Board recall petition
In Arizona, what does a ‘valid’ petition look like for ARS 33.1813?
Is it like a normal petition which states a (one) specific reason for the petition and nothing additional? Meaning, you ONLY sign the petition IF you AGREE with the singular statement of the petition?
We are currently dealing with a recall, for no cause, due to a small minority of homeowners who have been been legitimately noticed and fined for violation CCR’s and now they’re mad 🙄
The ‘petition’ that was put together is absolutely nothing close to a typical petition, it was a survey with Y/N under multiple questions:
1) Recall board president Y/N
2) Recall property management Y/N (even though that’s not a thing and worded incorrectly, replace vs. recall)
3) Increase board to: 5 or 7
4) Large fountain structure repair: Y/N
5) Which paint color do you like for community walls: A or B
To me, this doe NOT follow a petition format and petition purpose. Even though you can see some hand written signatures, there is no way to prove they circled any of the options, any options that may have been circled could absolutely be altered.
And the big problem to me, this was sent out as a Docusign. The law calls for a ‘signature’ many times regarding a valid petition. The law does not call for electronic signature.
At the end of the day, the purpose of a petition is to state one thing, it’s clear and concise. If you agree with the statement, you fill in your name, address and signature. If you do NOT agree with the singular statement, you do NOT sign the petition, as you are saying you do not agree with the statement.
The way this janky ‘petition’ was put together is not in a petition format, it was a survey with bubble options, which allows for corruption should one choose to do so.
On a valid petition with one statement, there is absolutely no opportunity to to alter a single thing, because of the purpose behind a petition:
*It has one purpose
*It only has one subject/statement
*It only requests a signature IF the party is in AGREEANCE with the statement
So, two questions:
1) Would this be considered a ‘valid’ petition
2) Would docusign ‘electronic’ signature be considered a ‘valid’ signature (also showing NO proof of the selections made, only the time stamp and IP information)
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Carrie,
Since I answered this question directly by e-mail, I’ll summarize the answer for the rest of the members. What was provided was a survey not a request for special meeting of the members for the purpose of doing anything. Of the 5 issues on the survey only one is actually actionable by the members, and that is the recall of a board member. The association has absolutely no requirement to act on the survey. To do that they would have had to circulate a petition to hold a special meeting of the members for the purpose of recalling the board member by name. If they got the required number of members to sign that petition for the special meeting, then the board would have had to call for and hold that special meeting within 30 days and the members could then vote on the issue. Someone can sign a petition to call for a meeting of the members without agreeing to vote on that issue at the meeting. The petition does nothing to affect the recall it only calls for a meeting.
If you process the petition properly you could use an electronic signature tool for the signature portion, but you would still have to identify the date of signing, the printed name and lot or address of the member.
Dennis