Charging members for use of our facilities if we invite any non- resident?
I read the Planned Communities Act – thank you for having it available!. However I do not see any rules about restrictions of use of the facilities our monthly dues subsidize.
We have a CommuNity Center as well as an open to the public restaurant and golf course. Our meeting rooms can be rented by outside groups.
In May of 2021 the HOA board wrote rules that allow a resident to use the meeting rooms at no charge still, but If we invite anyone who is not a resident then we are to pay for the meeting room. I understand where they may have been rectifying residents from holding classes and charging attendees, if indeed that was happening.
When I tried to reserve a room last summer to have a candidate speaker come in and invite members from our area I was told and shown their new rule and denied the space.
This y.ear another resident reserved a room and had the meeting with speakers and just went ahead and invited everyone. They said nothing and there have been regular, publicized meeting since for him and his attendees. The Facilities Manager and all know this is happening yet they have turned a blind eye.
Now I understand they will be asking our Pima County Elections office to reinstate,e our HOA as a voting/ polling center.
Firstly, can they keep a paying resident from having a meeting if there are group members attending that do not reside here?
I was told that, groups like Alanon do so much good, they were an exception.
Secondly, as they ARE allowing another resident to have growing numbers of mixed meetings of non members and residents does this constitute a bias towards my request last year?
The Activities Director had the Community Manager call me to reiterate I was prohibited by the rules from hosting a political meeting with non members.
The male HOA member they are now allowing with a wink and a nod is of the same political persuasion and hosts the same members of our other group.
I am happy my fellow resident has broken through or refused to/ pretended that these rules did not exist, and am wondering if the HOA Board knew it was on thin ice or the managers just allowed a male, not a female resident to host meeting publicly?
About Post Author
1 Response
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
prairiebelle,
You are actually in luck this last legislative session I drafted and negotiated a bill that was passed into law to address this very subject. This bill HB-2158 becomes effective September 24 of this year. The bill does several things but one of those things is to ensure that homeowners are allowed to use community facilities to hold meetings to discuss community issues and invite outside candidates and non-members to speak to the members. While the association can establish rules for the use of the facilities they cannot create rules that are different than any other use of the facility. Your example is classic. if they established a rule that required a fee if non-members are present, they would have to apply that rule across the board without exception. They cannot allow use of the facility without fee if non-members are present for some cases but not for others. That is known as arbitrary and capricious and unreasonable, and totally invalid. The law does limit the number of non-members to one non-member per member present. It states that each member can invite one non-member to attend and speak.
Assuming that you are a Planned community (HOA) the association owns the common property not the members and they can write rules for the use of their common property, but those rules must be applied equally and fairly across the board. Specific exceptions can be applied reasonably but cannot be used to censor or to weaponize the use of the facility against certain homeowners or groups of homeowners.
Dennis