When you close on your house in an HOA, you are entering a legally binding contract between you and the Homeowners Association.  The rules, regulations, homeowner rights and expectations are spelled out in our governing documents. You cannot be relieved of this contract until you sell your home. It is the governing documents that you now live by.

Because our governing documents create a binding contract, fundamental changes to them should not be agreed to lightly without a full explanation of the impact. These documents are the only protection available for homeowners. Any proposed changes should be clearly explained. Fact sheets should be sent to all members explaining the current situation, the proposed amendment, how this amendment would affect the current governing documents and how this proposed change will benefit the homeowners. Most importantly, every resident should be given the opportunity to vote on such changes, whether or not they are able to show up at a meeting.

Unfortunately, our current Board has done nothing to communicate the details of the proposed bylaw amendment. Nor did the Board see fit to include on the absentee ballot a way for members to vote without attending the meeting.

What is the Board hiding?

If the bylaw amendment passes tonight, enabling someone for as little as a $10 fee to buy eligibility to be a board member, the rest of the Association will be unable to do a thing about it. The contract will be changed, and we as members will have no recourse, no appeal, and no protections from the impacts of this change. The amendment starts to erode the only rights granted to us as members and homeowners in the governing documents. There is no state or city oversight group that Association Members can turn to since the contract will be legally binding on all of us.

It appears that the Board is going to argue that this amendment is designed to protect us, that is helps ensure that the Board members must be owners within the Association. Apparently, the Board believes that the current bylaws permit non-owners to serve on our Board. Actually, it appears the Board thinks it is a good idea to have non-members sit on our Board since they in fact secretly appointed one to be on the Board. Here is a copy of the deed showing Julie Bennett only gained property ownership in Pine Hollow on February 26, 2014 for as little as $10 – yet she is already a confirmed Board Member by way of Board appointment.

As sneaky as this is, the sneakiness is not the real problem here. The real problem is that the Board, now trying to cover its tracks for having appointed a non-member, is scheming to arrange pseudo-homeownership for this so-called board member and then cover it up with a bylaw amendment. And therein lies the real problem. The bylaw amendment, while it will be presented to us as a protection, in fact does exactly the opposite. It exposes our HOA to takeover by any person or corporation who owns a single square foot of land in the Association and is willing to “sell”  fractional percentages of it in order to “create” so-called “owners” that can now run our Association.

We have to stop this madness.   

If the goal of this bylaw amendment is to provide clarity to ensure only association Members can be on the Board, then maybe it is time to amend the proposal to ensure real homeowners, those with a real stake in a property, are on the Board, not people who bought a spot on the Board for as little as $10.

The problem is not really our current Bylaws. We have had these bylaws for nearly 20 years without a problem. The problem is the action of our current Board who decided to appoint a non-member and now wants us to help cover their tracks.

It’s time to stop giving our Board a blank check to do as they please without communicating the true motivations behind their actions. Our only option is to show up at tonight’s HOA annual meeting at the Friendswood library at 7:00 pm and make our opinions and our votes count.