ARC Board with Teeth

The Developer announced at the annual meeting that he wanted an ARC board with teeth. I am a fairly new resident here and would like to help out. I have a question I would sure be glad for some input on. Do we as this newly formed board have the right to ask residents to complete forms for changes they have alreadly done to their properties without prior permission. In other words we would like to ask all residents that have done these changes to submit paperwork and we would then approve all of them and the approvals would be retro active. This issue has come up because up until this point we did not have an ARC board that followed through on anything. (example: green landscaping we have several residents who changed their landscaping and did not submit a form to the ARC for approval, the work is already completed) We currently have nothing in our covenants pertaining to green landscaping and are currently working on something but should we ask those residents who already changed their landscaping to complete this form for us?

Janna,

We had a similar issue with my Association. The files for the Architectural committee was in disarray and we knew that files were probably missing. In an effort to clean this mess up we did the following:

1. Organize the files - This was done with "classification folders" which are the type that have fasteners to hold the papers in different sections of the folders (see attached document for picture) This also included a summary page of the applications.

2. Inspected each lot - This was to identify what changes were made.

3. Compared inspections and approvals - We identified what did and did not have approval.

4. Requested documentation - After identifying what wasn't approved, we sent a letter stating that the records were incomplete and asked for a copy of the approval if they had it. We also said (for those items we expected that an approval would have been granted) that if written approval documentation wasn't available to let us know so a memo could be generated by the committee to document the change.

5. Updated files - Memos were generated as needed to document change or inform the owner of a violation. Memos and other documentation were properly filed.

6. Moved forward - Having cleaned up the past, we moved forward enforcing the rules/regs of the Association. Publicized to the membership that work done without prior written approval would be fined as authorized within the governing documents. We also made recommendations to the Board to amend certain rules/regs where it was obvious a large percentage of members were in violation (one example was having garden hoses stored in front of the house. 75% were in violation. Suggested allowing this if in a hose caddy).

This way the Committee could move forward without too much complaining from the membership on actions (or the lack thereof) of past committees.

hope this helps,

Tim