The Private Ways Statute, §3101, subparagraph 4. Voting, begins:  “Each parcel of land…represents one vote under this section; …”

The MARA Board has recently been considering how  subparagraph 4. Voting, should be handled in practice and have asked Attorneys Denison and Cunningham for confirmation of what follows.

The key here is in the definition of a "parcel". Attorney Cliff Goodall has stated, "A parcel that constitutes the operative ownership piece for this statute is something that can be defined by each Road Association. …” (MARA Resources Page, Item 7, Cliff Goodall's Talk). If this is the case, then the owners in each road association can arrive at a definition that meets their needs.

In my statutory road association which has 10 parcels , 1 owner has three lots, 2 others have 2 lots, and the remaining owners have one each. It made sense to us to limit the voting power of each owner so that we might have a "fair and equitable" majority vote. Here is the definition we approved in our by-laws:

 "A parcel as defined herein will include property that meets at least one of the following criteria: 1. A single property (lot) representing sole ownership interest in the Association. 2. Multiple properties with an owner in common. 3. Any property that contains a dwelling unit comprised of a bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen. Property meeting two of the above will be defined by criterion 3."

We assess a parcel without a dwelling unit at 1/2 share. I hope this helps.

Anonymous wrote:

I agree, and think that the above definition of "parcel" is a good one.  Our road association had, for a while, one owner with a subdivision divided into multiple lots.  None of the lots was developed.  We debated whether the owner should get multiple votes under the statute, but that didn't seem fair to the rest of the members, especially in view of the fact that he was one of our habitual non-payers.  We also reasoned that if he got one vote per lot, he should also pay one assessment per lot, and it seemed highly unlikely that we would be able to collect.   He didn't show up to exercise his one vote, but if we had charged him per lot and given him a vote for each lot, it seems to me he would have been a lot more likely to come and try to outvote the rest of us so as to get his dues reduced, as the unpaid amount on multiple lots would have piled up at a phenomenal rate.  As it was, each time he sold a lot he paid up the back fees for one parcel, and that lot became a regular payer.  He would then start accumulating back fees on one parcel once again.  Eventually he sold his last lot.  We now have a few people who own two lots, but that's because they want the extra privacy of owning more land.  As far as I know, none of them intends to have more than one dwelling on their land, so under the definition suggested above, they will continue to qualify as one parcel.

I agree with the one vote per parcel rule, rather than having a couple voting twice for one parcel and possibly canceling each other's votes.  That's not the issue here.  Also, the issue here is not with someone buying an adjacent lot to have extra privacy.  Again, I agree that those lots should be combined and count as one parcel.  

The big issue here is when a developer either buys several lots (which may or may not be side by side,) or else buys one huge lot and divides it up into multiple small lots with the intent to sell them off one at a time.  Maybe he does sell some, but still owns the rest, some of which no longer touch each other.  If a person bought two house lots in different parts of the subdivision, they would be charged for two lots, but that doesn't work as well when a person buys one piece of land and divides it into half a dozen or more undeveloped lots.

We had this happen in our road association.  If we had counted each of the developer's subdivided lots as a separate parcel, he would have had to pay 12 assessments.  Since he never paid anything until he sold a lot, we figured our chances of collecting multiple assessments from him annually were zero.  By counting all of the land owned by that owner as one parcel, we were able to collect back dues from a few years on one parcel each time he sold a lot.  The new owner of that lot would then pay each year, and the developer would again be billed for one parcel for all of what he had left.  When he sold another lot, he would again pay what he owed for one lot since the last time he sold a lot.  By the time he sold the last lot, we were getting paid for all twelve lots by the new owners.

The other issue is that if we had billed him for each of the twelve lots separately, we would have also had to give him one vote per parcel.  Since we had trouble getting more than a dozen people to show up for Annual meeting, he could have outvoted the rest of them.  So the logical solution was to consider that he was the owner of a single parcel, charge him one assessment, and give him one vote.