Virus Q&A for your Association; Cabarrus County Institutes Stay-At-Home Restrictions
On March 25 Cabarrus County instituted a stay-at-home order. Residents must stay home and may not report to work or engage in non-essential travel other than for supplies, food, exercise and health care. As with the Mecklenburg County order, many industries are deemed Essential and are thus exempt. Click here to view the Cabarrus County order in its entirety. Note that the order became unavailable from the Cabarrus County website around 7 pm on March 25. The version provided here was downloaded by us before that happened. At this time we do not know if the order is being changed or if this is simply a problem with the County’s website. The Cabarrus County order is very similar to the Mecklenburg County order in most respects.
How do the current restrictions affect your community association? Here are answers to some common questions we are hearing:
- Will we be able to hold board meetings? The limitation is on 10 or more people gathering together, but it is advisable not to meet in person but to meet via teleconference or video conference. There are free conference call and free video calling options available online. Boards should be meeting regularly at this time to assess the effects of these events on your HOA.
- Will we be able to hold our annual meeting? Probably not. The size of most annual meetings would exceed 10 people. North Carolina law requires an in-person annual meeting each year. Boards will need to postpone any immediately upcoming annual meetings and investigate means for holding them online if the stay-at-home orders continue through the summer. Again, there are technological solutions for online meetings and voting which you may wish to investigate. The Community Associations Institute lists some electronic elections services companies in its Professional Services Directory.
- Your last year's budget and assessments should continue in place during this time. You won't be able to hold a budget ratification meeting so it will be difficult to adopt a new budget, and therefore change assessment amounts. It may be possible to do the budget ratification via online vote or postcard/mail-in vote. We are investigating this and will have more information forthcoming.
- What if our association is facing important issues upon which we need to hold a membership vote soon? Remember that in North Carolina by law, and according to the covenants of most HOAs and POAs, membership votes can be accomplished by electronic vote or mail-in ballot without the necessity of an in-person membership meeting. Only the annual meeting, where the board members are to be elected, is required to be in person. We can assist you in preparing the notice, ballot and proxy documents necessary to have a vote by mail or electronically.
- Can we continue maintenance and janitorial work? Janitorial services are specifically deemed essential and to the extent your HOA has common hallways, lobbies, etc. that need to be maintained or kept clean, those activities are even more important now and should be maintained according to CDC cleaning standards. Maintenance work can continue if it is necessary repair or maintenance, as opposed to optional upgrades or improvements.
- Can we collect on overdue assessments at this time? Assessments are still owed and your homeowners should be paying as normal. At the time of this writing, no changes to consumer debt laws have been passed which would prevent collection efforts; however, there have been discussions in Congress of instituting limitations on the collection of consumer debts during the virus situation. We will keep you apprised. In the meantime, courthouses remain open although with skeleton staffs, so we are still able to file liens and other legal proceedings; however, no hearings are currently being scheduled until June 1 and after. We are scheduling hearings in June now but expect those dates to quickly become filled, so you should not expect to be able to proceed with foreclosures or other legal proceedings quickly in the current environment. Therefore, we strongly recommend that all HOAs redouble their efforts to work out payment arrangements with homeowners in order to avoid the coming backlog of court proceedings.
- Can we collect on overdue assessments at this time? Assessments are still owed and your homeowners should be paying as normal. At the time of this writing, no changes to consumer debt laws have been passed which would prevent collection efforts; however, there have been discussions in Congress of instituting limitations on the collection of consumer debts during the virus situation. We will keep you apprised. In the meantime, courthouses remain open although with skeleton staffs, so we are still able to file liens and other legal proceedings; however, no hearings are currently being scheduled until June 1 and after. We are scheduling hearings in June now but expect those dates to quickly become filled, so you should not expect to be able to proceed with foreclosures or other legal proceedings quickly in the current environment. Therefore, we strongly recommend that all HOAs redouble their efforts to work out payment arrangements with homeowners in order to avoid the coming backlog of court proceedings.
We will provide further details as developments occur at https://www.moretzlaw.com/corona-updates. Stay safe, and stay essential!
