covenant committee...

Because of some contentious situations here lately about our rules and enforcement, our board (of which i am treasurer) has decided to set up a work group of homeowners to help us feel the pulse of our community regarding rules and how they are enforced.

I was wondering if any of you have had any experience with this sort of thing. I recognize the board has the authority and responsibility to administer the rules; however, our board appears to be wanting more homeowner input into how things operate.

The first meeting of this group is this coming week and one of our homeowners was encouraged to volunteer (and did volunteer) to provide leadership for this group.

Any comments, advice and such? What do u think?

oljim, in texas

Hi NpS - nope, there are no plans to give this group any authority. That authority rests with board of directors.

It is felt that our homeowners do need to be involved in setting standards (as far as rule and enforcement goes) - and the board appears to be open to listening and feeling the pulse of the community as decisions are made....in terms of both reasonableness and enforcement.

Also, according to a "Reinventing the Rules" document written by the Community Associations Institure, it is considered good practice to periodically review the rules and how they are being enforced. Seems like a fair idea to me....(right now anyway, before the first meeting is held) - ...lol...

As far as online surveys go, we do this periodically and have been pretty successful at getting good feedback from those having internet capability. Getting feedback from those not having internet capability has been a different story.

Thanks for your response!

oljim, in texas

Hi John - so far, the current board i am serving on - does not appear to be shy about accepting responsibility. Time will tell; however, this doesn't appear to be a problem at this time.

The board does; however, appear to be very interested in compliance - and, according to the literature we are reading, ease of compliance comes from three things at least (1) homeowner education (2) homeowner buy-in to the rules, hopefully resulting in a higher level of acceptance and compliance and (3) having a board being steadfast about rules compliance, unless there are very extenuating circumstances.

I don't expect this initial meeting to be a bitch session; however, i could be wrong about this. I will be able to let you know more about how the meeting goes later this week.

And John, i believe you are right-on about learning more about "how little many know about the subject"...lol...

Am looking forward to hearing more about how others feel about this subject.

Thanks for the responses!

oljim, in texas

Jim,

We have used adhoc committees before for document rewrites (the latest being the architectural guidelines).

We assigned a committee of volunteers (no board members).
We informed the committee that the Board desired the format of the existing guideline, followed by the new/amended guideline, followed by the reasoning for such changes.

The committee initially did a sight inspection of the development to identify the number of violations (as this gave an indication of what guidelines may need to be changed - some violations noted that let to changes was the storage of water hoses, decorative lawn items (garden flags, statutes, etc) and trash can storage).

The committee then drafted proposed changes for the Board (in the format required).
The Board reviewed the changes, made some of their own changes and made a proposed draft.
The proposed draft was then sent to the membership and a meeting was held for feedback.
Based on the feedback, the Board made additional changes.
Where necessary, the Board sought legal opinions on specific rules.
The Board then drafted, adopted and sent the new approved version to the membership.

This process took over a year to complete (about 18 months).

Roger, your point is well taken...lol...

oljim, in texas

...lol...love it - sooo funny!

The agenda is the key to this type of information gathering and whomever is leading the meeting needs to lay out a few "rules" when they start the meeting. Tell them what the expectations are for the meeting and what and how you would like it to go about gathering the information. One example would be to tell them that the meeting is about solutions and not problems and that in order for the board to hear everyone's ideas or thoughts we can't have separate conversations going on while others are talking, it will conclude at 8pm, and in order to do that we need to keep it about the agenda items etc.

Those first few minutes of this meeting are critical and if done properly, it can be a great meeting of homeowners, so the leader has to have some balls to maintain the meeting in a productive way.

We recently revised our ACC Guidelines to make them less onerous (for example some things in the previous guidelines required HOA approval - now if it meets the specifications, no approval is needed)

We have a management company that does a monthly inspection. Previously, the management company would send out letters of violations, some of which if not corrected would wind up with the association attorney and begin accumulating charges to the homeowners account. We assumed control of that process - Now the management company does the monthly and refers any perceived violations to the ACC committee who will review and make a decision as to whether or not to issue a violation letter. Anything referred to the association attorney must now have board approval.

http://www.caionline.org/info/readingroom/Pages/ReinventingRules.aspx

I'll give an example. The ACC Guidelines allow for an up to 48 fountain. To me it makes no sense to have a homeowner files a request that then results in a $25 processing charge from the management company if that request meets the guidelines. We just tried to simplify things. Any future board has the right to amend the guidelines, and of course we could also do it if things became problamatic

Arbitrary and capricious would mean that any revised guidelines were enacted unreasonably and without any proper consideration, or were enacted in violation of the law or governing documents.

Our guidelines were enacted based on the views of a committee appointed by the board to review the guidelines that were in effect at the time. The committee was appointed from volunteers in the community who took into careful consideration what they believed to be the needs of the community. The purpose of the revision was to make the guidelines less onerous while still maintaining community standards.

As communities changes it certainly makes sense to review guidelines and governing documents with a view to making them more responsive to the needs of the community. I don't think that there's anything arbitrary or capricious in that.

Thanks Laurice - good idea. Sounds like something that would be worthwhile to do at the next meeting....and very educational for everybody.

Just so all of you will know, this first meeting of the covenant work group (earlier this week) went great! I was pleased with the understanding of everybody and all seemed to be very earnest in giving their opinions and helping out. The CAI publication titled "Reinventing the Rules" was a tremendous help....and several of our homeowners had already read it in preparaton for this meeting.

Sure am looking forward to our next meeting!

oljim, in texas

Excellent Shelia...i agree about homeowner input being appropriate for rules and enforcement. I believe that homeowner buy-in and support is crucial to compliance.

Your idea of "asking homeowners" is close to the decision of the group at our first meeting. Homeowners who attended are now offering comments and such on an existing rule publication to see how this goes.

Gonna be interesting to see how all turns comes out. A report will be given at the next meeting...summarizing the homeowner comments and such.

oljim, in texas

Not sure where you're going with this PitA. How many HOAs don't have solar addressed yet in either their covenants or guidelines? Times change.