The Horseshoe Bay Property Owners Association announced that Cynthia Clinesmith and Joe Dan Rowland were elected to fill the two seats up for election this year on the POA board of directors.
This announcement came more than four and a half hours after the special members meeting adjourned.
Clint Brown, the attorney for the Horseshoe Bay Property Owners Association, called the special members meeting to order at 10:30 a.m. on December 11 and quickly ran through some legal formalities, such as confirming that the notice of the meeting was sent in accordance with state law and the POA’s governing documents.
In order to certify the election results under state law, prior to the special members meeting, the POA board of directors amended its bylaws to have a system that would allow the POA to obtain a quorum at the special members meeting. The system came into play because the number of votes cast did not satisfy the 30% quorum requirement set out in the POA bylaws. The list provided by the Maintenance Fund shows 9,170 lots in the POA, so 30% would be 2,751.
Brown explained the solution to the quorum issue. “What we are going to do now is what’s called a quorum reduction process. We are going to go from 30 to 20 to 10% and once we reach 10% we will have reached our quorum. That is because we have had over 1,500 people vote online, we have somewhere between 125-130 votes via mail-in ballots which are called absentee ballots, and then everybody who has voted in person. We don’t have that count yet, but we will meet quorum with the first two categories of voters.” Motions to adjourn and reconvene took place three times to reach the 10% quorum requirement.
There was a question from the floor asking if the quorum reduction was just for this meeting or for all further meetings. Brown said it was just for the 2024 special meeting of members. At future meetings, the quorum will start at 30% and be reduced as needed following the same process. The 10% quorum requirement for this election is 917 members participating.
The audience applauded when Brown announced that approximately 1,800 votes have been cast in this election, which is likely the largest number of voter participation in the history of the HSB POA.
Brown explained his role as general counsel for the POA. “I was tasked with running this meeting to make it as neutral as possible. You all are aware of and know what’s kinda been going on. We are trying to get things fixed and allow for a good vote. We have relied on the list provided to us by the Maintenance Fund. I know some of y’all have had issues because you have paid more assessments than your voting rights and we’re going to try to get that fixed. We can’t get it fixed today because we have agreed to rely on the list provided us. But I promise we are going to work to get it fixed before our next election.”
Brown has kept the 130 mail-in ballots secured at his office and they had not been counted before the meeting. Although the eVotes contained a tally, Brown said each of the eVotes needed to be reviewed and counted. And, of course, the ballots cast in person at the meeting would need to be tabulated. In order to ensure objective ballot counting, Brown asked for four volunteers from the members in the audience who are not related by blood or marriage to any of the board candidates and who are not a close friend of any candidate to serve as vote tabulators.
The first volunteer was immediately questioned by audience members as a close personal friend to a candidate and she withdrew. John James, Jill Petronio, Paloma Guerrero and David Wood volunteered to serve as vote tabulators despite knowing their task would take several hours.
An audience member asked who would have custody of the ballots after the election. Brown replied: “At the end of the voting process the ballots will be sealed in manila envelopes, plural because it will take more than one. They will be signed by your vote tabulators with their contact information provided, and they will be kept at my law office. They will not be opened except under a court order.”
By 10:45 a.m., the vote tabulators had collected the in person ballots from audience members and they retired to a separate office to conduct their duty. Brown said the POA would send an email blast with the results of the board election, hopefully in two to three hours. Then the special members meeting was adjourned and everyone chatted as they vacated the room, many of whom were somewhat surprised that the results of the election were still unknown.
The vote tabulators completed the vote count after several hours of work, ending a long delayed election season for the HSB POA and its members. The POA notified members via email around 3:30 p.m. of the election results: Clinesmith (1,171 votes); Rowland (1,086 votes); Donald Beeman (690 votes); Gayla Bowen (688 votes); Paul Groot (364 votes); and Sutherland (94 votes).
Board terms are normally three years, but the candidates elected this season will serve a shortened term from December 2024 until March 2027.
