Membership Opinion

John, there are a few confusing things about your post. First usage of ballot implies that the votes of membership are required - does not have to mean this but that is what it most often implies. Read your governing documents, chances are they state with close language "upon affirmative vote of xyz % of members are required to .... " If this is an overall vote which does requires membership's vote - then what was sent to membership was basically a "survey" which the board is going to gauge support for those particular four issues.

I would tend to agree with you on the issue of fairness of this type of survey/ballot. Was there a time limited for responses to be returned? Otherwise, what happens if an owner is out of town, or if mail is slow - there is no way to assure that every owner has recieved the survey/ballot. Again read your governing documents, if there are requirements for notice to membership for overal votes (the majors, changing by-laws, etc), then your board needs to follow those. If this is just an opinion poll/ballot/survey, and it covers four issues, I would think that a special meeting would be appropriate. If attendence is an issue (like most HOA's) then a sending out a survey/poll/ballot, without those the stipulation of "no resp vote of NO" is not appropriate (IMHO). If the survey/poll/ballot is worded correctly (say with strategically placed "not" in some sentences), this can be implied to be the "will" of the community by the "un-responded" vote tally.

I don't think there is anything wrong with seeking public opinion on some issues. We did that recently where we emailed and went door to door asking the neighborhood's opinion on something. Eventually it would have had to result in a neighborhood vote, but we did it to gauge interest so the board would not waste a lot of time and energy on something the homeowners wouldn't want.

Gloria,
In addition a show of hands is not a vote at the annual meeting. Our board over the past few years has gotten into the habit of asking for a show of hands and acting as if the membership wanted the action, which always involves spending money. I am not sure the membership should even vote on spending money, that's a board job. Polling the membership for opinion is fine, considering what is said is better, but, the authority to spend money rests with the Board, to insure this expenditure serves only the Real Property is hardest.

Thank you JudithC.
The membership of my HOA have no powers at monthly board meetings only the board members have that power. The only power the membership has is at the annual meeting and than you have to have a 2/3 membership in attendance or 2/3 of the membership proxies in hand to have a quorum. I will say that are bylaws have address certain cases that require the board to call a special meeting where the membership has voting powers but this is rare.
They used this type of survey procedure as I have mentioned to justify their position and board vote on the issues as stated. We had a 40% response thus making a count pure formality. Any response less than 50% made it a (no) on all 4 issues. I don't agree with it but I have to accept it. My greater concern is future issues that the board will have to make decisions on and the use of this procedure to justify that decision.
Thanks JohnM15

John:

Having the attitude that the membership has no power at monthly meetings in my opinion is a dangerous attitude. Sure, the board votes and makes the decisions, but it is a huge mistake if they don't seek input from their membership on certain issues. Remember that although the board makes the decisions, the membership can recall them at any given time.

John:

Are you sure your quote above is correct 115% of the last years budget?

Andrea:

The board makes the decisions on day to day operations, things such as CC&R amendments are an entire membership vote. With that said it is usually the board that spearheads those petitions or whatever you want to call them.

At the same time, most documents have provisions for the membership to get together to call special meeting to get rid of board members, it is hard to happen because it requires a lot of people to band together.

Here's how our HOA handled changing the CC&R's and by-laws. Technically, we must hold a "special meeting" with ALL the homeowners/members to change the rules. However, as many know, that's not going to happen. (Try getting a majority of 107 homeowners to show up one given day or form any kind of forum, not likely.)

Our lawyer helped us out on this one. What he did is draft 2 ballots/petitions. The first petition stated the changes in the rules the HOA wanted to adopt. It had just the changes and the area for the HOMEOWNER to sign. The owner had to sign their lot number and name. (I believe not signing it meant a "No" vote.) The second petition stated that the member willing gives up their right to attend a special meeting to cast their vote.

Essentially, the owner had to give up their right to attend the special meeting, but still have their vote count by signing the original petition. This freed us to go door to door or mail out the petition separately. The special meeting requirement really limited us on changing/adopting rules.

It's VERY important that your HOA verifies the person that signs the petition/ballot are homeowners and NOT renters. When we went door to door, we had that issue. Many renters wanted to sign but couldn't. The owners were out of state. We did mail the correspondence to the out of state owners or asked their renter to forward it with their rent payment. We did get little response typically from those owners regardless. It didn't matter as long as we had the current ones on board that made a majority.

Unfornately, we needed 90% of the owners to vote to be a majority vote on our CC&R's but only 75% on the by-laws. We lacked 2 signatures for the CC&R's because the rest of the owners were out of towners. So we had to actually WAIT for them to sell their homes before we could "attack" the new owners to sign. Took us 2 years to do so! So it can be a timely process in some cases.

Funny you should mention that Robert... That was EXACTLY my idea! However, I was NOT the one who initiated the changes. Those changes had already been discussed with an attorney prior to my purchasing my home. It was too late for me to make any more changes since the ballots/petitions had already been sent out and voted on by some. I am still amazed that the past president even thought about making changes. It's still suspect. He most likely stole the idea and passed it on as his own. He's quite the con-man.

Ironically, Our documents do allow for the 90% requirement to be lowered AFTER 20 years of formation of the HOA. It was formed approximately in 1986. That meant that in 2006/2007 we would have only needed 75%. Unfornately, we undertook this task back in 2001. At the rate we were going collecting signatures, we could have waited a few years instead.

I do recommend that people do review such small details as the percentage of majority vote it takes to make a change. It can make a huge difference. Especially if you consider that owner apathy is the number problem with HOA's. We even went so far as to reduce the number of required board members. We couldn't even get 9 members to attend a meeting never the less get 9 board members. So we reduced the number to 3 as the minimum number. You really have to take into account the participation level before deciding on a good board member amount.

John:

The example you gave would not be 115%. It would be 1.15% that they could raise the dues without membership approval. 115% they could raise the assessment from $100 to...well you do the math, quite staggering. lol

It's a matter of how the rest of the phrase is worded. If the assessments were increased BY 115%, then the $100 dues would be increased to $215. But as John's documents apparently have it worded, the assessments can be increased TO 115% of the previous year, which would take the $100 to $115.

FWIW: my documents state that the assessments "may be increased each year not more than 15% above the maximum assessment for the previous year". I think that is typically how it gets worded, and the 115% that John reported threw Gloria (and me initially) for a loop.