Amendment Vote

As hopefully all of the homeowners know by now we have been working long and hard to update our covenants in many ways to better position our neighborhood for the next 20 years.

It was our initial belief that we could proceed with voting on the revised covenants by an initial meeting and then we would collect the votes of those not in attendance in person or by mail. Our ambition being the every home was able to vote even though meeting attendance is generally only around 15%.

While the covenants have a clear requirement of 2/3rds approval; late last year we were hit with an unexpected road block the attorney made us aware of. In the original Articles of Incorporation, which the Board did not have a copy of, Section 9.09 states that any action that is required to be taken at a meeting can be done by written consent but only if it receives 100% approval from all members.

Clearly this is infeasible and in fact the State of Indiana has enforced a ceiling of only 75% for amendments to covenants. That said the attorney recommends that we amend this section of the Articles of Incorporation such that the rules for written approval outside a meeting are the same as those in a meeting.

To do this we are required by the By-Laws to call a meeting which must meet a quorum (60% of households). If a quorum is not met we must call a meeting at least 30 days after and the requirement would be half of the previous meeting. The meetings would continue with the required members lowering by half each time until we achieve quorum. At this point we can hold the vote for consent to amend the articles of incorporation.

Once that amendment is made we can hold the vote to make the actual changes to the covenants happen.

You may download the Articles of Incorporation here

If you have any questions or concerns please reach out to me directly at 260.348.5716

April 6th,  3pm at the Fishers Library in the ‘Stage’ meeting room.

Sincerely,
Lane Skeeters
President, SCW HOA