MelissaM2 (Oklahoma)
Posts: 13
Posts: 13
Posted:
Hi - I'm new here : ) I'm the president of a 47-tract road assoc in OK and completely inexperienced. And, of course, I have a member/former officer raising a ruckus and could really use your input. You all sound like you've been to this kind of goat-rope before! Will do my best to keep this brief.
Our former Treasurer/Board member recently resigned in a major huff (he held 2 posts concurrently because we had so much trouble getting people to serve with him). He had held a meeting Aug 1 07 that only had the 60% quorum for election purposes (2/3 is required for bylaw changes) w/2 proxies taken by phone with a promise to get a hard copy to him asap. There was an issue involving officers in good standing that would have required a bylaw change. No nominees were recruited for the election that was held, and those came only from people in attendance. He was fully prepared to institute his "officer in good standing" change right then & there. The meeting was declared valid; so many of us are tired of the "go nowhere" attitude and his alienation of so many members that we've been prepared to go with whatever happens just so we won't have to do it again. At the time, I was VP, ran for President and won. My cheese slipped of my cracker for a minute I guess.
Five days later he calls one of the other board members and says he wants to declare the meeting "illegal" (a favorite term, along with "lien" & "lawsuit") because he hadn't gotten written confirmation of the phoned-in proxies yet. He stated to both the other board member and me that he had not made any follow-up attempt for these. The other board member flipped... then he called me, told me she flipped and I agreed... then he resigned. He's been griping about resigning for the entire 5 years I have lived here. His daughter-in-law was President so, of course, she followed him which left me moving from VP to Pres; then his buddy/board member also resigned so the assoc was left up to me and the one remaining board member (the one who flipped). We set about re-doing the meeting to get the board straightened out and found out along the way how frustrated and angry the members were with the resigning officer. When we recruited for nominees we included 5 bylaw changes, including a restructuring of the board to increase the number of voting board members and the quorum within the board for decisions, and reducing the quorum for all purposes to 51%. As a result, our revised meeting on Oct 20 saw a full 2/3 quorum and every measure passed with at least 80% of the votes.
Ten days later the entire membership gets a 2-pg tirade from this guy detailing his objections and threatening to sue the assoc if we did not notify him (not the membership - HIM) of a date for a revised meeting by Dec 1. All his contentions were based on a mistake in my concept of a quorum for the Oct 20 meeting which other members straightened out for me at the meeting and the fact that he didn't like how we restructured the board. Now, keep in mind, he & his daughter-in-law & former board member buddy didn't attend the meeting, we suspect to keep us from having a quorum which we did anyway. AND they did not submit proxy ballots, which would have been the civilized way for them to express their objections. Since he sent his missive to the entire membership, the board agreed they were entitled to a copy of our response to him, which we sent with a summary of the meeting that thanked everybody for passing everything, introduced their new officers and restated the discussion that was held at the meeting about letting the neighborhood drama quotient die a natural death. The letter to him pointed out that he had refused to use normal channels to express his opinions (attending the meeting & voting), we had a legal quorum, and the bylaws provide for a non-confrontational method of requesting another meeting (7 members must come forward in writing; it doesn't say anything about recalling an election anywhere in the bylaws, it just says we will call a meeting at the members' request if that provision is fulfilled). If anybody wants to see the response and meeting summary I can send it, but I need to get his letter scanned to disk. We have signed copies of every proxy, a tally sheet for the officer's vote and the bylaw amendment votes, and a sign-in sheet that also lists when proxies were received. One member at the meeting picked up a proxy during the meeting to meet the quorum.
OK.... can he actually sue us over this? I don't understand what motivates a person to act like this... to feel like he can bully the whole association like this. I don't think it makes him a bad person... I can't imagine eating beets but I don't think people who do are bad people. I'm afraid members who are already tired of the drama he would generate (like sending a general reminder to everybody to pay dues that included 2 paragraphs of lien & lawsuit threats targeted at the 5 or 6 members who were behind) might just remove themselves from the process entirely after this. We can't afford that. On the down side, we didn't really stick to Robert's Rules, probably because we were all actually enjoying ourselves at this meeting instead of wondering if we had a fresh razor blade to use when the thing was over. Also, it was outside on a very windy Oklahoma evening and our tape is just unintelligible for the wind noise. But the vote was OVERWHELMING. CAN SOMEBODY TELL ME WHAT WE'RE IN FOR?? Anything y'all can tell me will be hugely helpful. thank you folks SO much, and I apologize for the length of this thing!
Our former Treasurer/Board member recently resigned in a major huff (he held 2 posts concurrently because we had so much trouble getting people to serve with him). He had held a meeting Aug 1 07 that only had the 60% quorum for election purposes (2/3 is required for bylaw changes) w/2 proxies taken by phone with a promise to get a hard copy to him asap. There was an issue involving officers in good standing that would have required a bylaw change. No nominees were recruited for the election that was held, and those came only from people in attendance. He was fully prepared to institute his "officer in good standing" change right then & there. The meeting was declared valid; so many of us are tired of the "go nowhere" attitude and his alienation of so many members that we've been prepared to go with whatever happens just so we won't have to do it again. At the time, I was VP, ran for President and won. My cheese slipped of my cracker for a minute I guess.
Five days later he calls one of the other board members and says he wants to declare the meeting "illegal" (a favorite term, along with "lien" & "lawsuit") because he hadn't gotten written confirmation of the phoned-in proxies yet. He stated to both the other board member and me that he had not made any follow-up attempt for these. The other board member flipped... then he called me, told me she flipped and I agreed... then he resigned. He's been griping about resigning for the entire 5 years I have lived here. His daughter-in-law was President so, of course, she followed him which left me moving from VP to Pres; then his buddy/board member also resigned so the assoc was left up to me and the one remaining board member (the one who flipped). We set about re-doing the meeting to get the board straightened out and found out along the way how frustrated and angry the members were with the resigning officer. When we recruited for nominees we included 5 bylaw changes, including a restructuring of the board to increase the number of voting board members and the quorum within the board for decisions, and reducing the quorum for all purposes to 51%. As a result, our revised meeting on Oct 20 saw a full 2/3 quorum and every measure passed with at least 80% of the votes.
Ten days later the entire membership gets a 2-pg tirade from this guy detailing his objections and threatening to sue the assoc if we did not notify him (not the membership - HIM) of a date for a revised meeting by Dec 1. All his contentions were based on a mistake in my concept of a quorum for the Oct 20 meeting which other members straightened out for me at the meeting and the fact that he didn't like how we restructured the board. Now, keep in mind, he & his daughter-in-law & former board member buddy didn't attend the meeting, we suspect to keep us from having a quorum which we did anyway. AND they did not submit proxy ballots, which would have been the civilized way for them to express their objections. Since he sent his missive to the entire membership, the board agreed they were entitled to a copy of our response to him, which we sent with a summary of the meeting that thanked everybody for passing everything, introduced their new officers and restated the discussion that was held at the meeting about letting the neighborhood drama quotient die a natural death. The letter to him pointed out that he had refused to use normal channels to express his opinions (attending the meeting & voting), we had a legal quorum, and the bylaws provide for a non-confrontational method of requesting another meeting (7 members must come forward in writing; it doesn't say anything about recalling an election anywhere in the bylaws, it just says we will call a meeting at the members' request if that provision is fulfilled). If anybody wants to see the response and meeting summary I can send it, but I need to get his letter scanned to disk. We have signed copies of every proxy, a tally sheet for the officer's vote and the bylaw amendment votes, and a sign-in sheet that also lists when proxies were received. One member at the meeting picked up a proxy during the meeting to meet the quorum.
OK.... can he actually sue us over this? I don't understand what motivates a person to act like this... to feel like he can bully the whole association like this. I don't think it makes him a bad person... I can't imagine eating beets but I don't think people who do are bad people. I'm afraid members who are already tired of the drama he would generate (like sending a general reminder to everybody to pay dues that included 2 paragraphs of lien & lawsuit threats targeted at the 5 or 6 members who were behind) might just remove themselves from the process entirely after this. We can't afford that. On the down side, we didn't really stick to Robert's Rules, probably because we were all actually enjoying ourselves at this meeting instead of wondering if we had a fresh razor blade to use when the thing was over. Also, it was outside on a very windy Oklahoma evening and our tape is just unintelligible for the wind noise. But the vote was OVERWHELMING. CAN SOMEBODY TELL ME WHAT WE'RE IN FOR?? Anything y'all can tell me will be hugely helpful. thank you folks SO much, and I apologize for the length of this thing!
We're even making arrangements to work with an elderly property owner who had significant tree damage to use their downed trees to fill in a couple of wash areas in the association's easement around our bridge. It will get the trees cut up for the owner and use them for an environmentally-sound, productive purpose. What we can't use around the bridge will certainly help a couple of the fixed-income residents who have fireplaces or woodstoves.