speed hump action

Karen

My initial blush is the BOD was operating within its duty to provide safety and did not require owners to vote on such.

I beg to differ. What is at issue is the speed humps.

Should the board remove some? Should the board finish installing the rest?

That's the ball that was put in motion - and IMO the board is being responsive to the pushback.

In your shoes, I would not like it either. But at least they are opening it up to the membership now. Some boards wouldn't even do that.

As to the board's right to install speed humps without homeowner vote, that would IMO depend on the cost versus your overall budget. If they were getting it done within the budget, then they were acting within their authority.

As to whether your HOA should have speedbumps, that's a heavily contested issue in many HOAs. The noise that the board is hearing may have nothing to do with the budget. Based on what you provided, I wouldn't jump to any conclusions about the board's actions.

Karen,

VA § 55-513 Virginia Property Owners Association Act specifies that the Board shall have the power to establish, adopt, and enforce rules and regulations with respect to use of the common areas . . . except where expressly reserved by the declaration to the members. An argument can be made that the Board was utilizing the speed humps/bumps as a way to enforce the speed limit. Therefore, unless your governing documents require such issues to be brought before the membership, a membership vote (which I agree would have been a better approach) simply wouldn't be required.

There would be no line item in the Reserves for the maintenance, repair or replacement of the speed bumps until they were actually purchased and installed. This likely wouldn't occur until the next annual review of the Reserves. Also, if your Association is utilizing the cash flow method, vs. the component method, when creating the Reserve Study, it's possible that there would be no individual line item at all.


Again, I personally believe that the Board should have brought the issue before the membership initially. It appears that many in your Association also agree with that belief and made that aware to your Board. Good!

It's likely that because of that awareness, the Board is now bringing the issue before the membership.


Regarding the speed bumps themselves, the members should vote on what they feel would be best for the Association. They should also offer alternatives, other then speed bumps, of ways to have drivers slow down within the development.

As for the Boards handling and decisions regarding the speed bumps, the members need to decide if they want the current board to remain and continue to have that authority. Perhaps this was a lesson learned and the Board will do better in the future. If that's the case, simply move on.

Perhaps there are others willing to serve who didn't require such a lesson (perhaps you might be one of those others) or that you don't think the members of the Board will actually learn from this issue. In that case you may want to consider gathering support and not reelect them to those positions and put in someone who will learn from the past.

However, to keep this from happening again, the membership need to remain involved with the Association. This means attending a few board meetings to see what the issues are and, perhaps interject at those meetings (maybe if this had been done the issue would have initially been brought to the membership). This also means not simply electing those willing to serve with no thought on who you are placing in an authoritative position to make decisions that will impact you and the entire development.

Hope this helps,

Tim

Your board, Karen, probably has "the right" to install the bumps without H/O input depending, as NpS notes, on the cost. In most HOAs and many states this type of capital expenditure needs to be voted on if above a certain % of the annual budget (or some such.)

It is not a reserve item because reserve studies only list existing components and this is a new component. If kept, it then goes in your resew study with the estimated life and replacement cost.

I think Tim has written that VA must post meeting agenda items xx days before the open board meetings. Was this on a posted agenda, discussed & voted on at an open meeting, and then recorded in the minutes? If so, I don't think H/Os can complain--everyone had a chance to attend and perhaps even participate.

If the Board did this behind H/Os' backs, OR brought it up at a meeting when it was NOT on a posted agenda, you do have grounds to be angry. To call their installation "maintenance" is inaccurate. If this is a part of a a long train of abuses, then, like Tim advises, try to put together candidates to replace them. But, it does look like the Board is trying to fix their error.

My question is how is this going to be paid for? Is there a line item in the operating budget with enough funds to pay for the work this year?? And out of curiosity, what is the cost?

The feedback is interesting. Of course, there is more to this story than can take up your time reading about. The issue that is disturbing most members is the way this was handled. And yes, there is a move for a recall of at least one board member.

I realize this is not a reserve item, but included it in my message because the board is "calling" it a maintenance/repair of the roads to justify spending the maintenance, line item and not asking for a vote. Capital improvements (something that was not there before) should always be approved by the membership. Especially given that it takes a 2/3 vote for approval by the membership for a capital expense.

This was all discussed and voted on outside of a board meeting and we do not know what it is going to cost. (they also bought signs)Since the year is not over there could be other costs for extra snow removal and the like.

There is never a working agenda only a generic one so no one would have known it was to be discussed. The minutes stated 4 speed humps at $10,800, but they increased it to 9 without telling anyone.

There were objections stated at that meeting, and a vote of the membership requested,but the board fabricated the history of speed bumps by stating the membership voted for them in a membership meeting years ago. In checking all minutes, that simply is not true. There was only a discussion of putting in 3.

This was just done and is not finished. Our budget meeting is this month. All that need to be done was to present it at the meeting and do it properly.

As far as the board trying to correct their actions now: they want to change the minutes of the last membership meeting to cover their actions and voting to remove them will just cost us more money.

That is why I wrote to see what the membership could do.

I do believe this has caused a much needed shake up.

that is exactly what was said. that it was how the board handled it, not the speed bumps per say.

No.

For Board meetings, Only a notice that a Board meeting is taking place is required. Not what the meeting is about.

For Membership meetings, both the notice and the purpose of the meeting (but not the actual agenda) is required.

Ah, VA is not as homeowner friendly as I'd thought! It sounds like at any open meeting any directors can offer an unexpected agenda item thereby blindsiding H/Os and also fellow directors?

From what Tim has written in the past, the increase from 4 to 9 humps should have been voted on in an open board meeting. Even if "action without a meeting was taken"; if so it needed to be recorded in the next meeting's minutes (I think?).

This, Karey, makes it crucial that you round up as many H/Os as possible to attend every board meeting. Unfortunately, you're not able to prepare remarks or alternate approaches in advance as you don't know what's on the agenda.

Your budget meeting this month is really important and It's good that H/Os have a voice in VA; they don't in CA (unless an increase of 20%+ is in the works.) This is a good time to get names & email addys of those who want a change in April or a recall sooner. Get your ducks lined up!

I don't get that impression.

The humps are an addition/expansion to an existing capital component.

Although I presented an argument that the Board installed them to enforce the speed limit, we don't know what the language is in Karen's governing docs except that she cited that there is a 2/3 membership approval needed for a capital expense. Additionally, the fact that they took money from the Reserves to have them installed was, in my opinion, improper (unless it was a loan with a documented way to pay the loan back).

Taking money from Reserves to pay for an unplanned addition to a capital component, although allowed, causes one of three things: 1) potential deferment of a planned event the funds were being set aside for; 2) Increase in Assessments to pay back the loan from the Reserves; 3) potential special assessment to cover the cost of the deferred event when the event is due.

It's certainly appears, from the posts, that Karen doesn't like the speed humps. However, she also plainly stated that the issue is the procedure and now the back peddling and possible altering of documents to support said decision for the speed humps.

Section § 55-514.1 of the Virginia Property Owners Association Act specifies that a Reserve study is to be conducted "to determine the necessity and amount of reserves required to repair, replace and restore the capital components;"

Merriam-Webster defines restore as the action "to return (something) to an earlier or original condition by repairing it, cleaning it, etc." Therefore, an argument can be made that such painting is needed to "restore" the capital component to the original condition.

Additionally, even if one doesn't agree with such an argument, the law specifies the minimums for Reserve Studies. It doesn't prevent an Association from including other items or tasks. Associations will often choose to include some maintenance items, like painting of curbs, in the study if that maintenance task is expensive and repeated on a regular schedule. In this way, the budget is more easily determined and decreases assessments from drastic fluctuations every year or two to cover costs of maintenance items that could have had money set aside every year to cover.

We actually paint our curbs every three years.

There is a maintenance line item in the budget for the roads, however, as I stated we do not know how much this will cost or what we may have to spend on snow. The line item specifies only snow and repair.

As a matter of fact I SUPPORT A FEW WELL PLACED HUMPS, so that is not MY issue, as previously stated.

Also, micro managing is not at issue here. The documents and state laws dictate how the association is to be managed and what the property owners rights are. Both the board and the property owners have a contractual duty to one another. They all need to utilize that and try to understand how the documents work together. The bottom line is if the board gets sued for an action or inaction, each property owner, as a member of the association and corporation can be named in the suit. Therefore it is imperative that property owners be involved and speak up (providing citations to back themselves up)when they believe the board is acting inappropriately.

Lastly, the board also has the duty in my documents to promote HARMONY. Do you think this way of acting does that????