As published in The View, March 2021:
President
PLEASE VOTE!
The annual meeting for the HOA will be on April 6, 2021. The Board election, along with one CC&R change and one Bylaw change, will also be on the ballot. All ballots must be in before April 6. Please fill out your ballot and send it in right away. All ballots have been mailed, and you should have received yours by now. If your ballot has not arrived, please contact the HOA office for a replacement.
The CC&R change that will be on the ballot is in response to a new State law, California AB3182, that went into effect on January 1, 2021. Last month I described this new law, which changes the minimum rental period to less than 90 days. Our CC&Rs currently state that the minimum rental period is 90 days. Our HOA is required to follow the new State law even though the CC&Rs say something different, so effective January 1, 2021, our HOA must allow rentals for 31 days or more, not 90.
The new law requires us to change our CC&Rs to conform to the new State provisions. Hopefully, we can get enough ballots in favor of the change but, even if we do not, we will still be required to enforce the new law no matter what our CC&Rs state. Unfortunately, we are not allowed simply to change the wording in our CC&Rs; our residents must vote in the change.
To amend a CC&R or a Bylaw, we need 51% of all homes to vote in favor, which is 1,760 homes. If we do not get 1,760 affirmative votes, we will have to leave the language in our CC&Rs the same, even though it will not apply and will conflict with the new State law.
When your ballot arrives, be sure to vote for this provision so we can align our CC&Rs with the new State law. If we don’t pass this in April, we may need to hold a special election in the fall at a cost of $10,000 to try again.
The other provision the Board will present is to change Bylaw Section 4.6.4, Balloting Time Requirements. Our current provision limits the time we can request ballots to 90 days. We are proposing to remove the 90-day limit so the HOA can still request ballots from those who have not voted after 90 days. The goal is to encourage more residents to participate and vote by giving the HOA more time to collect ballots. This change does not affect how many affirmative votes it takes to change the CC&Rs or Bylaws. It will still take 51% of all residents to make any change. This just allows the HOA additional time to collect more ballots.
It has been difficult in the past to change a CC&R or a Bylaw because of this 90-day time limit. In one case, 88% of the residents voted in favor of a change. But we ran out of time to collect ballots, so we did not reach the needed 1,760 affirmative votes. Changing this Bylaw will allow the HOA to contact residents who have not yet voted and ask them to submit their ballots. Our HOA attorneys tell us that we are the only HOA they serve that has this 90-day limit on collecting ballots. Your vote in favor of this action will not only save our HOA in election costs but will also help us to move forward with needed, and sometimes required, amendments to our governing documents.
There are four candidates running for two positions on the Board this April. Linda Aasen and Kim Fuller are running for re-election, while two new candidates – John MacDonnell and Moira MacLeod Foster – are also running. Please be sure to get your ballots in as soon as possible.
We are slowly beginning the process of reopening all activities in our community. As soon as the State and County revise their guidelines, the Board will contact you about those changes. It has been a most difficult time for everyone, and hopefully we can all remain focused on helping each other to remain safe and healthy as we slowly return to normal.
Better days are coming, and I look forward to those special days again knowing “it doesn’t get any better than this.”
Contact the author at kim.fuller@scshca.com.