What Do Voting Members Do?
In the "Voting Members/Alternates Memo Concerning Voting Member/Alternate Right [sic] and Responsibilities" are listed the responsibilities and duties of the Voting Member. And a few suggestions. Many are "must do's".
Compiled by the late George Reynolds, who was Treasurer for many years until his death in April 2021, most of this list is correct. The Memo can be read on the HOA's website.
On the homepage, click on Neighborhood News.
Scroll down to the Memo and click on Here.
Reynolds wrote in the second sentence of the first paragraph, "It's equally important to know that without the vote of the Neighborhood Voting Member or Alternate the Association is limited to proceed in many key areas."
One of those "key areas" is Litigation; ex., the lawsuit against Gus Philpott (me). The Board needed to get the approval of a large number of Voting Members, before it set its lawyers loose on me (CC&Rs, Art XIII, §10). The Board failed to do that! As a result, the lawsuit is unauthorized, and Members should protest the payment of any legal fees out of HOA funds.
Not only did the Board fail to ask for and get the approval of the Voting Members, the Board failed to vote to approve the lawsuit. That needed to be done in an open, public, monthly Board meeting, and it wasn't.
Make the Board pay the legal fees and costs, not the Members.
Why are the Voting Members, who are supposed to represent their Neighborhoods, allowing this case to continue? Maybe because they aren't legitimate, duly-elected Voting Members?
A suggestion in the Memo is "Create a Neighborhood Newsletter". How many Voting Members have done that?
If they did that, then homeowners (Members) and residents would be better informed about what transpires at monthly board meetings. Whatever goes on in monthly meetings and in those private, closed, pre-board meetings is not fully reported to Members.
To each of the 27 Neighborhoods (other than Barony Place), get busy and elect a bonafide, legitimate Neighborhood Committee and a Voting Member. They serve for 12 months, until the next Annual Neighborhood Meeting. It's not like the U.S. Supreme Court; they are not elected "for life".
If they do a good job, re-elect them. If they don't, elect someone who will!
Two of the errors in the Memo are the sentences that the By-Laws require the Voting Members and Alternates vote to elect or remove Neighborhood committee members. The By-Laws do not say that. Neighborhood Committee members are elected by, and can be removed by, a majority of Members of the Neighborhood.
The Voting Member is elected by the three-member Neighborhood Committee. A Voting Member cannot removed a Neighborhood Committee member.
Share this article with your neighbors, friends, family by using the SHARE button at the top-right or the lower-left of this article. It's on each page.
Comments
Post a Comment