Special assesment vote did not meet quorum

No..

The members present either in person or by proxy are the only ones to adjourn a meeting to a later date, not the Board. The question is, who is receiving the ballots.

The provisions to pass a special assessment will be in your CCRs. Generally quorum is a majority or 51% and the passage is a majority of voting power. For instance a complex of 200, quorum would be 102 and passage would be 101 yes votes.

If you have a management company and election rules it is a good possibility that the MC is the inspector.

Reread your CCRs - do they require a special meeting where 2/3rds of the homeowners have to show up in order to vote on the special assessment? That first part is important because you may not need a special meeting to take a vote, although I would encourage it - people can discuss the issues, get their questions answered and then the board can schedule another meeting for a formal vote OR have everyone submit ballots by a certain time - at the next special meeting, they would be counted by non-board member (a few people from the community could do this) and if you don't have a 2/3rds majority voting in favor, the idea dies once and for all.

When our community voted to shut down our pool for good, we needed 75% of the homeowners to agree, but that didn't require a formal meeting - we sent out the ballots and people signed and returned them. We didn't have a formal meeting to take a vote to decide on the pool because our bylaws didn't require this. If however, a certain percentage of homeowners presented a petition to hold a special meeting (as required by our bylaws) to discuss a specific issue and/or conduct a formal vote, the Board would be obligated to schedule the meeting and notify everyone. The meeting doesn't happen if the petition doesn't have at least 10% signing the petition or we don't get 10% to show up - we don't use proxies for this because they're only used to cast votes for Board elections.

In your case, I think your board is fighting a losing cause - apparently the homeowners have made it clear they don't want a special assessment, so they need to drop the idea or do a better job at selling it. After 2 years, I'd suggest put up or shut up - hold your special meeting and if no one shows up, the idea is dead. If people show up and object strongly and there are enough of them, the idea dies. If the board decides to call for a vote anyway and holds a special meeting to count them and no one shows up OR they don't get 2/3rds to agree, the idea dies and move on to something else.

And if the board doesn't take a hint? Maybe you and your neighbors need to rally together and elect another board (why haven't you don't that after 2 years anyway?)

I'll give your board partial credit for at least trying to get votes (too many attempt end runs around the homeowners when they don't get their way). Did you ask these questions of your board? If so, what was the response?

I remember this rule was changed a couple of years ago. The new requirement is that approval is by a majority of a quorum and quorum is defined more than 50%, §5605

We has a special vote to change how assessments are calculated. I even went to the courthouse to see the registered covenant change. The votes were attached as well and the dates span a few years. It took that long to get 67% of the vote. It does not have to be done in a single meeting in our community.

Hi Richard, I looked at that civil code that is for a regular assessment. Special assessments do not appear to be governed under that civil code. Our CC&R's specifically state 2/3rds

For a bank Loan
"with the approval of members representing at least 2/3rds of the voting power of the association, the power but not the duty to borrow money and to incur indebtedness for the purposes of the association".

Thank you for the clarification. But that would not apply for my community as it states: more restrictive limitations placed on the board by governing documents.

Guess Civil Code has no bearing to your legal council.

Richard thank you for all of your input. Your last reply clarified something that I never truly understood. Like I originally posted our special election was two fold. One part was for the approval of the assessment. That part met the 50% quorum requirement as per CA civil code that you cited. The HOA has stated that our special assessment was approved. However, the second part of our ballot was for the HOA to obtain a bank loan to fund the repairs needed to our community. This loan would result in the over 20% increase to our HOA dues. Our HOA is having difficulty passing the obtainment of the bank loan with the 2/3 quorum requirement is needed as per our CC&R's.