State board: Decision on Summerlin meetings ill-advised

Tuesday, June 29, 2004 | 10:58 a.m.

Members of a state board that oversees homeowners associations say the Summerlin North Community Association's new restriction on attendance at some meetings is ill-advised because it creates suspicions the association has something to hide.

But it doesn't break the law, so unless a complaint is filed by a homeowner or unless there is some investigation by the state Real Estate Division, the matter may never rise to the level of being heard by the Common-Interest Communities Board, the state board's chairman said Monday at the group's meeting in Las Vegas.

The Summerlin North Community Association decided June 23 that attendance at the monthly meetings that cover the entire master-planned community to the 81 elected delegates, one for each neighborhood, association employees and others who were invited.

Hal Bloch, president of the Summerlin North group , said the decision to limit meeting access was to keep "zealots" from dominating monthly meetings. Summerlin North is one of the area's largest homeowners associations.

Bloch said homeowners still have the opportunity to voice concerns at the association's executive board meetings held every month separate from the delegate meetings.

No angry Summerlin homeowners showed up Monday at the state board meeting to voice opposition to that decision, but after the meeting, some of the state board members said they disagreed with the way the Summerlin homeowners' governing board had handled the situation.

Michael Buckley, chairman of the five-member Common-Interest Communities Board and a former member of the Las Vegas Planning Commission, said he believed all of the association's meetings should be open to all of the homeowners.

"Board meetings should be open to the public," Buckley said. "It seems that if they (the association) wanted to move along the meeting, they could have just limited the time people are allowed to speak."

The state board, for example, limits public comment on issues to five minutes per person.

Buckley said that the situation could be viewed differently if the delegates to the Summerlin group's restricted meetings, after those meetings, met regularly with their neighbors, thoroughly briefed them and took their ideas to present at future meetings.

Still, he said, even if that were the case, "it seems to me to be a mistake to close the meetings. It just creates the suspicion among homeowners that something suspicious is going on."

However, Buckley said, if there is no violation of the Nevada statutes -- state law does not require private organizations to follow the open-meeting law -- his board might not get a chance to address the issue of those closed meetings.

Jan Porter, the homeowner representative on the board, agreed that limiting the time people are allowed to speak gives them the opportunity to air their complaints, yet still allows the association an opportunity to get its work done in a timely manner.

"Whether this will come before our board is a question for (Real Estate Division) investigators," Porter said. "The Real Estate Division would have to bring it to our commission if there is a legal issue."

Summerlin North has been in the news on several resident vs. homeowners showdowns including outlawing synthetic grass in yards and requiring residents to put away basketball hoops when not in use.

Eldon Hardy, ombudsman for Common-Interest Communities who addresses issues with homeowners and Nevada's 3,000 homeowners association, said he has received a few calls from homeowners regarding the attendance issue and advised them to air their views before the state board.

Hardy said Monday that no homeowner has filed a formal complaint, which is required for him to take the next step and talk to the homeowners association. If such talks proved not to be fruitful, the matter could be turned over to the Real Estate Division for an investigation.

The Common-Interest Communities Board next meets Aug. 31 and Sept. 1 at the Sawyer State Office Building.

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