board on't call a special meeting as required.

Typically it's the board that removes an officer as they are the ones who vote for them amongst themselves.... So not sure if your putting your cart before the horse here. Your board are also HOA members. So their vote counts as part of the voting process. Do you think they will vote for their own removal?

Have you read the details on how a special meeting works? Does it say the board is responsible specifically? Does it say things like a 30 days notice or at the whim of the persons wanting it? Seems there should be a bit more details to the process because so far it seems a bit sloppy and unorganized at it's best. Hence why the board or lawyers haven't replied.

I'm not following you. Laska and fellow owners are not seeking to remove officers, they are seeking to remove and replace board members, which only owners can do and they are following the procedure to do that.

It's irrelevant how the board votes. He's got well over the 51%.

jennifer,,, I know exactly what you are talking about,,

the 51% has to be tabulated on a percentage basis of total square feet of all the condos..

we have a spread sheet with all the sq footage.
..

the board doesn't have two more weeks to call the meeting..

the board is supposed to call the meeting as soon as they are presented with a valid petition.

the min 10 max 30 days is the range for when the meeting will be scheduled after the notice is sent to owners.. is it is now.. they haven't even sent the notice.

Thumbs up on definitely having over 51%!

To answer the q in the OP, no there is no remedy other than court. Our board's attorney threw the kitchen sink at that too. Saying that such a petition is not valid, the proxies obtained didn't give that specific power, on and on. I am talking about going to court over and over to argue every single thing presented.

Non-sensicle arguments on both sides that just wasted time and burned money. Hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Perhaps it would be different for you. Perhaps their attorney would not advise fighting against THE LAW as plainly written. It's still going to cost you to file the suit. I would make sure those proxies are air-tight. If you are going to spend money, you want to for sure win and win attorney fees.

PS I still don't follow your math. They have a max of 30 days and the 30 days are not up. When they are, maybe start with a demand letter from an attorney and see if their attorney won't do the right thing and it doesn't have to go to court.

Laska!

What does this mean? (from your other thread): "now the volunteers who are *likely* to be elected to the new board at the special meeting.."

Are you saying you demanded a special meeting to recall but not replace the board? You do not have people lined up to take their places?

You want a recall and an election? What if enough people don't even run? Or the right people? part of the current board could get voted in by default.

Friend, you have gone too far w/o an attorney. They are going to eat you alive. You're not even sure (according to the other thread) if what you are calling for is something they have to do.

They are already throwing objections at you, there is no way you are getting anywhere w/o the help of a good attorney. No way.

AND the attorney will clarify for you what you can and cannot, should or should not, sue over so you are not chasing your tail.

OK, so what does it say?

Laska

Unless you have an attorney, you will probably lose.

I'll come back to this with more, but of course the board is sending proxies because they are on their game, and friend, you aren't. You should have the proxies. Ugh, I hate this for you but I have to get off here. GET PROXIES NOW. Oodles of proxies either with the names of the people you want voted in or designating you as their proxy. Whichever you can.

IDK if the candidates have to be announced at the special meeting. That is something you should know. What your docs say about that. Focus, friend. Ignore all other aspects you come across studying your docs but this and zero in.

-- I disagree with Richard's contention that the Board might have 'until hell freezes over.' The courts expect HOAs and condominiums to be 'reasonable and fair.'

-- LaskaS, I see nothing wrong with studying your governing documents closely; making your legal arguments in a demand letter (as Jennifer says) and if your group cannot afford an attorney, then go to court pro se. Assuming you think your case per the governing documents is strong, then I think you have nothing to lose by going pro se. Let the other side's attorneys eat you alive. You have a chance of winning. Meanwhile, the next annual election should be approaching.

-- As part of the decades old "access to justice" movement, Texas has free legal assistance here and there. Draft a court petition using samples you find online for the appropriate state court in Texas; take it to the free legal clinic; and go from there.

-- You have a majority who are already angry with the Board. The board's running up legal costs will only make this majority angrier and more likely to toss the bums out when it comes election time.

luckily,,, there was a board meeting today discussing the special meeting,, and the letter that was going out.. I had already notified the three new board members(who are part of the homeowners who got the petition for recall signed etc) of my concerns regarding the way the letter is worded.. and the way the proxy is worded.

the three all insisted that the letter not go out yet, and that the wording of the proxy must be changed.

we(the volunteers)will also contact all the owners and advise them not to sign the generic proxy the board is sending out... The volunteers have a valid proxy for a recall vote.. and we also have been using DOCUSIGN to get legally valid signatures from owners through email.. we will send our own proxy ,, and have the owners sign those.. we have all of the owners who signed the petition contact information.

We already have about 20 proxies.. but of course.. we need a lot more.. but just letting you know jennifer.. we(the volunteers) are on our game. The board is hemming and hawing and now trying to right the wrongs that have gone on for the past year.. .... THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN PAYING ATTENTION THE PAST YEAR. THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN DOING THEIR JOB . NO WAY IN HECK AM I GOING TO AGREE TO LET THE CURRENT BOARD MEMBERS WHO WERE ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL ,WHILE THE PRESIDENT RAN ROUGHSHOD THROUGH RESERVE FUND AND IGNORED OUR BYLAWS, have a change to make it right.. ! are you kidding me. we have been telling the board what was happening for 6 months. they refused to act. Now that we got the petition, now that they realize time is up.. they are trying to follow the bylaws.. it's disgusting.

Alright, well, go Laska! Get 'em. IDK if docusign works with your bylaws so I can't comment on that, but in general I like your 'tude in this post. Too little, too late, busters. Get those proxies, and may the odds be ever in your favor.

Laslo’s,

Are you going to be on the Board or assist with a committee?

Sorry - auto spell checker.

Laska .... are you going to be on the Board or a committee?

melissap1,

by and large, finally, the owners have finally realized the board doesn't know what they are doing.. they have hired contractors who have done unacceptable work. they have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on contractors which was for work that largely was not the hoa responsiblity, the board now is trying to get another million dollars from owners so the board can do"the rest" of the work necessary.

well, no way in heck are we going to give the board another million dollars to waste, when they have clearly mismanaged the original million dollars we had in the reserves.

probably about 85 out of 125 owners are now actively rebuilding. many are done. All the waisted time, the board was trying to stall owners and tell owners not to rebuild or the board would have to tear down their work. It was all bs.. the board members were not even resident owners. ...

neighbors are helping neighbors.. the board members are not resident owners. they aren't helping anyone. while they may have started out with the right intentions, somewhere along the way, they refused to follow the legal requirements our documents outline, and our hoa attorneys told them they could do whatever they wanted as long as it was in "good faith"... the lawyers and management company(who only does our accounting) have done nothing to stop the board from doing things that are clearly outside their scope of authority. the lawyers and managment company claim they just work for the hoa and take direction from the board, they don't have the authority to tell them how to operate.. while this may be technically true.. I believe the hoa attorneys. and management company ,,knowing full well that none of the board members had ever served on a board and none of them had bothered to look at our documents, should have advised the board on the what their responsiblities were and should have warned them when they were not following our bylaws.

george,, yes, i am currently on the volunteer committee that gathered signatures for the petition to call a special meeting.

I am going to put my name in the pool of candidates for the board, yes,

I was previously elected to the temporary board(post hurrican harvey).. I resigned because I strongly disagreed with what the majority of the other people on the temporary board were doing.

I have stayed involved ever since then. The board tried to blame me for the delays and mistakes. They have spent thousands of the hoa funds trying to prevent homeowners(including me) from having access to contracts, financials, documents that are legally required to be available to homeowners upon request.

after 5 months of the board acting outside of their legal authority on issues, signing contracts without bids, signing contracts without discussion, paying contractors for work that was not verified or checked off on.. paying a project manager 120,000 who didn't actually have any project supervision duties....
(i could go on,, but literally, there is not a single contract that was vetted and approved the correct way according to our documents. the internal controls to prevent payments from being made without first verifying or approving the invoices were ignored...)

finally, the owners that had remained silent, and just hoped everything would be ok,, finally came around . It's textbook erin brokovich .. ( i never saw the movie, but everyone keeps comparing me to the character in the movie)/

at the end of the day.. I have spent month just trying to get access to information that is supposed to be made available upon request. When I finally got the contracts. It was worse than I could have imagined. No timelines. no price breakdown,, no comparisons.. ,, no project supervision, immediate payment .. ugggggg

ok, sorry george,, yes,,I plan on being on the board or any committe or any volunteer position that I am need in.

Laska, with respect to your last post and your statement the notices went out yesterday: are you certain you are in compliance with the window for meeting notices. Most I have seen say something like "not earlier than (some number of days, such as 50) and not later than (some number of days, generally 10".

You should check to see what your documents say about a notice window.

bill,,, thanks for the heads up. We were already checking the notice requirements.. the board has 30 days to call the meeting from when the petition was given to the secretary. the notice requirements are no less than 10 days and no more than 30 days ..

we did end up changing the special meeting to nov 7,, because we had to make sure we gave at least 10 days notice.

The president has not bothered to show up to any meeting since aug 25,, the day we presented the petition. She has not responded to emails. I'm pretty sure she knows , it's just a matter of time before all of the things she did that were outside of her legal authority are exposed in detail.

Now the hard work begins!

I know its always way harder to get money back from contractors after they have been paid..
that's the whole point of having some kind of checks and supervision before they are paid. (however, that didn't happen,, the president submitted check requests for payment without having board approval and despite knowing that the work that was done was questionable.and not complete and not what the scope called for)

We are in the process of going over the contracts and comparing it to the actual work that was done. We have found tens of thousands of dollars of work that was billed for, yet, the contractor did not in fact do the work. They also, stupidly, posted a punchlist inside each unit. checking off and claiming they did do the work!..
so it's a matter of getting the proof from each individual owners to confirm and provide receipts, pictures etc, that the work in question had already been completed way before this contractor started.