WASTE PICKUP

This association is in Idaho: Our BOD has signed a contract and has sent emails telling us that we need to contact the waste company we are individually using, and that they will not allow them into our community after December 31, 2010. The reason is that the board has made the decision that this would help with having only one day of waste service rather than two days of waste services per week creating less wear and tear to the roads in the community by using one company only.

Would this be a board decision or a community decision?

There are some that do not live in this community year round and have their waste services only when they are here. Some have emailed the board asking if they can pay only when they are here. The email has been sent daily for 3 weeks and the board is not answering anyone. This is causing a lot of turmoil with many people.

Is this the board not doing their fiduciary duty for the community?

It depends; does the CC&R's give the BOD the power to enter into a contract for garbage removal for the entire community? If yes then it's doing its fiduciary duty although I wouldn't put it that way. If the CC&R's require the homeowners to provide their own trash pick up then the BOD has overstepped its bounds.

First I am not an absentee owner. We are in rural Idaho. The board has not had a meeting in 3 months they do not answer their phones and there is no office. The board members work from their homes and are sending out emails on what they want done. We live in a rural gated area and have to maintain our own roads. The board believes that we should only have one waste company for everyone and the HOA will bill each homeowner monthly. (It happans to be a company the homeowners do not use). People are emailing one another wanting to know if you live here part time if they have to pay trash pickup every month when it is a gated community. Because the board is not answering their emails or phones. Some home and land owners are asking if the board can change things like trash pickup that was individual homeowners responsibility along with changing our quaterly assessments to monthly with trash pickup added on to our assessment billing. Hope I have made this clear enough.

It sounds like these are private roads owned by the community (the HOA). If so then yes, the HOA can restrict access to the roads so that only the one trash company can use the roads. Trash trucks can cause a significant amount of damage to roads because of their weight, so it would be in the interests of the community to limit the number of times that these heavy trucks are on the roads.

Check your documents, but more than likely the Board also has the authority to enter into contracts for services to the community. You could probably still use the other trash company if you really wanted to, but it would be up to you to get your trash to a location where they could pick it up since they are not allowed to use the HOAs roads.

As to paying for trash pickup only when a part-time member is actually there, probably not. The service is provided to the community as a whole regardless of if you individually are making use of it or not. Overall it should be less expensive per residence because only one trip is being made to the community instead of two.

You say that the Board has not had a meeting in 3 months. How often do your documents say that they are supposed to meet? If this is a vacation community, it could be that they only meet a couple times per year, plus the annual homeowners meeting. It might be that nobody is getting a response because the Board has not had a meeting to review the questions and decide on a response.

Sure hope this isn't one of the communities around Tamarack. If it is, then waste pick-up is probably the least of your concerns.

Tam, I think it is a good idea to have only one company provide weekly trash service for a gated community with private roads which the association maintains. The trash bill should be paid by the association and be included as a budget item and be part of the homeowners' annual assessments.

Whoops, let me add to my first random bit about controlling the gate. The assumption there is that the documents leave the individual owners responsible for their own service. If it's an association responsibility then this comment does not apply.

Robert,
I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at. Why would an amendment be required for anything? I'd be very surprised to hear of a governing document that says that trash pickup must happen on a particular day of the week. Most docs are only going to say who is responsible for providing it (association or owners) and then the day-to-day minutiae is left to the board to exercise discretion over. If it's a board created rule the board can create exceptions as it sees fit provided that all requests for exceptions are considered equally.

I don't want to stray too far off topic here since the OP's question is whether the board has the authority to unilaterally impose a single trash vendor on the association and disallow owners to continue to manage it as they have.

Robert you're assuming facts not in evidence, we don't know that the BOD didn't put the contract out for bid, in fact we know very little except some owners are PO'ed because they may have to pay for the service year round. Whether the BOD can do this should be spelled out in Tam's CC&R's which are not available to us, so Tam will have to be the one to interpret them. While the BOD should answer the homeowner's questions; it is December and while I can't speak for all Association's ours doesn't schedule a Board meeting in December nor does a whole lot of Association business get done. An Association doesn't move that fast by the very nature of the beast so if they get an answer within a month I would consider that speedy as the BOD will most likely need to meet to decide on an answer.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see where putting a project out to bid is mandated by Tam's HOA.

It may be. Or, like ours and many others that I know about, it may not be.

In California, Stirling Davis may require it, but I don't know.

So obtaining a contract without a bid is not necessarily a breach of any fiduciary duty.

As Tam's other post brings more information out, it appears (to me) that there is really an issue with the secretary.

I have no idea what role, if any, Tam plays on the board, but the statements she/he is making about the secretary and the he-said/she-said between the secretary and the president and the attorney leads me to believe that we are, once again, getting only a very small portion of the story, and one that is colored or filtered through some pre-disposed history or bias.

Read the last paragraph in Tam's last post and see if you can read between the lines.

It appears to me that the president is using the secretary as cover and/or flak magnet. I'm sure others may interpret it differently.

But what can't be denied is that we are clearly only getting a partial read of the entire situation, and it's somewhat slanted --

In terms of garbage pick up, we are trying to get a single garbage pickup contract in our development. Right now we have 5 different companies who pick up on 6 different days a week. Yes, that means we have a garbage truck rolling through here Monday through Saturday.

We have reached out to the membership to give us some preferences (days they prefer, whether to include recycling, yard waste, etc etc etc). We have even asked for people to be a part of the committee for the project.

So far no takers. We have had fewer than 5 replies to our "preferences" survey (out of nearly 600 residents).

Kooky.

But the day will come when we award the contract and notify the residents that they will need to terminate their current contracts and that waste management costs will now be added to their assessments.

I'm quite sure we will hear from them at that point.

Much like Tam's board is now hearing complaints after the fact from their residents.

I will guarantee you that many of the people who will complain in our development at that time will swear up and down (and on a stack of bibles, too) that they NEVER heard ANYTHING about single-provider garbage pickup. (Much like Tam seems to think that the secretary "acts first then thinks" -- when there is no way Tam could possibly know what amount of time or energy or thought the secretary puts into any one project or another).

It's the way of HOA life.

100% agree; 0% disagree.