Board elections
Hi, we have an annual meeting this month. In our CCR’s we are to elect three board members; two for a one year term and one for a 2 year term. Nothing else is stated in our original CCR‘s since 1974 that still stand today. (We are only 6 unit condo). Only one person has submitted their name. Is it lawful to take nominations from the floor at the meeting? Any suggestions if we can’t get 3 members. In Az is it required to have members who own in our complex to be on the board? Thank you, your site has helped us tremendously!
About Post Author
4 Responses
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Mary,
First you win the prize for the smallest condominium that I’ve come across in this state. There are no state laws that require a board member to be a resident of the community just an owner of a unit in the community. If your governing documents specify that a board member is required to be a resident, then that dictates for your community. If you have a quorum of your unit owners as defined in your governing documents present in person at the meeting, then you can nominate anyone from the floor, even if people that sent in absentee ballots did not get an opportunity to vote for those people. In Arizona quorum can be satisfied by either being present at the meeting or having sent in an absentee ballot. If you have established quorum by the combination of both owners present and by those who have sent in absentee ballot than you cannot nominate from the floor, because the owners that sent in absentee ballots did not get an opportunity to vote for anyone nominated from the floor at the meeting. One last thing, typically when you have a staggered board like you have then once the stagger is achieved every board member from that point on has the same term. You just elect board members who’s term has expired. In your case one year you elect one and the next year you elect two that way it is never an entirely new board.
Dennis
Dennis, you wrote ‘If you have established quorum by the combination of both owners present and by those who have sent in absentee ballot than you cannot nominate from the floor, because the owners that sent in absentee ballots did not get an opportunity to vote for anyone nominated from the floor at the meeting.” Can you please elaborate on this?
This is not rocket science. Only a quorum of the members can act on any issue. If a quorum of the members is not physically present at a meeting they cannot act to nominate anyone to be a candidate or to elect those members to the board. If you need both the actual members present in person and the members that voted by absentee ballot to satisfy quorum then the members present cannot do anything without the vote of the members that voted by absentee ballot. So, in those cases the meeting of members can only consider anything that was presented to all homeowners on the absentee ballot, including anything as simple as approving the minutes from the previous meeting. Obviously, any motion to nominate anyone from the floor where the absentee ballots are needed to satisfy quorum, because the absentee ballots were not allowed the opportunity to vote on that issue or any of the candidates nominated from the floor. The only time a meeting of members can do anything that was not on the absentee ballot is if the members present constitute a quorum and because of that they are all that is needed to decide any issue. While the absentee ballots votes count for anything they voted on they are not necessary to decide any issue when the quorum is present at the meeting.
Dennis
Dennis, Thank you for that. While not rocket science, it seems to me to be a bit of a subtle point that I’ll bet most boards and management reps would not “get”. Our CCRs simply state that nominations shall be allowed from the floor. The interpretation has simply been to ask at the meeting “any floor nominations” knowing that anyone who floor-nominated would never be elected because so many votes have already been submitted and counted. In such a situation, a floor-nominated person would only stand a chance of being elected if there were more open positions than members who ran, whereby the votes of those on the floor would put that person in, even if it were only 1 vote, theirs.
On a different note, thank you for HB2270 and getting it introduced. That contains many great improvements and clarifications which will all help to define homeowner rights. I hope it passes and becomes law.