Opinions about elections in Arizona

We have our annual elections coming up in October. We elect a new 5 member board every year with a simple majority. I wasn't here for last years elections, but it seems proxies were no longer allowed as of Sept 2006. Az now requires absentee ballots with a voting agenda (v. giving your neighbor a signed piece of paper to vote however on whatever). Traditionaly this is usually a laid back community, "live and let live". There are 85 homes here.

Our board has usually been elected mainly by proxy votes. Chances are the HOA didn't have time to adapt. I heard that under 20 people showed up for the meeting - low, but not all that unusual. I doubt if many homeowners still know they can't use proxies or that things can change in 30 years. They can be 'hard of listening'. As a result, 3 of the previous board stayed on (sorta by 'default') and as a result, the HOA has been barely operating - just doing bare minimimun.

Our HOA pays for all of our water, sewer, solid waste use as a community. When the community first opened in the 60's, we were in the county and became annexed apx 1967. The city won't take on any of our utilities for individual metering because they are old and not compatable (Besides not even the gas or electric company know where their lines are). Even the streets are too narrow.

If the worst came to pass and there was no HOA to pay for water, etc. what would happen? This can't be the first situation like this but I can't find any examples. I'm sure the City wouldn't allow us to use water for long without payment. I called a neighborhood assoiciate with the City and he couldn't answer either (but also did't seem too familiar with our situation).

This isn't the first time this question has come up - but we've narrowly avoided finding out the hard way what the answer might be.

I wanted to get some opinions on what might happen if there were not enough votes to elect a HOA board or if for some reason, our HOA board wasn't able to pay the bills?

Yup. I'm hoping a good (verifiable) picture of what 'could' happen without an HOA might provide a good wake up call or improve some people's listening skills around here.

I served on the board for a couple of years, but due to health reasons, i've been out of the loop for awhile. I'm not sure I can take this challenge on by serving again.

(We also have a noobie in the community fighting everything, with her lawyers. And she rents her property out. Her case is up to the Supreme Court. I'm kinda proud of our default HOA. But she has challenged this board's legitimacy and drained our funds. More on that later.)

I realize prozies are illegal and that's why this board did not use them. I'm proud of them for doing things 'right' despite some people in the community not understanding why and for not walking away, leaving us with no board last year.

I can't say why they didn't appoint additional people to help them during the year. I know they've had good volunteers. But I'm also not going second guess them on this one because so far, when I've looked at the issues closely, they have come out doing things 'right'. For all I know, there could be more to the story than what I know (lawyer's advice, etc.) They have not put out updates on the situation or explained themselves at all which really bothered me. I did meet the lawyer once and he stated to say as little as possible about this to anyone. That leaves the community in the dark. I asked him to prepare a statement then and he said he would. That hasn't happened. He agreed that this person thought she could outspend the HOA and that was probably her goal.

You have to understand, this community has gotten by for over 30 years with no major catasrophe's, show downs, embezzlement, horrid renters, druggies, or committees, just on 'dumb' luck -really. There's been a handful, probably up to 40-60%, that have been trying to bring the HOA up to speed (slowly). When I first signed onto the board, we discovered the secretary had been using white out in the bylaws and CC&R's for years, instead of taking them into a lawyer. We also voted on setting up a reserve fund with nearly unanimous approval. If anything, this new person has taught us (or should teach us) that things can't continue in the 'easy-breezy' way they have been, i.e. like it's 1950. But this community is very independent and that's probably the main thing everyone does agree on. I just don't see pro-management happening.

Trust me, this new person is off her rocker. She's got deep connections with real estate developers and her letters have said she's ticked off because we aren't bankrupt yet. That was her goal. The situation never would have gotten this far if the City had enforced building codes. She did everything we could not ignore, including building 2 houses on one lot and the city did nothing? No permits. No certificate of occupancy. When I called the neighborhood association person with the City, he said the planning board had declared it was a "shed" (last month). Wrong. I had classifieds showing she was renting it out as a studio and it's literally a foot away from the back door of the other home - completely visable from the street. A major fire hazard here. Both houses are rented, so it's not like her life is on the line. She didn't get approvals from our HOA.

In her letters to the community, she claimed our HOA was preventing her from enjoying her "grandfathering rights" and attacked our HOA because we had a reserve fund. She completely ignored that our expenses nearly doubled in the summer and advised everyone to use special assesstments rather than having a reserve acct. BTW, she also holds a valid real estate and c.p.a. license. Her website claims she does work for real estate developers and attorneys along with property management. If anything, I thought about filing ethical charges against her with the acct. and real estate board.

I'm not buying she was 'victimized' by our volunteer HOA. I know there's been a lot of staffing changes at the City building dept since this started also. She now owes $14k just in assestments and unlike other communities, because we have community metering on the water, we are paying for her utilties literally.

One of her other points was that our board was not elected last year - well, no board could have been elected from what I've heard. She has been able to take a moral toll on the community here largely because our board has been silent, and she's been quite vocal. From what I can tell, no one in the community has supported her but her letters state several have. One of the reasons is her letters say 'others' have also withheld assesstments and when I look at the books, I can see no one has withheld assesstments. But that can be very confusing without communication from the board.

So tell me what is 'receivership' or is there a resource on it I can read?

I have little doubt this new person wants our HOA in bankruptcy. The City is well-known for making back door deals with private developers. Our property has suddenly become very, very hot. The City pays apx $.30 on the dollar for property. I'm beginning to think our only way out of this is to find our own developer first.

It just ticks me off. Our longest border butts up to a major regional park. The view is fantastic from our roofs. There are half million dollar condos surrounding us within just 2 years, new university satillittee, nice (restored) lake, another fishing lake, big box mall (ewww), crime lab and a budding high tech and financial center all within a mile now - most of these changes have happened within the last year. Previously this area of town was treated like 'scrap' - as in 'who would want to live there'. We are also in the corner of 4 major metro areas with access to the 2 newest freeways a short hop away. Now, they are interested and want it cheap. 'Recievership' or bankruptcy would most certainly do that. The City planted druggie renters into a community to our north before forcing them to sell. At least they weren't able to do that here.