The purpose of this website is to provide information to the overall HOA membership about how our HOA is being managed. It is very easy for residents to go about their daily business and forget about what is or is not being done to make our subdivision an attractive and desirable place to live. We elect HOA Board members to make decisions about things that will enhance property values, maintain the common areas and pay bills for such work, collect dues, and enforce rules with a commonsense mentality. You have probably heard of HOA horror stories from other subdivisions whereby HOA Boards become obsessed with enforcing every rule to the maximum limit or they start to become power hungry and create or misinterpret rules that were never intended. Sometimes personal grudges between property owners and board members can turn into major conflicts. We DO NOT want that within Rancho Lorena.
What we want is a Board of Directors that understand the limitations of their roles, and the meaning of being a responsible fiduciary.
Fiduciary Definition
A fiduciary is a person or organization that holds a legal or ethical relationship of trust and must act in the best interests of another party (the principal), placing that party’s needs above their own.
Board members should study the Bylaws which govern all Board related actions, and the Covenants (Deed Restrictions) that each property owner has agreed to abide by when they purchased their property. They should know these documents very well and should also know how they relate to Texas State Property Codes which in many cases take precedence. It is very helpful for Board members that are officers (President, Vice President, Secretary, and Treasurer) to have experience working in business or a management type roll in the past since managing an HOA is technically a non-profit business.
Deed restrictions can be a tricky subject. Board members need to recognize that the deed restriction rules were put in place by the subdivision developer prior to anyone buying a lot. They are based on that developer's image of what they envisioned this subdivision to be like and are also based on a lifestyle that existed at the time the development was being created almost 20 years ago. One example is deed restriction 2.13 which governs the type of fences allowed within Rancho Lorena. It is obvious by the deed restriction that the developer envisioned Ranch Style houses (hence the name Rancho Lorena) whereby every lot might have a horse. Anything other than a split rail fence has to be approved. Obviously, most of the people that have purchased lots here did not build a Ranch Style house and do not have split rail fences. The truth is almost every rule in the deed restrictions has been violated at this point and trying to enforce them precisely as written is an almost futile endeavor. One of two things needs to happen. Either the Board should revise the entire Deed Restriction document and put it before the membership for an approval vote (which requires 90% approval by the way), OR the Board needs to adopt a commonsense approach to enforcement of the existing rules.
Commonsense Approach
1. Does the violation create a conflict between neighbors that has been raised to the HOA Board?
2. Does the violation negatively impact the property values of surrounding properties?
3. What is the true intent of the deed restriction as it relates to the subdivision as a whole? Does this situation exist anywhere else in the subdivision?
4. How long has this situation existed without any issues being raised?
In relation to # 1 above, the HOA Board is not a dispute resolution entity. Any dispute between property owners that is not directly related to a deed restriction should be handled between the property owners as a civil case and is not within the responsibility of the HOA Board.
The HOA Board should not misinterpret rules in order to achieve its own agenda. A case in point is Rule 2.14. When the Board decided on its own that we all needed to have a common trash collection company, they decided not to follow Rule 2.14. That rules says that the Board can require a common trash collector, but they must pay for the collection of all trash and then get reimbursed though dues assessments to the lot owners. They did not want the responsibility or work it would take to get dues assessments approved and billing completed and collected, so they chose to make each lot owner get an account with the trash company they chose and make payments directly to the trash company. The contract they signed with that company has a termination clause that says if any lot owner creates a default the company can terminate the contract, stop all collection, and make the HOA pay for the remainder of the 5-year contract. That means if any individual lot owner does not pay their bill, or does not use that company, the HOA could potentially be billed hundreds of thousands of dollars which we do not have. Basically, the HOA Board signed a contract that puts our HOA at financial risk without ever showing that contract to anyone. That is NOT being a fiduciary, and that is what we oppose.
There are actually several issues that have taken place whereby we believe the current HOA Board has not acted as a responsible fiduciary. So, the actual purpose of this website is to make you aware of what has taken place and what we believe needs to happen. Please see the other pages on this website for more in depth information.