HOA Legal Status (Sample Blog)

Yesterday Joe Refsnes invited me to go with him to the office of Lic. Marco Ramirez to listen to different options for the continuance of the HOA. While this isn't really any of my business, I am still involved at the periphery by virtue of having put up this website. So I'm going to take the liberty of writing a casual blog about the meeting. As I mentioned to several of the people I met here at PDB, this website can just be a place where people hang photos, but it could also serve as a platform and tool which facilitates community communication and discussion. I hope that by writing this, others will see that it is possible to participate in such a community fairly easily.

We arrived at Lic. Ramirez' office right on time at 5:00 PM. We had to wait because his day had somehow developed a delay. So I took the time to read the "certified" (i. e. legal) English translation of the PdB HOA charter. Although the charter seems reasonable and useful, there were a few points which I didn't understand from the translation. The idea of the charter is that the Mexican government grants the HOA the power to make one or several persons legal representatives for the group, and also the power to collect money and pay bills without incurring any tax liability. The HOA has absolutely no power to coerce people to join or leave the organization. This is in direct contrast to a Nayarit condominio regime, which has a fixed membership once it is formed. Like a roach motel or the Newark airport, you can get in but you can't leave.

The current HOA also has the power to collect money owed to it for services rendered.

After reading this document, I had the impression that the non-coercive nature of this charter would be appealing to the people I've met here at PdB. It seems like it would be very difficult to come up with a set of condominium bylaws that would appeal to everyone in PdB, and especially as these would be imposed on the community after they already have lived here.

As it turned out, once we got into Ramirez' office he told us that it is not possible to reorganize the subdivision under a Nayarit condominio regime at this late stage, so that's not an option. He also said that there is really nothing wrong with the current charter with a few notable exceptions:

• The association's minutes need to be brought up-to-date.
• The association's books should be examined and also brought up-to-date if there are any problems or gaps.
• The CFE bill needs to be transferred out of the name of Pasquarito (sp?) and into the name of the HOA.

Ramirez assured us that these few things are relatively easy to get done, requiring only an extraordinary meeting of the HOA and a trip to the CFE by a lawyer or other representative.

Ramirez also said he will give a quote on a per-job basis, which seems good...my own experience in Latin America is that for some mysterious reason, jobs which are paid by the hour usually stretch out a bit longer.

In summary (and this is my opinion only!) it seems to me that the current HOA is not very broken. It is a recognized Mexican legal structure capable of doing the things which need to be done, and it is completely voluntary. This means (in theory at least) that if people think it's not effective or there's too much overhead, they can vote with their feet, which should force the HOA to operate on a lean and effective basis. It also means that if the people of the PDB community are willing to communicate their needs and wishes to each other, and come to some kind of consensus, and then finally communicate this to an elected HOA representative, the HOA's legal representative power should save time and money as well as provide more clout for dealing with the substantive issues both now and in the future (such as easements, environmental impact considerations, etc.)

That being said, it would still be a good thing to generally distribute both English and Spanish versions of the charter to anyone concerned, and maybe fix the parts of the English translation which don't make immediate sense. If anyone is interested, I could put it up on the PDBHOA site. This could be done in a private forum so it could be discussed. Comments on this blog are also welcome!