Crested Butte South will proceed with covenants revote

Strong voter turnout; revote starts this week

[  By Katherine Nettles  ]

After months of grappling with how to handle a revote on amended and restated covenants, the Crested Butte South Property Owners Association (POA) outlined a path forward last week and will hold a revote on covenants July 15 through August 15 in tandem with its annual board of directors election. Crested Butte South property owners turned out in much larger numbers for a second special meeting and elected to proceed with a revote on covenant changes this month rather than waiting for a new board to be seated in August. 

On Thursday, July 7 the POA board of directors held a brief special meeting to announce the results of the latest vote, which ran for two weeks from June 22 through July 5. The results, according to independent electronic voting service Vote HOA Now which the POA has recently started using, were a 62% voter turnout with 568 out of 906 eligible POA votes cast. 402 votes came in “for” proceeding with covenants revote right away, and 166 votes came in “against” proceeding with the vote and said they would prefer delaying the vote until after a new board of directors is seated and had a chance to review the covenants anew. 

POA board president Andrew Sandstrom said during Thursday’s special meeting that he was pleased to have had another robust turnout and that the community had spoken clearly of its readiness to move forward. 

“We did it in the most robust, democratic way we could, and we feel very good about the [close to] 63% turnout we received,” he said. “And the community was overwhelmingly in support of continuing the covenants vote July 15 through August 15.”

Sandstrom addressed the difference between two special meetings held in quick succession this summer regarding a delayed revote, with very different results. Both special meetings were called by a written request from a group of at least 10 members as outlined in the POA bylaws and each required a vote, according to Sandstrom, if a quorum of 10% or about 90 participants attended. 

The first special meeting was conducted on June 1, and since a quorum was present a vote was held with a 22% voter turnout (200 eligible voters). Those voting in that first special meeting elected by a slim margin to delay the covenants revote (93 in favor of proceeding and 103 or 108 in favor of delaying). A second group of members then requested the second special meeting, citing confusion and poor notice of how the first meeting would take place and that if a quorum was present, it would include a vote. 

“We are not choosing between one meeting or another,” said Sandstrom of the second special meeting and vote. “Rather, the membership asked us to call a meeting and so we did so. And I feel like we had a very robust turnout, I think it was great to hear from the community.”

“I think this has been a learning curve and I think the second special meeting vote was more representative of the community,” commented board member David Neben.

The ballot questions on the covenants have been amended from their previous format that was voted on last fall, with several questions clarified and pulled out for better transparency in response to community member feedback after the previous vote was nullified.

The POA board has adopted a new voter allocation system to address previous voter allocation errors, as recommended by a membership voting allocation committee. The new allocation system has been in place for the past two special meeting votes and will be used for all votes going forward. 

Board members did note that for the new covenants to pass in the upcoming revote, 50% plus one of all eligible voters must vote in favor of changing them. That means 454 votes must be cast in favor. 

A sample ballot, the existing 1970 covenants and proposed new covenants as well as a summary of changes between the two are posted on the POA website at crestedbuttesouth.net/new-covenants/.

The board member elections will also be held July 15 through August 15 and a Q&A with each nominee can be found on page 22.