Rogue Board attempts to improperly approve an ARC application for a patio

I didn't want to hijack the other thread on patios and ARC approval, but I do want to add this which is happening in my Florida HOA. Any thoughts?

My HOA board tabled approval of an Architectural Change Request for a patio last Tuesday.

The request was submitted by Mrs. A.

Mrs. A is on the board.

Mrs. A is the only member of the Architectural Control Committee.

She had already approved the (her own) application on behalf of the committee and submitted it to the Board for final approval with the recommendation from "the committee" (i.e. herself) to approve it.

FL state law requires all meetings of an Architectural Control Committee to be noticed and open to all homeowners. Mrs. A held her own secret committee meeting of the committee; there was no notice of the meeting posted.

When the question of approval came up at the Board meeting, there was only the 1-page application. No drawings, no pictures, no sketches, no elevations, no mention of materials, no contractor name, no nothing.

Mrs. A motioned its approval before she recused herself from the vote. As it turns out, the Board had already approved and paid for the relocation of the underground irrigation lines and sprinkler heads behind her house. All done in secret and behind closed doors. "We can't have any meetings because of COVID-19".

Essentially the Board was prepared to rubber-stamp a decision they had already made outside of a Board Meeting, which is against our Bylaws and state law. There was quite the reaction from some of the other homeowners at the meeting and the president recommended tabling the approval of the application which the others on the Board agreed to do.

Reacting to the vocal dissent from the homeowners in attendance, the president announced that in the future the board would consider Architectural Change Applications on a case-by-case basis. Sounds to me like the very definition of arbitrary and capricious.

We have no detailed written Architectural guidelines or requirements. There's just a couple of sentences in the CC&Rs about "aesthetics, harmony and the common character of the community".

Good answer, AugustinD, thank you.

Rejecting the application outright because the law wasn't followed is something I hadn't thought of. Good catch.

Speaking about architectural control, the CC&Rs say the Board may delegate to a committee but the final control authority rests with the Board of Directors. I think if the Board wanted to un-delegate this application from the committee and proceed to a final decision on its own, that should have been made clear in advance. There were 2 other Architectural Applications that the board did approve on Tuesday besides the one made by Mrs. A, and they too had been approved by the "Committee" as evidenced by a written report from the committee to the Board in advance of Tuesday's meeting. There were 3 others approved by the Board in June despite there being no open and noticed meetings of the committee. There have been no noticed and open Board Meetings since April.

The board will push back hard on any suggestion that its approval of those applications was improper and against state law (FS 720.303(2)(a) says, "The provisions of this subsection [section is titled "BOARD MEETINGS"] shall also apply to the meetings of ... any body vested with the power to approve or disapprove architectural decisions with respect to a specific parcel of residential property owned by a member of the community.")

Mrs. A announced her intention to recuse herself from the vote after she made the motion but had no intention to leave the meeting. The president did ask her to leave before the rest of the board discussed the motion and she reluctantly did. Talk about body language! She was not happy about it.

Re. closed meetings, I agree that maybe, just maybe, they could be considered necessary while the pandemic is ongoing, but they've made many, many decisions among themselves since the last open meeting in April. The Notice and Agenda for Tuesday's meeting was the first communication from the Board on anything whatsoever since April. On Tuesday the board barely mentioned or reviewed the decisions they've made since April. Without the minutes from any of those meetings, it's impossible to know how each director voted on everything they decided to do. FS 720 requires the minutes of a board meeting to record how each director voted on every motion put to a vote.

For instance, one director hired a painting contractor to trim bushes along our 800' long front wall. Then he was fired a month later when the directors found out the man and his company, had no insurance. Anyone reviewing the minutes of the Board Meetings from this year will never know that happened.

I think it would have been prudent for the Board to ask the association attorney for his opinion on how they planned to manage the association during the pandemic. FS 720 does provide "emergency powers" for boards, but this Board has unilaterally decided to grant themselves other powers not provided for in the statute. Anyway, the board did not ask for any input from the attorney.

As for justification for paying for the irrigation system alterations, this was only touched on briefly at the Tuesday meeting. In regard to the patio application, a homeowner asked about the underground pipes that would have to be moved and the president replied, "It's all been taken care of." It was only the day after the meeting that someone called the president for clarification and only then did she provide that little detail.

In other words, there is no justification as far as I can see beyond, "We've already approved the patio application and all that remains is to rubber stamp the decision at the next meeting. In order to speed things along we might as well go ahead and have the irrigation pipes and sprinkler heads moved now." We have no idea who did the work or how much it cost.

I agree that too much speculation can be bad. I've debated with myself more than once over the summer whether or not it was fair to label this board "rogue". I resisted using that label for months. No longer. I think when you look up "rogue" in the dictionary you see a picture of the directors of my HOA.

Am I remembering correctly that you currently don't have patios in the community, this proposed one would be the first?

If you're setting a precedent, it may make sense to convene an ad hoc committee of homeowners to consider whether or not patios should be allowed at all, and if so what sorts of requirements should be met (size, placement, materials, etc.). This committee can poll the neighbors, check out other communities, and address any disadvantages of allowing the patios (eg. noisy outdoor social gatherings disturbing neighbors, changes to drainage patterns that may have negative downstream impacts, etc.).

This decision shouldn't be in the hands of a few board members who are clearly not complying with state laws and are trying to railroad through this change. Covid is just an excuse.

Other than that, I agree with Augustin's comments.