Some of you have/will receive a letter from the HOA office with two of the candidate’s flyers inside. This is not an endorsement by the HOA for these two candidates. The HOA is required by law to send out these notices, but it doesn’t mean the HOA is endorsing them.
Let me explain:
Current law states that if a resident wants the HOA’s membership list for a purpose reasonably related to the requester’s interest as a member, e.g. to send out a notice to homeowners regarding the HOA’s election, then the HOA is required to give them the HOA’s membership, which includes the list of addresses for all the homeowners as well as the homeowners’ email addresses if the HOA maintains a list of the homeowner’s email addresses. A member asking for the membership list would then mail their letters at their own expense to all the homeowners. Such a request was made by two of the candidates, so the HOA supplied them with the current membership list of all homeowners.
The exception is the homeowners that have opted out of having their contact information included on the membership list. The HOA is prohibited by law from giving out those “opted-out” members’ contact information. The law does require that for these members who opted-out of having their contact information included on the membership list the HOA must either mail (or email to those members who have consented to receive HOA information by email) the documents for the candidates. So, for those members, the candidates provided their letters into the HOA office already stuffed, sealed, stamped and ready to go. The HOA then put on address labels and mailed the letters. The HOA used its return address so that if the letter is returned, it will come back to the HOA so that the candidate will never know the address of the member.
This was all done at the expense of the candidates. We billed the candidates for the time and material to make this happen.
Some of you are receiving the letter from two candidates which we are required to send out for the candidates. But it was done at the expense of the candidates, and we want you to know the HOA is not endorsing these candidates because of mailing a letter required by law.
Thank you,
Kim Fuller
President