The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Results at July 7 meeting; annual board election begins July 15
[ By Katherine Nettles ]
The Crested Butte South Property Owners Association (POA) is trying again to recalibrate its path on when to hold a covenant revote for the subdivision. The POA has issued notice of a special membership meeting and a written ballot vote that started June 22 and ends July 5 to determine if the official covenant revote will begin in July.
If the vote achieves a quorum and the majority votes in favor, the current proposed Amended and Restated covenants and restrictions revote will be held July 15 to August 15, at the same time as the annual board of directors’ election. If the ballot item does not pass, the vote will be delayed until after a new board is seated in August and will be left to the newly seated board to decide if and when to hold a revote. Meanwhile, 10 people have submitted nominations to become board members for the POA’s upcoming election and some contenders have been a part of the group challenging the original vote.
The new vote on whether to delay a covenant revote is being held now through July 5 electronically via Vote HOA Now, an independent agency. A special meeting at the POA office is scheduled on July 7 at 7 p.m., during which time the results will be shared. All POA members should have received an email or can register at https://crestedbuttesouth.ivotehoa.com/register.
The past seven months have been tumultuous for the POA as its updated covenants vote in October 2021, which had high turnout, was scrutinized and challenged by a group of members for various reasons. The board of directors ultimately nullified the vote due to irregularity issues with how individual votes were allocated to members of various property types. The board addressed the vote allocation problem using a citizens committee and took additional steps in rewording certain sections to be clearer and more transparent as separate ballot questions. Then the board went to work on scheduling a revote for July.
This spring some of the property owners who had challenged the first vote urged board members to revisit the covenant change process and reconsider items such as short-term rental (STR) restrictions that placed an annual 90-day cap on STRs. Others asked to add a third story allowance for the commercial district to the ballot.
The board remained firm on having already gone through the extensive public process of creating the proposed covenant changes and having improved and clarified the ballot language and vote allocations for a second round. Some of those property members who challenged the original vote and asked for more time to consider the covenant changes then submitted a written request for a special meeting to consider delaying the vote. It was signed by 16 members.
That special meeting took place two weeks later, as required in the bylaws, on June 1 and approximately 200 voting CBS members cast a vote or a proxy vote on delaying the revote. The option of delaying the revote won out by a close margin of 103 or 108 in favor of delaying (a counting committee reported three slightly different results) versus 93 or 94 against delaying a revote. While those votes were still being counted a new group of 18 property owners submitted another special meeting request on June 7 citing “lack of adequate information” over the previous special meeting and requesting a “more informed and balanced vote on whether the Restated Covenants an Amendments voting should take be postponed until after a new CB South POA Board is elected at the August 2022 Annual meeting.”
The letter specifically stated that the first issue was that the first special meeting did not notify members to come prepared to vote. “Secondly, there are concerns that the voting procedure did not comply with the procedures defined in the bylaws,” according to the letter. This referred to the meeting not being officially published on the POA website and proxy forms used without clear communication about proxy guidelines and processes.
“The previous four boards, including the current board of directors, have been participating in the covenant review process since it started in March 2019. All have attended the covenant-amendment Steering Committee meetings, reviewed proposed covenant drafts, considered public input, obtained regular legal review of the drafts and attended several work sessions to fully understand the proposed changes and mapping of current proposed covenants. Seeing this project through completion is the current board’s duty. It should not be carried forward to a newly elected board that does not have the investment and the benefit of having participated in a three-year process,” continued the letter.
“The community voted in the Restated Covenants and Amendments in October 2021. All four questions passed easily. A recount of the votes, with the corrected voter allocation, confirmed the passage of all four questions. This group of 16 property owners does not like the outcome of this vote and seeks to bully their way into getting what they want by challenging every procedural step… Waiting to elect a new board will delay a transition to a set of rules that the community has already supported by majority and will enable this group to possibly push for revising the Revised and Amended Covenants to benefit a limited number of people’s special interest,” the letter concluded.
POA board president Andrew Sandstrom said that when a group of 10 members calls for a special meeting the bylaws require that the board comply. “We can run the meeting two ways—the way we ran the first where if a quorum (10% of the membership) shows up we have to run a vote, or the way we are running the second meeting, where we set it up as a written vote in advance. This way seems like an improvement because everyone has a chance to vote and it eliminates the need for counting committees, the possible human errors, all the human factors involved,” he said. “But those are our only two choices, as I understand it.”
Sandstrom says that although this process has been challenging he believes in the work and in making improvements to the POA’s systems.
“There’s more interest in the POA than I think there ever has been. Even though we’ve hit some roadblocks I think each time we have, we’ve gotten better,” he said.
The POA estimated that it has spent roughly $13,000 on the various legal costs, staff time, notifications and Zoom system upgrades for the additional special meetings and votes. That also includes the new Vote HOA Now process.
“The cost of the initial work on the covenants and then the response to allegations which led to the nullification of the first covenant vote are estimated to be far greater than the special meeting costs. With an entire staff turnover since all that started and a board who does not have capacity to add more to their plate right now, we can’t look more deeply into those numbers at this time,” according to new POA manager Derek Harwell.
When asked at what point the results of a vote might be immune to continued requests for special meetings or revotes, Harwell answered that the POA bylaws are written to allow a group of 10 property owners to request such meetings. He said an upcoming POA board meeting agenda will address that topic, and Sandstrom confirmed that the board will consider a higher threshold for calling special meetings that is consistent with the Colorado Common Interest Ownership ACT (CCIOA) practice. CCIOA requires 10% of the membership to sign a request for such a meeting, which would equal about 90 people. This bylaw requirement could be changed by a majority vote of the board, unlike the POA covenants which require a membership vote.
Meanwhile, an election for board members will run July 15 through August 15. There are five open seats on the board, and 10 people submitted nomination forms prior to the deadline on June 22. They include Brad Wolfe, Kley Hughes, Mark Tardiff, Sue Schappert, Hannah Lang, Chelsea Stangl, Scott Clarkson, Sarah Steinwand, Rachel Gardner and incumbent David Neben who is running for another term. Two incumbents, Sandstrom and Mary Haskell have two years remaining in their term.
The Crested Butte News will print a Q&A with each nominee in the week before voting begins. The POA will also have a mission statement from each nominee on its website at crestedbuttesouth.net.
