Why would a state make it harder to amend Bylaws?

I seem to be one of the few Hoosiers on the board, so here’s my take on some of your issues, for what they’re worth:

First, if your community is 23 years old, I doubt if the 2009 HOA law applies to you (communities established before July 1, 2009 could vote to make themselves subject to the law) – you really should consult your association attorney to see what laws apply to your community.

Next, when it comes to amending the bylaws or CCRs, there really needs to be more thought applied to the process rather than talking about it at a meeting and people saying “yeah, let’s vote to change section X” - all in favor, say I. Okie, doke, we’ve changed it!
I suggest you have your association attorney do a legal audit of your governing documents – basically reviewing them to see if there’s language that needs to be deleted because it’s outdated, refers to the developer (who’s long gone) – or is downright illegal. The attorney could help you determine if there are sections that are too vague or if the CCRs even mention certain issues that have developed since the community was turned over to the homeowners.
You can also poll the homeowners on what they’d like to see – are the issues with rules enforcement? Do the CCRs need to be clearer on what’s the Association’s responsibility to repair vs. the homeowner? You could also ask them to prioritize on what’s most important and then plan to work on that. This is where it’s helpful to have a committee doing a lot of the donkey work on drafting proposals and making recommendations to the board.

Finally, you’re correct that regular board meeting or annual meetings aren’t the best settings to discuss complicated issues – one is a business meeting and the other may spend most of the time with Board elections. I would suggest that the board hold town hall meetings what a specific issue can be discussed. Get a really good moderator to help everyone stay on topic and state the purpose. In fact, you may want to have these once a quarter to bring up specific issues.
For example, if everyone was up in arms about the nightly rental (something I think I’ll bring to my own Board to review), you could have a town hall meeting discussing the rental issue. I might even have the association attorney and property manager show up - the attorney to make a brief presentation on what the law says and the property manager may be able to provide an overview of how other communities have addressed the problem.
That meeting could be the start of forming a committee to explore the issue in more detail (if people are really fired up, they can join the committee to do some research and report to the board on the findings and make recommendations)

In my neighborhood the BOD is not open to any research done by members. So communication is difficult. Any suggestions or questions by members not received well, or just not acknowledged.

Unless they are actually on staff, Attorneys are only going to offer advice when asked.
The key is realizing what questions to ask.

In your situation, the question I would ask would be, what Statutes are applicable to the Association?

SheliaH,

We are in south central IN. Our contact with the HOA is prolly going to be severed soon (we are mid-purchase of a house) and since my wife and I are the "foundation documents experts" in our group, things are complicated. A number of the new Board members will prolly just wish these things would go away. It might help if we could get more specific. Could you contact us at faf [at] ozart.us? We would really appreciate it. Thanks.

Frank

Not exactly sure what your point is about a corporation.. but regardless, we would not like anyone to duke it out for us. At least, not if we have to pay for it. We do not have deep pockets.

I have read through these regs a number of times previous to posting my original questions. And it was expressed early in this discussion that our 23 year old condo may not be subject to this set of regs. If you are contending that this is incorrect, I'd be interested in hearing more.

As I said above, when I read in these regs that:
"A modification of or amendment to the
bylaws is valid only if:
(1) the modification or amendment is set forth in an amendment
to the declaration; and
(2) the amendment is recorded."

Given the **stipulations in our CCRs**, the only way we can amend the Declaration is to get 75% of the membership to vote it in. If you are saying we can just ignore this technicality and skip over the voting part, please explain why it wouldn't be challenged by the people who might have not liked the Bylaws amendment.

Lots of good points. The world should be listening to the debate ongoing in a country where even judges & sheriffs may be directly elected.

As to FrankF3Indiana's originals, "condominium" & its variant labels are about statutory templates that intervene to impose a legislated straitjacket onto the far older, sometimes whackier world of merely cross-contracted promises ( contract law ). Whether or not properly assumed by owners & perpetuated, HOAs usually lack legislative templates until possibly complaints reach a high enough level of frenzy.

I have read that the earliest, modern era CONDOMINIUM template was the 1963 Illinois version. My jurisdiction's first dates free-standing to 1966-7. Claims have been made that "condo formats" kicked around 3000 years ago in Palestine etc where condo wars are still ongoing.

Some condo acts entrench literally the actual text of condo by-laws and may reflect that the legislators did not want such tampered with without lots of pain. Under that approach condo Declarations would get very high thresholds for onsite amendment , but lowest hierarchy house-Rules would get least. Anything passed after the (2002-) 2009 housing fiascos could reflect extra levels of wild fear for the future.

"51 % votes" :

Finally , where approvals are literally legislated or Regulation-prescribed to require "more than" or "50 % or more" whatever, the literal reference is not "51 %" vote etc. It is 50 % of entitleds or respectively a single vote more than 50 %. Only where exactly 100 units are entitled would a "more than 50%" approval mean 51 votes present/proxied. Voodoo mis-counts may make a mockery of that of course.

Hmmm 50%, well How does Common area's apply to Vote since, since they're also lot numbers. my neighbor hood lot 11 & 12 and others are common area's. say like say there is 50 lots in my community, so that's by interpretation 50% is 25 lots is the magic number to get, but here's the catch 9 lots are common area's that covers wetlands and streams area nobody can build on. yet reading the HOA's bylaws and CC&R, each lot has a equal voting rights, so the Board already has 9 lot votes for whatever they want to do, so all they need is 16 lot owners to dictate to the rest of the HOA as what to do. if the majority is min 75% that board would need Much more lot owners because they already have 9 votes they can say is legal votes by them.

There should be one type of National HOA laws instead of all these different deviants of them and because the laws are so complex, they need Federal Oversight on them.

Bob, this must be something unique to Canada.

I've never heard of votes being allocated to common areas in any Association that has been discussed over the past 7 years I've been a member of this site. I've also never read of common area voting rights in any governing documents I have had the opportunity to read.

Members are granted voting rights. The number of votes a member receives are typically based on the number of lots/units that they own (typically 1 per lot) or, in the case of condominiums, the number of votes a member has may be based on a percentage of the size of their unit compared to the whole building.

Declarants typically have the same voting rights based on the number of lots or units owned. However, the Declarant typically has more than one vote per lot owned.

This is probably one of the many examples our HOA isn't a HOA, CC&R's and the Bylaws which is one document rolled into just 1 recordings and that one where the HOA Board accepts the Bylaws before the first house was even built, the developer rolled everything into one combined Recording, so there was nothing to pass on to established a HOA through the legally enacting the HOA. this is probably done on purpose so it couldn't survive a hostile take over of the development by a Huge big Named builder in this state, this bully builder bought up all the property around a small developer and just assumed they could take over the HOA, that was till they tried it and had to record a new HOA with a similar name and specifically excluded our section from it. yet their responsible for our common area's and street maintenance now, use to be the city responsibility.

One of the many weird things in our CC&R's and By-laws is this, "All Lot's have equal Voting rights" if you look at the plats of the land each parcel has a lot number on them that's including the common area's which are owned by the HOA. given that the board represents all lots, those common area's to me have the same voting rights by proxy of whomever Is on the board.

Were a small development of well less then 40 houses but with over 40 lots but 10 are common area's of just streams and green spaces, which represents bout 25% of the lots which are common area's. the way it says each lot has equal voting rights, seems the board can use them as proxy's, if we ever decide to start a HOA up.