An Open Letter to the Residents of Timber Lakes and Timber Ridge

These pages are one homeowner's plain-English reading of the Association's bylaws and the proposed amendment. They are not legal advice. Check everything against the documents yourself; the bylaws and the proposal are linked below.

Neighbors,

I have lived in Timber Lakes for five years. I like it here, and I generally keep to myself. But there comes a time to speak up, and this is it.

On November 13 the board is asking us to vote on a package of changes to our bylaws. I have read the current bylaws and the proposal line by line, and I am writing because I do not think most of us know what we are being asked to approve. The full proposal was not mailed to us. It should have been.

Part of the package is housekeeping that Texas law already requires: restoring the vote to owners who are behind on dues, allowing mail-in and email ballots, matching the state’s rule on who can serve as a director. I will vote yes on those.

The rest is not required by any law, and every piece of it moves power from owners to the board. The board would pick its own size, anywhere from five to nine seats. The one-seat-per-section rule would be gone. A director could stay in office indefinitely if an election is skipped or does not reach quorum. Officers would no longer face annual re-election. The board could meet in an undefined “emergency” with no notice to anyone. The requirement to insure against theft of our money would be deleted. The quorum to pass anything would drop to five percent on a second try. And our right to walk into the office and look at the books would be replaced by a certified letter, a ten-day wait, and a fee.

Eight of those changes the board says it can adopt without our vote at all. Our bylaws say otherwise: Article XIII gives the power to amend to the members, not the board.

I did not start out suspicious. My first doubt came when the board changed how often meetings are held, on its own, without asking anyone. The February 2025 minutes record it in one line: meetings “would be held quarterly, and go from there.” Since then there have been meetings on a Monday, a Tuesday, a Thursday, and now a Friday, at 7:00 or 8:00, with whole quarters skipped, and the last annual meeting records no election at all. That is a small thing. But a board that changes small rules by itself will change large ones the same way, and this package would make that easier, not harder.

What I want is simple. Accountability. Decisions made in the open, at meetings we are told about in advance. An end to rules that change at the board’s convenience. And real notice to every household, by mail or by direct email through the HOA portal. A Facebook post is not notice: Facebook’s algorithm decides who sees it, and plenty of us never do. A sign at the entrance is not notice either; you may not drive past it that week. Notice means it reaches you.

Here is what I am asking you to do.

Read the proposal before you vote. The bylaws, the proposal, and a plain-English walkthrough of every change are on this site. Check my reading against the documents yourself.

Come to the November 13 meeting in person. Mail-in ballots are allowed, but under Texas law a mail-in voter gives up the right to vote on anything changed from the floor. If we are going to fix this package, it will be fixed in the room.

Vote no on the changes the law does not require, and ask that they be taken up one at a time, not as a bundle.

Help write a better set of amendments. Under Article XIII, owners can propose bylaw changes at a members’ meeting. I would like us to bring our own: a fixed board size, section representation kept, a published deadline to run for the board, a definition of “emergency,” the theft-insurance rule kept, the records right kept, an independent ballot count, and mailed or emailed notice of every meeting to every owner. Please contact me directly if you'd like to be involved. A sample amendments proposal is available here, or as a PDF

I have sent the board a formal records request and a written objection to adopting anything without a member vote. Whatever I receive, I will post. If you want to help, or if you think I have something wrong, message me on the neighborhood Facebook group. I would rather be corrected than be right alone.

Erik Pitti Timber Lakes, Section 3A