What Works in Your CCRs and ByLaws?

Leilani,

Governing documents vary from Association to Association for a reason. Different amenities, services, applicable State statutes, etc. impact what is contained within those documents.

Since most Associations are incorporated, the Bylaws should basically follow the applicable corporate statute in place at the time the bylaws were written.

This makes it difficult at best if not impossible to utilize sections of bylaws from a different association that is not in the same County or municipality as your own. For example: something that works within my Association, proxies, are prohibited by Stature in Arizona.

If you are really interested in changing your governing documents the best procedure I can offer would be:

1) Form a committee outside of the Board to review existing bylaws and compare them to current applicable laws and make suggestions as needed based on those laws.
2) The committee should then research Bylaws of similar Associations within its same geographical area and make suggestions as desired.
3) The Board should take the committees proposal and publish it to the membership for comments.
4) The Board should then make changes based on those comments.
5) The Board should then have an attorney review the changes for legal opinions
6) The Board should then make changes based on those opinions
7) Publish the proposed changes to the membership for a vote
8) Due to the numbers needed, the Board and the committee now needs to solicit proxies (if allowed) and do everything they can to inform the membership and encourage them to vote.

If done properly, the process will likely take a year or more.
When we last made major changes to our governing documents, it took 3 years.

I found an answer to that once in the rules of court in AZ and assume this is fairly common since I believe it came from Federal rules: If the time given is 10 days or less then only business days are counted; 11 or more days are counted by calendar days. In addition, if notices are allowed to be mailed then there is an extra three days added for delivery time.

Thank you Tim, Larry and Melissa. That is a good start.

Leilani,

Although this is a nice topic, it has been discussed various times in the past and the bottom line, as I pointed out, becomes the applicable State laws, County codes and City ordinances.

If I recall, you are not on the board and are in a limited position to address issues within your governing docs.

If I recall, you have an issue with the Board about elections (and your Associations elections are in November).

To be honest, I think you are putting the cart before the horse. If you are running for the Board, once elected and serving you will find out, as many of us did, that what we thought we understood was simply the tip of the iceberg. Once on the Board, it's best to see how things are being ran and what changes, if any, you have the support to make in the short time you have been elected to serve. Changing governing docs will not only require the support of the Board but the support of the entire membership.

If the membership is having problems with elections, then I doubt changes in CC&Rs will occur any time soon.

It may be best to spend your time on learning about the applicable statutes regarding elections, the current election process within your Association, see how you can participate (perhaps volunteer to be an inspector) or monitor (ask to witness the count) the election process, and identify the differences between applicable laws, your governing documents and the actual process used by the Association.

Tim you explained that very nicely.

As a general rule if you can't successfully address the issues that you claim to have on your own single property the chances are quite slim that in your spare time you might be able to revise the entire HOA form of home ownership.

And believe it or not there are many other issues boards are responsible to handle besides updating documents to give a small few the illusion they are now protected.

Many times when some people decide change is needed they skip the part about working to change their own circumstances and then jump to the rather simple task of overhauling the entire system. You know different state laws, different county laws, documents unique to every single HOA lets just change them ALL to suit what I think should be.

Eliminating HOAs is a pipe dream. Changing state laws nationwide is delusional. As Tim has mentioned if you can't resolve an HOA election issue within your own community seeking to redefine the entire HOA system is putting the cart way before the horse.

Talk about biting off more than you can chew...........

Leilani,

The statement that you are "convinced it will take a judge to fix" what is broke in your Association causes me concern.

The other concern is that you appear to want to undertake the process of rewriting your Association governing documents vs. trying to fix the things you are convinced it will take a judge to fix.

If an individual appointed to the bench can fix things, then the membership can do the same thing (if they are willing). It might not happen overnight. It will happen in time if individuals are willing to commit that time and energy. It took me three years (from the time I started to rally the membership) to have things start to change within my Association. It was another year after that before I was elected to the Board. Once on the Board I discovered things that needed to be addressed that prevented me from even considering fixing other things. Why, did it prevent it? The answer is that the other things that needed to be addressed required a lot of work which the rest of the Board was unwilling to provide. However, knowing that most individuals will gladly approve something if they don't have to put in the work, I chose to do the work and present the proposals to the Board.

In my experience, and from what I've learned in the experience of others, is that rewriting the governing documents is not an easy task. You may be able to get an amendment or two adopted, but a full rewrite is not something to be considered unless you have been serving a few years and have had the opportunity to address all the other unknown issues.

From what you describe, if I was elected to your Board, I would start with the following:

1) Transparency What can be done to help communicate to the membership what the Board is doing (by the way, that's how I became the editor of our newsletter and the website administrator in addition to being President the first year I was on the Board).

2) What policies are needed which are currently not in place (I ended up writing three policy resolution that year, because of the issues I found when I was elected to the Board. These were: Assessment Procedures, Association record retention policy, Association procedures for issuing disclosure packages).

3) Financials Are the financials accurate and are the Reserves adequate (I ended up doing our first Reserve study, as in the 25 years previous to me being on the Board there had been no study done - this was also a violation of Statute).

Based on my experience and based on what I have learned from others, I applaud your enthusiasm. However, I think you are putting the cart before the horse and, if elected, once on the Board you will discover many other things that need to be resolved first before any attempt at a document rewrite.

I with those here who say: For now, work with what you've got. While all governining docs are "different," they share a great deal. Elsewhere I & others have made suggestions about what your can do this recall election to try to get it done legally. Everything you need already is within your governing docs and state laws. But it takes tons of work to learn those things --with others-- and then to act. rationally and logically.

Don't have Tim's patience so I'm not going to repeat the excellent advice you've already received. You should cut & paste that which you can do right now from here and other sources, organize it logically, and make an action plan WITH OTHERS.