President’s Report – June 2015

Community Documents

Your Board has embarked on a new task of rewording some of our community documents. We have approved an ad hoc committee to do so. The committee consists of R.D. Corrette, Fera Mostow, Lee Powell, Gordon Smith, Georgeana Mimms, Charles Hemphill, and myself. We may be forming some subcommittees in the future and asking for additional volunteers. More about that later. Many of the committee members have been attorneys in their past lives so they are familiar with legal documents, and that is what we are dealing with here.

What are the community governing documents?

In order of authority they are:

  1. Declaration of Covenants, Conditions & Restrictions: Commonly referred to as the CC&Rs, they are a legally binding recorded document. They include information about the property, language establishing the HOA, descriptions of units and common areas, restrictions on use, and more. Basically they are the rules of our community. They govern what you can, cannot, or must do with regard to your home and the common areas.
  2. Bylaws: The Bylaws state how the HOA will be run and contain information on voting processes, quorum requirements, provisions for holding annual and special meetings, how board members are elected, and other operating guidelines.
  3. Rules and Regulations: They clarify and provide additional details to ambiguous language in any of the above governing documents.

Any of these governing documents cannot trump or contradict the rules and laws set forth in the documents that hold more authority. Basically, if you change one there may be cause to change another.

Our Rules and Regulations are an evolving document and have already been amended and will probably be revised again. Changes to them require only a majority of the HOA Board to approve.

Why are we changing them? Our CC&Rs were written for the developer. They are well done but were created many years ago. Time changes many things, and our CC&Rs are not an exception. They need to be updated and brought into the 21st century.

How will this process happen? The ad hoc committee will review the documents looking for out-dated language and may suggest more current verbiage. The document will then be reviewed by our Board and sent to the Association’s attorney for final wording. The board will then submit it to all of our members for a vote. Fifty-one percent of members must approve the changes.

When will this process happen? We hope to have the documents ready for a vote shortly after our developer is gone from the community. This will probably be sometime next year.

If subcommittees are approved, and you are interested in helping, please fill out a committee interest form at the HOA office.