President has no say so?

Started by TomW4 • 7 replies • 1254 views

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TomW4 (Texas)
Posts: 5

Posted:

I am the president of an HOA in Texas. For the past year I have not been able to do much about what I see as a corrupt board which operates under my own eyes. I have reason to believe that the current other 3 board members are meeting behind my back and taking place in possible voting fraud which involves proxy votes. Our election is 1/29 and just today (1/15) I received a new list of people whom have been nominated to run for office. Our deadline for receiving nominations was 12/15. I asked the secretary why I was just now told about the new list of people and was told that it was not my business to worry about the nominations for election......just to worry about conducting the election. Is there anything I can do about this before this election takes place?

RogerB (Colorado)
Posts: 5,067

Posted:

Tom, usually the By-laws state who appoints the nominating committee so you could start there. Second, you can request the Secretary verify in writting that all candidates nominations were received by 12/15. If you still doubt the Secretaries word you could contact candidates and ask when their nomination was submitted. For any you can prove to not have filed by 12/15 you can remove their names from the list.

Sounds like you think the rest of the Board is trying to get rid of you? If so, have you asked yourself or them, why?

TomW4 (Texas)
Posts: 5

Posted:

The reason that I know the "new list" of nominations was not in on time is that the new names are not on the proxy ballots. The proxy ballots were mailed to the homeowners on 1/11 with the group of names that were nominated by 12/15. The new list which I was allowed to view last night had a different group of people that were running for all of the positions at hand. If the new list of people would have been turned in on time they would have been printed on the proxy ballots along with the actual names that are currently on it.

There has been a lot of things like this happening in the past with this particular board. I was elected for the first time in Jan 2007 and have made it possible for the first time ever for our homeowners to each be able to speak at our public meetings as long as they are civil about doing so. All of the obvious things have happened to this association: books have been requested to be viewed by homeowners through several attempts from attorneys (with no luck), over abundance of deed restriction violations have been sent out right before elections so the board can hold a members vote selectively for being in violation. I am the president and have been told that I don't have any reason to see the books as my job is basically to call the meetings. I am new at this but do not think that this is fair conduct of a board. I really need to know if there is anything that can be done before our 1/29 annual meeting where our election will take place. Your replies are greatly appreciated!

EdO (Florida)
Posts: 3

Posted:

I would focus on collecting evidence of fraud/manipulation, etc. and with evidence (be sure it's solid to avoid legal retribution) in hand, write a letter to all members or write an article for insertion in your Association's newsletter in which you present the evidence and call for action (dicatated by your documents) for the removal of the violators. EdO

RogerB (Colorado)
Posts: 5,067

Posted:

Tom, if you chair the annual meeting and nominations are not allowed from the floor, then the additional nominees after 12/15 can be disallowed. In other words as the Chair at the meeting you should not allow any of these for consideration during the voting. Also, as the President I would require the custodian of the books and files to make them available for viewing by homeowners upon their request. The President has many duties besides calling and presiding at meetings. The President is the leader of the association; as President you have more authority and power than any other member.

TomW4 (Texas)
Posts: 5

Posted:

I have asked the person on the nominating committee to put in writing that the people from the new list were nominated on or before 12/15. I know I will never receive this documentation. The racket is that the group of people that think they are above all of the other members ( we have a total of 85 members) are rotating in and out of office at will for each election and have been doing so for 30 years. It shook up the current board when I was elected as president, the only reason I was elected is because I made the last board count the ballots in front of everyone instead of the normal behind closed doors scene.

We had a nice group of people running for office for this up coming election and once the veteran board group found out who was running they quickly decided to get all of the positions flooded with veterans again with the new-late list of nominees. I have been restricted to the point of having any say so in any of our meetings and have also been told that I can be gotten rid of at will. I pose a threat to them because I am an honest citizen and want to do the right thing for the community. It really is unbelievable how I am pushed around in this board, I don't give up easily especially since I have alot of people in this community that are depending on me to uphold their rights as property owners in this neighborhood. There are about 8 to 10 people that make up this veteran board group. There is one in particular that does all of the ordering from outside the board. So I nominated a 3rd. person to the nominating committee for receiving the nominations for the this up coming election since I believed the 2 other nominators were corrupt. I actually got this done! The new nominator was the only one that turned in the list of names by the stated date of 12/15/07 (he is the only one that turned the list in to me). The current VP went to the new nominators house right before he gave the real list to me for the nominations and asked him for a copy of the names. The new nominator gave him a copy as requested on 12/14/07. The proxy ballots were then printed and sent to our community on 1/11/08. Last evening (1/15/08) is when the new list of nominees was brought to my attention and was told they were done properly and that they were from one of the veteran nominators. If it was done properly these names would already be on the proxy's that were sent out on 1/11/08. Am I going crazy or thinking too deep into this? I have spent alot of time on this as I do care about this small community. I also found out that our deed restrictions are not recorded properly and there is no record of any bylaws being recorded in our county. These fraudulent people have milked a few of our neighbors dry with petty lawsuits and restriction violation charges. Kind of messy but I think it is worth cleaning up!

TomW4 (Texas)
Posts: 5

Posted:

I will have to look into the nominations from the floor part. If we are able to take nominations from the floor then this new list should not have been shown to me (I believe). On our proxy ballot t does have a space for writing in another name to vote on but I will check the unrecorded deed restrictions to find this out.

TomW4 (Texas)
Posts: 5

Posted:

I did request the books to be available to the members upon appointment. I was not even allowed to see them! Over 5 professional correctly worded attorney's letters did not get the books viewed by anyone! The group that wanted to see the books did not want to sue the association so just kind of let it fizzle out. The veterans do not want the newbies to get hold of any of the books that is why they are going to try to make sure a couple of the people that are running for office (that tried to view the books) will not get elected.

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