HOA Exceeded Spending Authority on Yards

We have a number of people from California who comment on Davis-Stirling the state's HOA law and homeowner rights, but the first thing to remember is that most of us aren't attorneys - if you want answers to legal questions, hire your own and ask him or her.

To save time and money, however, start with checking your documents. If the board overstepped its authority, the "penalty" often starts with recalling them, so your bylaws may have instructions on how that's done. If not, there should be language on how to call for a special meeting (usually requires a petition signed by a certain percentage of homeowners). At that meeting, you can discuss the board's conduct and vote to recall them or not. Just be sure if you kick them out, you have homeowners ready to step up and take over because your association cannot operate without a board. Perhaps YOU can be one of the homeowners who step up? If you want to hold them individually responsible for reimbursing the association for the money already spent, you might need to talk to an attorney about that because legal action would likely be necessary.

Your documents might already define what is common area vs. areas that are homeowner responsibilities, so it might not be necessary to issue new rules, so keep reading - if it's there, all you really need to do is ensure you have a board that will follow the rules. That being said, you might want to rethink your stance on changing maintenance responsibilities. Communities are always changing and sometimes change to the point the association budget can no longer handle certain responsibilities because homeowners kept yelling about assessment increases, not realizing they hurt themselves when deferred maintenance happens and escalates to the point they HAVE to pay a special assessment and live with fee increases well beyond what's in the documents because they made poor decisions. Similar to people who haven't been saving for retirement all along and now find they may need to work until they're 100 or die, whichever comes first.

That's why your documents need to be flexible enough to allow the community to evolve - a better step might be to have your association attorney look at them every 7-10 years or so to see what needs to be tweaked to be compatible with current federal, state and local law. Part of that would include looking at things like rule enforcement and polling homeowners to see what changes they'd like to see and are willing to live with.

Which brings us to community design standards - an easier way to handle that would be to have the board (the new one anyway) charter an advisory committee that can research and make recommendations on design standards, covering what can and can't happen regarding exterior changes, such as what type of treens can and can't be planted, house colors, etc. The board would vote on a resolution adopting those standards and that's what homeowners would have to comply with when they make changes to their home. Part of that process would also consist of polling homeowners to get their opinion and you tweak the rules from there. The documents probably allow the board to adopt additional rules as long as they don't conflict with the documents or state/local federal law (check them).

You made a good point. My attorney is already checking on that point.
It is interesting to note that the HOA said that they consulted with their HOA attorney and supposedly knew the risks and still re-started the landscaping project without a community wide vote. While a community wide vote to approve the project costs would help to resolve the issue, I presume that the Liability Insurance Company would not like HOA Board members who have a record of violating the HOA rules and laws that they were elected to follow.

Does anyone have any experience with HOA Liability companies that have pull their coverage of such HOA Board members ?