The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
“Take the human element out of vote counting”
By Katherine Nettles
Crested Butte South property owners can expect a chance to vote again on how to proceed with a revote on covenant changes this year, as the Crested Butte Property Owners Association (POA) has announced it is preparing a new vote to replace the one it held on June 1. The POA board of directors sent out a letter to members last Friday stating that a new group has taken issue with how the last vote went and a new effort to fully automate voting and counting is underway—all to determine whether to hold a covenant changes revote before or after a new board of directors is seated in August. The POA has been mired in a voting controversy since it held a membership vote on covenant changes in November of 2021, which it later nullified due to vote allocation and has since worked to reschedule with more clearly stated and allocated ballots.
The question of when to hold a revote on the proposed amended and restated covenants has held up the actual revote process for several weeks. In May POA board members scheduled the revote to be held throughout the month of July, but then held a special meeting to reconsider that date at the request of a group of 16 POA members as mandated by the POA regulations. The POA shared the results of that special meeting and vote on Friday, June 10 in an email to all members.
“At the request of 16 of our members, we conducted a special meeting of the owners on June 1 to determine if the membership would like to move forward with voting on the Amended and Restated Covenants as proposed or if they would like to wait until a new Board of Directors is seated,” reviewed the email.
While the results of that vote were inconclusive and slightly varied, they indicated a majority of votes were in favor of delaying the covenants vote.
“At the meeting, we determined a vote counting committee of four to compile the submissions of those in attendance and cross reference with proxies we had received. We have received three of the four vote count committee responses from the first special meeting. It appears that members at the meeting voted in favor of postponing the vote,” according to the email. The committee findings as shared by the POA board were as follows:
Counter 1: 108 for postponing and 94 against
Counter 2: 103 for postponing and 93 against
Counter 3: 103 for postponing and 94 against
Counter 4: did not count votes “because there was another special meeting that was requested, and this vote needed to be nullified.”
According to the board another special meeting was requested by a second group of 18 homeowners in the POA on June 7. According to the email, “Their concern is that members were not informed well enough that a vote would take place at the meeting, and that the notice for the June 1 special meeting was inadequate. Also, there appears to be confusion about the use of proxies, including the form that was provided to members.
“This was the first time in our POA’s history, that I am aware of, where we had to run a special meeting of this size,” continued the email from the board. “We worked to enact the best system possible to gather all of the votes at a live meeting. That said there have been numerous folks questioning this process particularly around proxy voting.
It appears proxy votes were the key to achieving a majority in favor of postponing.
“Moving forward, we are working to utilize Vote HOA Now to run a vote of the entire membership to determine if the membership would like to proceed with a vote on the Amended and Restated Covenants as proposed or if they would like to wait until a new Board of Directors is seated. A new board may or may not further revise the proposed covenants.”
The plan is to conduct this latest vote using Vote HOA Now, “to take the human element out of vote counting and proxy validity determination,” according to the email. “This will give the entire membership the ability to weigh in on a clearly divisive issue. This will also leave no question by either side of the direction that the community would like to move. Voting by written ballot on this issue eliminates the need for proxies.”
POA members will receive information about the new vote by email from Vote HOA Now, including a ballot by which to tender votes. There will also be a notice of a new special meeting, sent by mail, to all members during which the board will announce the results of the vote administered by Vote HOA Now and to discuss the process for voting on the proposed Amended and Restated Covenants.
According to POA board president Andrew Sandstrom, a special meeting requires a quorum of at least 10% of all owner/members in good standing, or about 95 people.
