After holding up a proposed Hilton Garden Inn project in the Village of Oak Creek for months on the basis of the HOA’s covenants, conditions and restrictions, the Village of Oakcreek Association’s board of directors moved closer to folding during a closed meeting on Nov. 23.
During the meeting, the board maneuvered to reverse its Architectural Review & Restrictions Committee’s second denial of the preliminary hotel design for the corner of SR 179 and Jacks Canyon Road, which is being proposed by parcel owners Jack and Chandrika Patel.
In recent months, some opponents of the project had pinned their hopes on the HOAs CCRs standing as a roadblock to the hotel, which was rezoned from residential to commercial by the Yavapai County Board of Supervisors in November 2019. In October, the VOCA board to back away from its earlier opposition — in spite of continued opposition from members of the architectural committee and VOCA at large.
VOCA President Gwen Hanna declined to discuss the board’s actions during the Nov. 23 session, citing executive privilege, when asked whether any decisions had been made by the board.
But one result of the closed session was a determination to remove ARRC Chairman Kevin O’Connor from his position after he recused himself for ethical reasons from a Nov. 19 vote on the Hilton application, which he said ended up splitting 3-3, causing the application to unexpectedly fail a second time after the board sent it back to the ARRC.
Another result of the closed session appears to be a determination to send the Hilton hotel application back to VOCA’s altered architecture committee for another vote on Thursday, Dec. 3 — during which the ARRC committee again voted against approval
During the special meeting Wednesday, Dec. 2, convened to officially replace O’Connor as chairman of the ARRC, O’Connor told the board “the action that was taken on the Nov. 23 executive meeting was to reverse the second permit denial by the ARRC that was done on Nov. 19.”
Asked about this “action” in a closed meeting, Hanna again denied that a decision had been made.
“Any decision to reverse an ARRC decision should happen in a session open to the membership. To be clear: We did not have an executive session last week that reversed ARRC’s decision on the Patel’s application,” Hanna said.
Though previously supportive of holding the Patels to the CCRs, VOCA’s board experienced a change of heart during a closed meeting with its legal counsel Oct. 12. During the discussion, according to meeting minutes, the board determined that the two-story rule did not apply to the rezoned commercial parcel.
But instead of approving the Patels’ project during an appeal hearing two days later, the board of directors decided to send the application back to the architectural committee for another hearing, along with their determination that the two-story rule didn’t apply.
But the architectural committee proved cantankerous, and on Nov. 19, the Hilton proposal failed to pass the committee for a second time, in spite of the board’s determination that the two-story rule did not apply.
That’s when the VOCA board met in closed session on Nov. 23.
During the ARRC meeting Dec. 3, some ARRC members expressed concern with the way the board had removed O’Connor before the vote, and accused the board of trying to “push through” approval of the Hilton proposal.
Arizona’s open meeting laws, which prohibit voting in closed session, do not apply to HOAs. But the board is bound by its own bylaws, and VOCA’s require all meetings to be open to the membership, except for certain “portions” of meetings. The exceptions to the open meeting rules are portions that “pertain to personnel, legal consideration, contractual negotiation, restrictions problems” and other areas allowed by state law.
The bylaws also require the minutes of meetings to be posted within 10 days, which had not been done for the Nov. 23 executive session nor the open Nov. 19 ARRC meeting as of press time.
Hanna denied that the board made a decision about the Patel proposal at the Nov. 23 session, but if it did, as O’Connor suggested in the Dec. 2 special meeting, the board would have needed to come out of executive session to vote.
Before the Dec. 2 vote to remove O’Connor from the ARRC chairmanship, O’Connor, who also serves on the board of directors, criticized the board’s handling of the Patels’ appeal to the board of directors.
“If the board of directors has the authority to reverse an ARRC decision, for whatever reason, it should have exercised that authority in Oct. 14” rather than sending it back to the committee.”
