By: Lydia Crawley The Parsons Advocate
Tucker County will lead the State of West Virginia with the founding of the first Chapter of the Community Associations Institute in the State. Kathy Knight informed the Tucker County Commission of the formation of the conditional chapter during the Commission’s April 23rd meeting.
“After 18 to 20 years of West Virginia trying to have a chapter, the Community Association Institute, we’re finally making it happen,” Knight said. “It has been a long, difficult, bloody road, but we are making it happen.”
According to Knight, conditional approval for the Chapter arrived in December just before Christmas. Since the approval arrived, Knight said she and her organization have been working on the necessary paperwork. Knight said that her organization has accomplished in months what most start up chapters take five to seven years to accomplish. However, there is likely an additional two years worth of work yet to complete to finish establishing the Chapter, Knight said.
According to the CAI website, the organization was founded in 1973 and is an international center for community association information, best practices, education and advocacy. The website also states its mission as advancing community association governance, management and quality of life by inspiring professionalism, effective leadership and responsible citizenship.
“They are anything HOA, end of story. They are the gold standard, world class standard,” Knight said. “They are also national and international.”
According to Knight, currently, Tucker County has a total of 33 HOA’s registered. That count is up from an initial number of five in the County when Knight first spoke with the Commission. According to Knight, HOA’s are not tracked at the County or State level. To become an HOA, all that is required, Knight said, is to register the covenants and restrictions with the County Clerk.
Knight said that all the states surrounding West Virginia have at least one Chapter, but West Virginia never has. According to Knight, states such as Virginia have Each state has the ability to learn and use what the others have already done and established, Knight said.
“We’ve never had a Chapter, we’ve never had a voice,” Knight said.
Knight said that Winwood’s HOA at its annual meeting revealed that all of its records had disappeared. Winwood has the only airport in Tucker County, Knight said, and has memorandums of understanding with various entities throughout the area. Knight said the realization of the disappearance of the records came at the annual meeting in April. Documents that are missing, according to Knight include blue prints, schematics and approvals, among others with no explanation.
“We have a problem at Winwood and its a dandy,” Knight said. “It appears, that when you are a Homeowners Association in the state of West Virginia, you are treated as if you are a mock, separate municipality. You govern yourself, make your own laws, supposed to act according to your documents.”
Those documents, Knight said, outline that records must be kept. According to Knight, permanent records are required, including building permits, sire plans, blue prints, approvals and disapprovals.
As president of the Winwood HOA, Knight has seen that the HOA had kept records in the past and had seen the blue prints for herself. However, now Knight said everything is gone.
“It appears there is no coordination and there may possibly be a mass miscommunication and gap between the mock municipalities that are like Timberline, Cedar Place, Winwood, Beaver Ridge, pick a HOA, they’re all an independent mock municipality, to planning and zoning in Tucker County,” Knight said. “And you guys are the bosses. I feel sorry for you. You’re trying to run the county based on this giant jig saw puzzle, but you’ve got a few pieces missing, mock municipalities.”
One missing piece for the County is the missing Winwood records, Knight said. The missing records were the deciding factor in Knight’s decision to tenure her resignation as President of the Winwood HOA. The resignation letter, Knight said was effective at midnight that day.
Knight said that the Chapter will likely not fix the issues at Winwood, but will help HOA’s across Tucker County and the State in the future.
“Will a startup chapter of CAI fix Winwood? Probably not,” Knight said. “How do you reconstitute that which you do not have?”
Knight, who said she has lived in Winwood since 2005, said she has pushed for a central database for HOA records. Knight said she has wanted digitized records in a central database and she said for a while the HOA was doing a good job of it. Knight said she does not know what happened and has not been given any answers.
Knight asked the Commission to reach out to the State County Commission Association with specific questions about their experiences with HOA’s in their counties. She also requested a work study meeting with the Commission to discuss the results of the questions posed to the other counties.
