.

Thanks, Tim. I have some more research to do on proxies. My only concern at this point is our rules and regulations, how the Board may or may not choose to adopt changes, and how the voting procedure will work at the next annual meeting of the members. Even thinking about proxies at this point is probably getting ahead of myself and reading too much into it. The Rules are only 7 pages. It's not like I'd be wasting hundreds of hours of work if the changes end up getting voted down. It sounds like a good way to get my feet wet, so to speak.