NC elections

We have our first elections coming up and, wise or not, we're trying to handle it ourselves. We're a new 22 unit self-managed HOA in NC.

What I'm becoming sure of is that we won't be able to get enough people to participate in our Nominating Committee nor will we have enough new people volunteering to serve on the board. I expect we'll end up either with the same people on the board or lose a few.

In re-reading our bylaws about the former, it says:

"Nominations for election to the Board of Directors may be made by a Nominating Committee consisting of a Chairperson, who shall be a member of the Board, and at least two (2) members of the Association. The Nominating Committee shall be appointed by the Board prior to each annual meeting of the members to serve from the close of the annual meeting until the close of the next annual meeting, and such appointment shall be announced at each annual meeting. The Nominating Committee shall make as many nominations for election to the Board as it shall, in its discretion, determine; however, in no event shall the nominations be less than the number of vacancies. Nominations may also be made from the floor of the annual meeting."

Which says to me that a nominating committee isn't strictly required because of the use of "may" rather than "shall" in the first sentence. Interested if others read it the same way.

My other concern is that we'll either not get any nominations or lose board members. The former I think is handled by the section 2 below in that anyone willing to continue on the board does so if there are no competing nominations.

The latter we'll simply have to try to rope more people in much harder if we lack 5 BOD members. I don't see any way around that without changing the bylaws. Which fortunately we can do without cost since they aren't filed with the state.

"Board of Directors

Section 1. Composition.
The affairs of the Association shall be governed by a Board of Directors after such time as the Declarant has turned management of the Association over to the Townhome owners. The Board shall thereafter be composed of five (5) directors. Furthermore, each director shall be an Owner, or the spouse of an Owner of at least one Townhome; provided, however, a married spouses may not serve on the Board at the same time.

Section 2.
Election and Term of Office.
Directors shall be elected by vote of those persons present, in person or by proxy, at the annual meeting, a quorum being present. Those persons receiving the most votes shall be elected to the number of positions to be filled. The term of office for directors shall be for one (1) year, commencing from the date of elections and continuing until the election of successors. "

Mich

Do you docs allow for nominations from the floor? If so, forget the nominations committee. Many associations ignore the Nominating Committee or give them marching orders that anyone in good standing can run. They do not under under any circumstance choose who runs.

Send out notice of the Annual Meeting and announce that their will be an election of Directors and all are invited to run. Include in the notice a Proxy appointing the the BOD as the Proxy holder. This way you will probably be able to achieve Quorum as Proxies count toward Quorum. No Quorum, no business including no election.

At the Annual Meeting put out a plea for people to run for the BOD. Explain it is critical in needing a BOD to run the associations affairs. Scare them that the alternative is Receivership and a Judge will appoint a Receiver that will drain your money away real fast and not only that, leave the association in debt that each owner will have to pay off.

If you get at least 3 to run, that will be enough as 3 of the 5 from a Quorum allowing the BOD to operate.

When the dust settles consider a Bylaw change that the BOD consist of 3 to 5 Members and the BOD decides the size.

-- I see what you mean. Ultimately, two of the Bylaw's sentences sort of contradict each other. I for one would not argue with a board who chose not to appoint a committee at all and said instead, "All applicants to be candidates will be candidates, as long as they meet the requirements of the bylaws and state law." In my experience, nominating committees are not all that useful and rarely materialize, even when expressly mentioned in Bylaws. I do not see how anyone complaining can say, "there's no nominating committee and there is supposed to be one... grrr" and be taken seriously.

-- I had in mind folks stepping up at their own initiative and volunteering to be a candidate, along with nominations from the floor.

TimB4 as you can see above that would violate our current bylaws. Two members of the committee have to be non BOD.

Given the flood of volunteers we've got /s I'm going to try going with no committee at all.

PatJ1: no, what I've given above is everything that mentions a nominating committee in our docs.

Yah, I've seen some of the conflicts you're alluding to. I honestly think that the developer found or was given some really basic boilerplate docs as there are *loads* of things talked about here as things that should be part of basic docs that are missing from ours.