HOA Legi-Slate

Ever wanted to get more owners to attend an annual meeting?  Well, an association in Delaware has come up with a controversial method...they have imposed a $100 fine if owners don't attend the annual meeting or at least return a proxy!  Would this work in Colorado?  We certainly would not recommend doing this through rule but it may be possible to write this type of a requirement into the Bylaws of the association.  One should question the legality of requiring an owner to vote!  Can you imagine if every owner in the U.S. was required to vote in the upcoming presidential election.  Weigh in by sending me an email with your thoughts.

I think it's a great idea. I don't know if the $100 fine is to much, but I did this in Los Angeles and it worked very well. The owner's had to attend or send in the proxy. We had 97% attend or respond!! We also gave out lottery tickets at another association meeting and had a very good turn out.

A creative idea, although not really one that I would like to see implemented in my association. But then, how do you motivate owners to: 1. Be involved in charting the course for their Association by being informed and making informed choices when voting; 2. Fostering a sense of 'community'; 3. Getting Association business accomplished without need of rescheduling annual meetings when quorum is not met?
Maybe there are some other ideas such as having a social activity in conjunction with the annual meeting - a wine tasting party after the meeting? A pot-luck social? Inviting an interesting guest speaker? Door prizes?
hmmmmmmmm .... I guess there are some other means to get owners involved!

I don't know if I agree with fining homeowners for being lazy/busy/disconnected. We have been able to find someone in the community to go door to door to get proxies rewarded with a $100 to $250 gift card paid for by the Association. (Justification = recalling an additional meeting would cost the homeowners much more than that.) Just my 2 cents... :)

Since HOAs are corporations it's a little bit different than a vote in a governmental election, but the concept is similar. If you own voting shares in a public corporation you can either attend the annual meeting, send in a proxy card, or do nothing. Why should an HOA be any different? If an owner doesn't vote then they're effectively saying that whatever decisions are reached are fine with them.

Having been president of an HOA with over 2000 homes and seeing turnout vary from 10 owners to 200 at annual meetings I can say that if there's something that owners care about they will show up.

We have enough trouble getting people to buy in to major projects and changes that affect their rental condo and property value; it would be suicide for the board of directors to implement a mandatory attendance policy or fine for non attendance.

I have often thought of reversing the above and offering homeowners a quarter credit from the dues to attend or send proxy to encourage participation. Current participation has never, in 6 years, been above 25%. What's the legal challenge with offer a savings to quarterly dues?

Loura,

In Australia, voting is compulsory in federal, state and local elections and you are fined (I think about $50) if you do not vote. In fact, you do not have to actually vote - as long as you turn up at the voting station and receive a voting form you can tear it up in front of the election officials - my wife did this and the officials were annoyed, but could not do anything about it! (That was quite a few years ago now and I guess that mail voting is now dominant.)

You can argue endlessly about whether it is more "democratic" to have compulsory or non-compulsory voting. If voting is non-compulsory then candidates can be elected by relatively few voters (if there is no interest in the elections). With compulsory voting at least you can be sure that the winner has the "support" of the majority of citizens.

Requring, by fining, people to vote, attend HOA meetings is problematic and a bad idea for a number of reasons. First, the backlash and increased contempt for HOA's and the power they wield would create many negative outcomes, including legislation to prohibit or make very difficult (and impractical) such fines. Second, forcing all people to get involved in their HOA like this will likely result in involvement of some who are counter productive or disinterested at best. Requiring participation and fining people at this level creates yet another burden on homeowners which could amount to a financial hardship. All this just tips the scales further against the value of an HOA and might result in less demand for homes in those communities and ultimately impact property values. I would like to see more discussion of some positive ways HOA's can get more participation (voting, meetings, etc.) that include alternatives to traditional formats, such as mail voting, surveys, and other methods of communication between the members, the board and management.

Well, whenever someone doesn't do as we wish, there are ways of making them. I prefer education to coercion. I don't think Delaware's method would be constitutional. Some say that constitutionality does not apply in HOAs, but I disagree. I believe everything should be done with regard to people's rights. Sometimes this requires that we association leaders walk a fine line, in balancing one person's rights with another's, but we should be able to do that. And, sometimes, what a homeowner claims is a "right" is not really a right at all.

Delaware is way overreacting. We would all like more homeowner participation, but, the fact is, homeowners will be apathetic until there is an issue that negatively affects them, then they come out of the woodwork. That's just human nature. We can deal with it. But we also need to be consistent in making sure that owners understand that, by not participating in the process, they must accept the decisions that are made. I use this as an opportunity to remind homeowners when and where the board meetings are, and even to invite them to get on the board, thereby having a positive impact on the association.

I can understand the frustration of the board by lack of participation of members. But by imposing a fine? That's stretching it a bit far. There should be other ways to get their attention. Try having potluck or other activities.

My understanding of the back-story is the Association in question had issues with trying to get a quorum. The better solution in my opinion would be to try and get the by-laws changed to make obtaining quorum much easier rather than trying to fine your members into showing up. An alternete suggestions would be to throw an association BBQ, get quorum there and pass the by-law changes for smaller quorum requirements for Annual meetings.

Dave

It is each owner's right to decide for themselves whether or not to attend these meetings. I believe that a board is over stepping their authority to require attendance at member meetings and/or submission of proxies by their members.

Maybe what could be done is that there should be board meeting attendance expense line in the budget. All those who attend get a maximum of a certain amount (for any meeting...including board members. A mentor would tell me that it is better to reward than to punish and to approach a matter in a positive way. Let's say that on average a homeowner pays $60, so that $10 per meeting could be the fee...and would be paid out for up to six meetings. Any leftover from that line could go into reserves or a bonus for board members.

This requirement is just asking for litigation. Associations could publish
the names, with a commentary on the lack of involvement, of those who choose not to
attend or supply a proxy as a means of
embarrassment but $100 fine for doing
neither seems undemocratic.

Maybe a raffle for a chance to win a $100.00 Visa/MC gift card for those who attend the annual meeting.

I think a fine of some kind would be a great idea, very often it is difficult to make quorum which hinders the ability to get much needed budget issues passed.

I like the idea of requiring owners to vote or be present. Poor participation in community buisness by the general community members makes governing the HOA a challenge. But a $100 fine would outrage many owners. Not a good way to create Harmony within a community.

Although voting is a good thing and would make doing business easier it shouild not be mandated like this. Too many ideas that may be good or not are attempting to be mandated such as seat belt use or motorcycle helmet laws.

Another inconsistency is the legislature making sure HOA votes are done by secret ballot yet now many of the same legislators are advocating the elimination of the secret ballot in union elections. Too many inconsistencies regarding the American Privilege of voting.

I totally disagree. There are to many unknowns and variables as to why a home owner cannot attend, albeit, there are many who are just lazy about it.

With the economic downturn in the economy i think it would cause a lot of dissention toward the hoa board.How to win friends and influence enemies.

With the number of foreclosures on the market, and the rising gas prices, i don't think we need to make things financially worse for home owners. We have a difficut enough time getting some of the homeowners to just pay their monthly dues.
There are alternative ways to get home owners to come to meetings, some of which have already been mentioned here by others, or to send in proxys other than hitting them in their wallets. Why does this always seem to be the first avenue of approach to remedying a situation, raise taxes, fine the home owner for not showing up...what freedoms will people have left if we keep doing stuff like that. I guarantee it will only lead to alienate homeowners within the community, towards each other and the hoa board.

The idea behind democracy is to have informed people vote. It seems to me that forcing the uninformed to vote undermines the effectiveness of the system. I would expect to get a lot of proxies naming "the Board" or the president, and in many communities this would overwhelm any attending people who actually know what's going on. Perhaps forcing everyone to vote would paridoxially put all the power in the hands of a few.

Fine is a good idea - owners can vote or abstain, their choice, by attending meetings or submitting a proxy (a five minute endeavor).

First - Since many proxies contain the name of the HOA President as the default for receiving the proxy, unless someone else is named to receive the proxy, there could arise a challenge that the President is coercing votes favorable to him or her.

Second - I would advise any Board to stay away from fines as a method of addressing the apathy issue. This does not actually get people involved, it will just give them another divisive issue encouraging them to stay uninvolved.

I do not see how anyone could reasonably enforce a fine for not voting in and HOA election in any state. If you want to get people to come to a meeting, do something fun while the votes are being counted, like carnival games for the kids (big and little) or bridge or penucle (sp?)or bonco (is that the right game) for those less active - all with prizes.

If you really cannot get people interested in coming, or its not worth the effort, get approval to amend the quorum for the annual meeting or voting to the number of ballots or proxies received, and you will never have the quandary again.

I have problems generally with the whole proxy thing. Our HOA (which uses the firm that hosts this site) will bring up questions and votes at the meeting that we don't know in advance and the proxy has to serve for those votes also. I'm not giving anyone that power for me. We had a vote that yearly meetings wouldn't be prior to 7 PM (we're a commuter community), yet the HOA continues to have 5:30 or 6:30 PM meetings and they wonder why people don't attend.