YMCA Taking Over Our Recreation Area!

Has anyone ever had their HOA turn over their recreational assets (i.e. pool/tennis) to a third party to manage it for them?

If you have, how did it work and is it working out?

Did your entire neighborhood have to approve the lease/sale or just the Board?

We just caught our Board secretly negotiating with the YMCA and offering to lease (give?) them our recreation area in exchange for them taking over the management of our pool! Running the pool and keeping 6+ acres mowed has been a costly proposition and hassle through the years but within our resources and budget. The Board's plan was to spring it on the membership in attendance at the annual meeting in January and ask them for the authority to complete the negotiations and sign the lease. Essentially how ever many show up at the annual meeting constitutes a quorum and attendance is usually only 25 households out of 263 which makes it easy for them to slant the voting just by making sure enough of their friends show up. Being exposed has forced them to put out a preliminary statement about the proposal but there is nothing about what's actually being proposed. They also completely revised the Bylaws to allow them to sign leases for the neighborhood and control the nomination process for future Board members. Just to make the story even more interesting, an attorney that's on the Board is the one that approached the YMCA and now he supposedly is going to be the Y's attorney for the transaction. Talk about a conflict of interest!

If this isn't enough to wake up the community to the dangers of having a Board that holds their meetings in secret then all hope is lost and those of us that care should be finding better neighborhoods in which to live.

How does the BOD revise the bylaws in Tenn.? In FLA it takes membership votes.

Well, the beautiful State of Tennessee has NO State laws and Statutes governing HOA's. I own a property there and have talked with the Attorney General and he said that basically, there are no laws on the books. There are some general real estate laws but none for HOA's. EEE GADS!!

I see nothing unusual about hiring a management company to take over something like a pool. Sounds like a win-win situation!

But you said - "They also completely revised the Bylaws to allow them to sign leases for the neighborhood and control the nomination process for future Board members."

Who is the "they" and no one can do what you said without going thru due process (bylaw amendments procedure)

Donna is correct in that TN has no laws specifically governing HOA's. I accidentally left out an important fact that this is not just managing the existing pool/tennis facility, the YMCA is proposing to build a completely new facility on our land if they get the 30 year lease. Property values in our town for property like this continues to set new records every time a piece is sold. So the 6 acres they're looking at turning over could easily be worth a million dollars or more if rezoned to commercial.

The Board is telling the neighborhood nothing about what's been proposed. They're soliciting proxies asking for the authority to vote on issues that come up at the annual meeting and one issue that's going to magically come up is to ask for the authority to negotiate and close the deal with the YMCA.

The 20 year old Bylaws state that the Board can amend the Bylaws. This is something I've been fighting for the past several years especially when they started considering themselves as the sole authority on what is "best for our neighborhood". Though we have the means to easily solicit the input from the residents, they refuse to do so. They have already illegally passed a revised covenant to convert our neighborhood from a voluntary to mandatory association. They spent 18 months trying to collect 50.1% of the required signatures to do so. In that time they've revised the wording without making the original signers resign it. They made it one of those campaigns where, "we're going to vote, and keep voting until we get what we want!" Eighteen months, come on now! Talk about backwoods politics. Our only option is to pay an attorney out of our own pockets it have it challenged in court.

Our Board is tasked with maintaining the "common properties". I'm still reading all the revisions to the Bylaws they sent out two days ago but it's apparent that they've amended a number of the provisions to ensure they have more authority than ever.