Updating CC&R's/By-laws from 1969 - what should we include?

One thing to learn is how TX laws have changed so that some of your CC&Rs are out of date. Your CC&Rs, for instance might say that sat. dishes for TV reception is forbidden. But, in this case, you need to know the federal law about them.

Any language in them that's about the "declarant" (developer) probably should be deleted.

Any language that discriminates by gender, race, ethnicity, etc. must be eliminated.

Is your HOA detached homes, condos, or? How many homes?

Google HOA CC&Rs, Texas to learn more.

I wanted to share, in more detail, what our process was:

1) Committee made recommended rewrite

This consisted of a document, paragraph by paragraph showing the existing language and the new language along with the reason for the recommended change (original - in black ink, recommendation - in blue ink, reason - in green ink).

2) Board reviewed recommendation and made changes to create draft.

3) Draft was published to the membership and a special membership meeting was called to answer questions and receive feedback.

4) Board made changes based on membership feedback creating revised draft.

5) Revised draft was sent to the attorney for review, comments and recommendations.

6) Board made changes based on attorney review to create proposed restated and amended document.

7) Proposal was published to the membership along with notice of meeting to vote on changes. As we could utilize proxies, the Board and committee went door to door and contacted non-resident members requesting proxies.

8) Meeting was held and document voted on (we chose to vote on the whole document vs. each section).

9) As the vote approved the changes, the adopted document was sent to the attorney for filing. Once filed, the adopted document was published to the membership.

depending on what your originals say, here's some other things that might (or might not) need consideration:

methods of communication, between board members AND to the community. Are you still required to send mail? must you post on a bulletin board? Can you update to include electronic communication? telephonic? Must requests for agenda topics be delivered in writing via a letter, or can a text or email work? can minutes be posted or provided electronically?

Methods of payment: perhaps update to allow newer forms, or at least, remove restrictions that disallow them for future boards (ie, dues payable by cash or check could be altered to dues payable by cash, check or other means as determined by the treasurer/board).

additional committees that may have formed (or disappeared) since then: may want to set up their functions, scope, membership, etc..

new collections methods/policies, if you have them (how liens will work, fees for collecting debts, etc.).

Oh, and if you have one forbidding any business to be run from the home: you probably want to update that to say what you want it to say (no traffic, or no deliveries, or no commercial ovens, day care, etc.).

I don't know about elsewhere, but where we live, CCRs and bylaws are filed with the county recorder and can be downloaded free of charge. It's a good idea to look at documents for similar associations, particularly if you can identify some that appear to be well run. I'm not suggesting you should copy them, but see what provisions you may want to replicate in your own.

Good Luck. A lot of good advise has been given. We had our annual meeting Tuesday, February 23. We did pass some amendments to our documents. Updating documents is a very time consuming and expensive project.

After we delivered/mailed the notice of the annual meeting, Board Members divided our owner list into 4 sections and assigned 4 Board Member to call the members in a certain section to emphasis how important this meeting would be. We did not pass all the proposed amendments but I am pleased with the progress we have made.

Kudos, Bonnie--you take your role so seriously and I'm glad this worked out fairly well!