Why No Members of the (HOA's) Neighborhood Committee?
The Neighborhood Committee of the HOA is another of the most important committees.
Its mission, found on the HOA's website is:
Responsible for helping each community in the Summit to locate and elect a local neighborhood committee that will represent their community at SCA board meetings and thereby allow their Voting member to vote on vital issues that affect the Summit and their local neighborhood. The Neighborhood Committee will assist and advise local neighborhoods with problems that they encounter.
This committee should have a chairman who understands the By-Laws and is committed to complying with them. The committee should also have members with the same commitment to compliance with the By-Laws.
The committee has a chairman. However, he has been supporting the alternate, unapproved, unauthorized, non-compliant method of finding new "Voting Members". That method is the one of "getting signatures" on a form from the office.
The Neighborhood Committee has not challenged the Board's tolerance and recognition of "Voting Members" who have just stayed in office for years without the required Annual Neighborhood Meetings and annual elections of their respective Voting Members.
He has come up with a further alternative of email voting for Voting Members, which he explained to the Board at the February 4, 2025 Board meeting.
In October 2021 a previous president of the HOA appointed a homeowner as chairman of the Neighborhood Committee. He did nothing to help neighborhoods come into compliance with the By-Laws or to help them elect legitimate Voting Members.
The current chair of the Neighborhood Committee says he has some people helping him, but no other homeowners or residents are named to this committee. If the committee had four members, in addition to the chairman, the Association could be divided into groups of seven neighborhoods for each committee member, and they could all have legitimate Voting Members within 60 days.
A draft of amended CC&Rs and By-Laws has been submitted to the Board. The Association will be unable to adopt the amendments, because there is only one legitimate Voting Member (Barony Place).
The other "Voting Members" are not legitimate. They were not duly-elected by their respective neighbors. This step of Election is critical, because of the legal authority the Voting Member holds in his neighborhood to commit homeowners to a dues increase of more than 10% (which is sorely needed), to a Special Assessment, and to legal action that the Association might wish to commence.
Currently, the HOA is engaged in an expensive legal action against one resident. Without Voting Member approval, that legal action is unauthorized and is prohibited. The Board of Directors did not approve it, and the Board has not approved the expense for it.
So, who should pay the expense? Not the Association. Not the Members. Should the board members have to pay it personally, since they are allowing it but never approved it?
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