As the Village of Oakcreek Association reviews a controversial hotel proposal for an undeveloped tract on State Route 179 in the Village of Oak Creek, members of the homeowners association’s architectural committee have accused VOCA’s board of directors of inappropriately interfering in the review process and violating open meeting rules.
The HOA is reviewing the hotel plans because the parcel is in the Pine Creek II subdivision of VOCA, and project owners Jack and Chandrika Patel signed on to the subdivision’s architectural restrictions at the time of purchase.
On Dec. 3, VOCA’s Architectural Review & Restrictions Committee held a hearing for the Patels’ proposed Hilton Garden Inn for the fourth time since August.
Three ARRC members questioned the legitimacy of holding a fourth hearing after three “no” votes and accused VOCA’s Board of Directors of trying to engineer a “yes” vote in the committee by replacing committee Chairman Kevin O’Connor with the board’s secretary, David Hanke — a more reliable “yes” vote — one day before the meeting.
“At the last ARRC committee, we voted to deny the Patels’ request to build a Hilton Garden Inn. The vote was 4-3 with Kevin [O’Connor] casting the deciding vote,” ARRC committee member Bob McCann said. “On the following Monday, the board called a special meeting and decided to replace Kevin with David.
“What’s going to happen next if this for some reason doesn’t pass? The board’s going to call a meeting next Monday and some of us that are on the committee are going to be moved off the committee? This isn’t right. The community needs to know it. The board is trying to push this through.”
Replacing O’Connor before the meeting led Brian Morse, a member of the ARRC committee who previously supported approving the hotel, to abstain from voting, leading to a fourth denial of the proposed hotel in the committee.
“I think the process has to be seen to be correct and transparent, and right now I think with the removal of Kevin from the board, unless we get some definitive reason, then this whole thing stinks to hell,” Morse said.
This view was seconded by several VOCA members on the Zoom call.
“You better be careful. It looks like to me somebody is ramrodding this through in order to get the hotel thing in the Patels’ favor …. Stay with the process because you’re tearing at the integrity of the organizational aspects of VOCA,” said a member who did not state his name at the meeting.
Three architectural committee members also suggested that the board may have violated the HOA’s open meeting rules by overturning the ARRC’s previous denial during a closed executive session or other means outside of an open meeting.
HOAs are not considered “public bodies” under Arizona’s Open Meeting laws, but a state law passed in 1994, Arizona Revised Statute §33-1804, requires HOAs to adhere to rules similar to open meeting laws for public bodies, but in respect to its members.
The Arizona Attorney General’s Office has a unit dedicated to enforcing open meeting laws, the Open Meeting Law Enforcement Team, but according to OMLET’s website, “the attorney general, county attorneys, and other public lawyers are not authorized to enforce the laws relating to homeowner associations.”
This leaves enforcement of open meetings up to an HOA’s membership.
VOCA manager Deb Brewer told the committee that the board of directors had overturned its previous vote — clearing the way for this fourth vote — but when questioned about when the vote took place, Brewer couldn’t explain why there was no record of this action in an open meeting.
“The board has to vote in public. The board can’t just vote in private and make a statement [that it overturned a decision]. It has to be in a public meeting,” ARRC member Debbie Stevenson said.
VOCA board president Gwen Hanna denied that a vote occurred in a closed meeting of the board of directors, but there’s evidence of a closed-door action being taken by the board before the Dec. 3 ARRC meeting.
O’Connor, before the board booted him, referenced in his final remarks an “action that was taken on the Nov. 23 executive meeting … to reverse the second permit denial by the ARRC.”
Asked why O’Connor said an action was taken in the closed meeting, Hanna issued a denial via email: “We did not have an executive session last week that reversed ARRC’s decision on the Patels’ application.”
Following the Hilton Garden Inn’s denial in the Dec. 3 committee meeting, the VOCA board of directors convened another closed executive session Tuesday, Dec. 8 — the fourth time the board of directors has met in closed session since October.
