New Texas Law and the ACC Committee

My reading of the Texas statute is that it gave the board the authority to hold hearings and overrule the ACC if the homeowner requests a hearing. It also defines that board members and relatives cannot be on the ACC. But it does allow the board to appoint the ACC. And it does not say anything about the board NOT being ale to enact or modify the architectural standards. Since the board is in charge of the documents and changes, I believe they can change the architectural standards of the community (with or without a member vote depending on the documents).

Not in Texas, but it seems similar - Our Board appoints the ACC (in our case it's defined in the documents as an actual board). The board revises or has final say over revisions to the rules and regulations which the ACC enforces. In general, the ACC doesn't make the rules but they interpret the rules and approve or disapprove the applications. The board also has final say. If an application is rejected, the homeowner can appeal to the ACC one time. If the ACC does not approve a second time, the homeowner can appeal to the board. The board has the right to overrule the decision of the ACC.

in general, all Committees are created and appointed by the Directors. There's description in the governing documents on what is required to create a committee (charter, authorities, etc). All Committee Members serve at the pleasure of the Board of Directors. Generally, Committees are granted authority to operate autonomously, delegating the decisions to them, but the Board certainly has the final authority to review and overrule any Committee action.

And of course, keep minutes and records of all actions, even actions without meetings. These records are to be made available to the Membership.

Adam isn’t wrong that the ACC still serves at the pleasure of the board. They are appointed by the board and can be removed at any time.

The idea behind having separate bodies was to act as a check and balance, but when one group can just remove the members of the other group if they disagree, it’s not much of a check or balance.

The board cannot overrule an approval, but they can overturn a denial if the denied homeowner requests an appeal.

Ideally, the board and ACC members should confer and establish architectural guidelines together, to prevent an endless cycle of appeal hearings and committee member replacements when they disagree.

Larry, do you happen to have the statutory reference to provide? I'd like to cite it.

Then you need to remove them and replace them with members that will take the responsibility more seriously.

Been there, done that. We had ACC members who would say "that looks fine so we should just approve" when it contradicted the rules. One was a realtor who would promise his clients that he could get things approved.

We had everyone on the ACC resign and then appointed new people. It wasn't pleasant but it had to be done. We also had a newly revised set of ACC rules so we had an orientation before the first meeting and talked about their job was to enforce the rules as closely as possible. The ACC serves at the pleasure of the board. They make their own decisions, but if they can't follow rules then they need to gone. The ACC and fining committees have to be made up of people with rule-follower personalities or what's the point.