Academy/Committees & Volunteers
Landscape committees
A landscape committee looks after the grounds, but "looking after" almost never means "deciding." Here is what it can actually do on its own.
A landscape committee has no authority of its own. Unless the board specifically delegates spending or contracting power, it is advisory: it inspects the grounds, gathers bids, and recommends a plan, and the board decides. Check your bylaws and any committee charter for what your committee was actually given.
Recommend, don't decide
A landscape committee cannot hire a landscaper, approve a tree removal, or spend association money just because it thinks the job needs doing. A committee is a subordinate body: it "cannot modify any action taken by its superior," and it only holds the authority the board actually gave it. That means most landscape committees, like most HOA committees generally, exist to research and advise, not to act.
"Committees research and recommend. The board reviews and decides."
Source: How to Build Effective HOA Committees That Strengthen Your Community, Kuester Management Group
If the board wants the committee to actually sign contracts or approve spending up to a set amount, that has to be handed over explicitly, usually in a board resolution or a written charter. Absent that, a bid the committee likes is a bid it brings back, not a bid it books.
Where its authority actually comes from
No statute in the research behind this course names landscape committees specifically, and most states do not regulate them by name. Some states treat a committee differently once it has real decision making power, for example requiring open meetings for a committee that can approve or deny something. Check your own state's community association statute before assuming a landscape committee is exempt from meeting or notice rules.
Below statute, authority runs downhill: the declaration or CC&Rs if they set landscaping standards, then the bylaws, which usually say who appoints committees, then a board resolution or written committee charter. A charter is where most landscape committees actually get their day to day marching orders: its mission, its scope of authority, who sits on it, how it reports to the board, and how it runs its meetings.
Standing committee, board appointed by default
A landscape committee is almost always a standing committee, one that exists on an ongoing basis, because grounds maintenance is a continuous job rather than a one-time project. Unless your bylaws hand the job to a specific officer, the board appoints its members, and whoever the board names first becomes chair by default.
The committee also needs a majority of its own members present to actually decide anything, even a recommendation. One member walking the grounds alone and reporting back informally is not a committee action; it takes a quorum of the committee itself, meeting together, to produce something the board can rely on as the committee's position.
Check yourself
Answer before you read the explanation, recalling it is what makes it stick.
The landscape committee gets three bids, picks a contractor, and signs the contract without asking the board. What happens under the default rule?
The bylaws never say who appoints landscape committee members. Who appoints them by default?
The board wants to dissolve the landscape committee midyear. No one on it has done anything wrong. Can the board do it?
Sources
- Robert's Rules of Order Revised, Article IX, Committees and Boards
- Creating Committees, HOA Law Blog, SwedelsonGottlieb
- Committees (Generally), FindHOALaw, Tinnelly Law Group, PC
- How to Build Effective HOA Committees That Strengthen Your Community, Kuester Management Group
Committees & Volunteers
Want the full picture of how much power a committee can be handed, and by whom? Read Committee authority next.
Whether a landscape committee has any spending or contracting authority, and who appoints its members, comes from your association's own bylaws, CC&Rs, and any committee charter, not from a universal rule.