"The Kenthill Townhomes revised House Rules were voted on and were passed by the Association on July 27, 2005. It is now August, and we must begin the task of examining our governing documents to revise them. When this is complete, our documents will have the necessary provisions in them to address our many needs, as well as the power to carry out them out. Then we will go back and revise our House Rules again, this time putting back several items which had to be deleted, because the Declarations as they now stand make no mention of them (such as towing, Building Reps, etc.).
In the interest of getting this project started, on August 1, 2005, I wrote the following letter to the office of Kris Sundberg, the Attorney for the Association. I wrote:"
Dear Mr. Sundberg,
On March 22, 2005 you sent a letter to the Kenthill Townhomes Homeowners Association. In the letter you answered five questions that the Board posed. In answering question number three, you stated that in accordance with our Declarations, the House Rules and Regulations of Kenthill Townhomes needed to be approved by all of the homeowners.
The Kenthill Townhomes Board was not able to conduct this vote at the Annual meeting March 31. The board carefully reviewed the House Rules for any corrections that need to be made. They also provided a copy to Mr. Dean Pody who also reviewed the document and made his suggestions and comments. The revised and corrected House Rules were sent out to homeowners in early June, and a Special Meeting was called for on June 27th to approve the House Rules. A 51 percent majority was not achieved at that time. A second Special Meeting was called for on July 25th (using Article II Section 6 of our Bylaws). This time the House Rules were approved by the membership by 37 percent majority.
While reviewing the House Rules, Mr. Pody discovered many items that needed to be deleted. Some of these items were not objectionable, but because they were not in our Declarations or because they conflicted with our Bylaws they could not be included in our revised House Rules. During the past several months many homeowners have expressed ideas and suggestions that they would like the board to consider when preparing the final draft of our House Rules (to occur sometime in the future). In order to accomplish this, and keeping in mind the comments of Mr. Pody, the Board is considering revising the Kenthill Townhomes Declarations and Bylaws. When this is completed, they want to revisit the House Rules and revise them a second time (all this hopefully by the end of the year).
We would like you to counsel us as to how to proceed at this time. A former property manager from our old property management company advised us that there are pre- formatted forms for Declarations and for Bylaws that Homeowners Association Boards can use as a guide when revising their official documents. Is this true and would these forms even apply or be of use to Kenthill Townhomes? In your letter to us on March 22nd, you pointed out that Kenthill Townhomes is not a “New Act” condominium. In other words, it is not subject to the law which was written by the Washington State Legislature in 1990. Would it be advisable to attempt to bring the Kenthill Townhomes Declarations and Bylaws into compliance with the law as it's now stands in 2005? Or is that even possible? Would be advisable for the board to attempt to amend our Declarations and Bylaws, keeping those rules and sections which might be best for us to keep intact?
The current Kenthill Townhomes Board is comprised of four members with limited experience and one member who has years of experience but who will be leaving shortly. Therefore we look forward to any advice and counsel you may give us.
Sincerely,
Thomas Flynn
President
Kenthill Townhomes Homeowners Association
