ARC Questions

First, some background. Our community is a couple of years old, closing in on 50% of its planned residents, and the HOA Board is still controlled by the developer. I was recently elected as the sole resident Board Member, and I'm trying to get a handle on what, in my eyes, appears to be a bit of a mess in the way things are being run.

Now, we have an Architectural Review Committee, made up of volunteers appointed a year ago by the Board President. My first question deals with how the ARC should be operating. Prior to COVID they had monthly meetings to discuss all applications. The meetings were never announced and were not open to our residents. No minutes were taken or published. Since COVID they have stopped conducting meetings. Instead, application for ARC approval resident in a Google folder and members of the committee individually download and review documents and approve or deny without discussing with other members of the committee. Which has resulted in identical requests being denied to some residents and approved to others.

My question is, how much of this acceptable? I had thought decisions had to be made by the committee, that meetings had to be open, and that minutes had to be published. But I also know that a lot of these rules don't apply when we are still in the phase that the developer controls the Board. Any insight would be appreciated.

My second question is that when I read through the Declarations for our community, I see reference to an Architectural Board, which is given the power to create a a set of Architectural Guidelines. We don't have anything called an Architectural Board, nor do we have a set of Architectural Guidelines. Within the Declarations there are specific items listed, such as no clothe lines, no trailers parked in driveways, specifications for allowable fences and design of decks and patios. But no specific document known as Architectural Guidelines. I don't believe the ARC is the Architectural Board, because I'm quite sure they don't have the power to change our rules. Is it possible I'm completely missing something?

As always, I appreciate all of the thoughtful advice this forum has been providing to me.

I agree. When under developer control that committees/BOD's are advisory at best. The developer has the final word.

If Covenants/Bylaws tried to lest everything acceptable or not, they could be hundreds of pages long and still not cover all issues that might arise. As an example, our Covenants say the BOD is tasked to maintain "community standards".

An example: each of our 112 patio homes has a natural wood, shadow box style, 6ft privacy fence around each its backyard. Our docs make no mention of fences in any way shape or form. We got a request from someone to lower their back fence to 4ft so they could enjoy the view of the retention pond behind their home. We denied it. They replied: Where in the Covenants does it say I cannot? We replied the docs say as per community standards and 112 identical fences certainly sets the community standard thus your request is contrary to community standards. They stopped requesting.