Susan,
There is not. Your board is responsible to manager the elections and to ensure that they are held fairly and openly. The management company works for the board and not the other way around. If you have specific issue with how the management company is running the elections bring them to the board directly. If they do nothing about it generate a petition to remove the entire board and replace them with people that will do their job.

Dennis

Rob,

Please remember that renters don’t count unless the owner has given the renter permission to act in his stead in writing to the association. Only actual home owners are members of the association. Contact information is generally considered confidential and most associations don’t provide that information unless permission is granted by each homeowner. Unless you have contact information these petitions are seldom successful without door to door leg work. Again why HB-2052 is so important.

Dennis

Thank you for the quick and thorough reply. The 25% threshold is quite low in my case, given the size of the community, that’s literally just a handful of votes. Some of units are renter occupied. Do you know if AZ requires HOA to provide the name and address of all members upon request? I could just write some letters and organize a vote.

Winslow,

While I’ve answered all question thru the e-mail stream that you sent to me directly, I’ll repeat that answer for the benefit of any member reading this question. Whether or not homeowners know that CC&R’s exist or not is totally irrelevant. If they are recorded they exist and all property in that community is subject to the conditions and restrictions of that recorded document. Renewal of existing CC&R’s is typically automatic and needs no action by the community or the board, but you would want to see the specific language of your particular documents.
Arizona law provides no vehicle for the courts to reduce the approval requirements for changes to the declaration. The approval requirements specified in the declaration is required.
What was not included in this question but relevant to the case is that while the CC&R’s were recorded and required that a non-profit corporation be created to run the community and enforce the CC&R’s, the declarant never created that association and for over 16 year the association never existed. Technically any home in the community could not be bought or sold with recorded deed restrictions that were not implementable. This put the community in grave danger and my advice for this community was to hire an attorney and create an association to comply with the CC&R’s. While this will do nothing to change the CC&R’s it will at least allow the association to function and free the homeowners to sell property legally.

Dennis

Rob,

The process starts with a petition signed by 25% of the homeowners in your community. This takes a group effort by like minded individuals and friends. Get your core group organized, and go door to door or call for an informational meeting at any community meeting room. The management company does not work for the community it works for the board and will do absolutely nothing to help in your effort. This is why my bill HB2052 is so vital to this type of effort. It prevents the association from restricting your ability to post signs or to organize meeting or hold those meeting for that type of effort. The association will never provide you the contact information for all the homeowners unless each individual homeowner has given permission to make that information public.
Once you have your signatures (get more than the minimum 25%) present that to the board. The board must then call for a special meeting of the members to be held within 30 days of the receipt of the petition, to vote to remove the individual board member cited in the petition. The board would be required to notify every member of the community of the special meeting and the subject of that meeting. A simple majority of the homeowners voting at that meeting in person and by absentee ballot decides the outcome. An important thing to remember is that if you are removing only one board member the board not members get to decide who will fill that vacancy for the rest of that unexpired term.
Dennis

Thank you so much for the quick response!

Lisam,

It the decision to fire the landscaping company is based on performance issues by individuals of the contractor than that can be accomplished in an executive session. Any decision to hire a new landscaper must then be accomplished in open session.
You can have a standalone executive session as long as it is noticed 48 hours prior to the meeting and the reason why this meeting is acceptable to be considered in executive session by simply noting one of the 5 acceptable reasons why the subject matter to be discussed can be made outside of an open meeting in the notice for that meeting. In this case the justification would be section A.4 from ARS 33-1804.
One important point that you made in your question is that you can go into executive session after a properly noticed open meeting but when you do that you must mention and include in the minutes the section of ARS -33-1804 that allows you to discuss issues in executive session.
Dennis

Dave,
There are no laws preventing the board from sending fliers to the community. If in fact the board approved such distribution. The association is represented by the entire board and only the entire board or at least a quorum of the board deciding at an open meeting to send out flyer. If no such vote took place or if this was done outside of an open meeting than the board President has absolutely no authority to send out information to the community on the communities dime. If the cost of this distribution was paid using association funds without the approval of the board the President breached his duty and responsibility to the association. No individual board member has any power including the president to spend association funds without the approval of at least a quorum of the board.
If the association President sent the pamphlet out in the name of the board and actually slandered any other candidate (knowing posting or publishing false information about an individual for the purpose of discrediting that individual) than the association could and should be held accountable for that libelous act. This is also a breach of duty of this individual in that he knowingly subjected the association to litigation for personal gain.
You need to get the truth out about the good candidates and call out the acts of the board president. The truth cannot ever be considered slander, but you absolutely stick to only what you know to be true. No generalities and no assumptions or falsehoods.
It is absolutely great that your community has 6 candidates running for 3 board positions. What you need to do is engage the community in participating in this election and voting for the board members that will act in the best interest of the association and the homeowners as a whole. If this individual is not up for election this year than you may consider running a petition to remove him from the board.
I’m not an attorney so i cannot advise you relative to the content of the letter but if you want to send it to me you can send it to AZHOAtruth@gmail.com.

Thanks
Dennis

Dennis,

Oddly enough when I called management company and asked what the latest CC&R and amendments were the lady I was talking to first said something about there being an amendment to the “vehicles and parking” regulation dated 2020 but then she quickly said oh never mind that must just be a draft or something!? She then went onto state that there are no amendments to the original CC&R’s dated 1999. Im so fed up with these people. I guess I’m screwed for the time being. Thank you again for your advise.

Spencer

Mckenzie,

Unfortunately you are not alone with this problem. Most community CC&R’s were written well before the concept of vacation or short term rentals were a problem. If the association has no restriction on the length of rental of units or homes than each property owner has the fundamental right to use his home for any reason he/she wants. It is their property. However if the association has no provision on rental time then they are free to create rules addressed at the behavior of tenants relative to the impacts they have on the use or enjoyment of the common property or other individual homes. Now if the association has provisions in the CC&R’s restricting short term rentals ()typically anything less than one month) they are duty bound to enforce those provisions. Like I said there is nothing grey about this issue, either that have restrictions that apply or they do not. And if they do not they are still free to create rules relative to the protections of your rights to use and enjoy your property without harassment and nuisance behaviors of the tenants.

First look over you CC&R’s carefully especially any provision relative to rentals. If you believe that the neighbor is violating those provisions then report that violation to the association either the board directly or the management company using the tool that they have established to address violations of the governing documents.

If they refuse to act and you believe that the association is ignoring a specific provision of the CC&R’s than you can file a petition to the Department of Real Estate noting the associations failure to enforce the governing documents and requesting the Administrative law judge to force the association to comply with the governing documents.

Dennis