A.R.S. 33-1813: Removing an HOA Board Member in Arizona

If your HOA board is mismanaging the community, A.R.S. 33-1813 gives members a real tool to fire them. Gather enough signatures on a petition and the association must hold a special meeting within 30 days to vote on removal. If the board stalls and never holds that meeting, the directors are removed automatically at midnight on the 31st day. This page walks the exact numbers: how many signatures, how many days, and how many votes it takes.

The petition threshold

The recall starts with a petition, and the signature bar depends on the size of your association. For most communities, the petition needs signatures from at least 25 percent of the votes in the association, or at least 100 votes, whichever is less. For very large associations with more than 1,000 members, the bar is at least 10 percent of the votes or at least 1,000 votes, whichever is less.

On receipt of a petition... signed by the number of persons who are eligible to vote... that is at least twenty-five percent of the votes in the association or by at least one hundred votes in the association, whichever is less.

The "whichever is less" language helps small and mid-size communities. In a 200-lot HOA, 25 percent is 50 votes, which is less than 100, so you need 50 signatures. In a 1,000-lot HOA, 100 votes is far less than 25 percent, so 100 signatures is enough to force the meeting.

The 30-day clock and automatic removal

Once a valid petition lands, the board cannot drag its feet. The special meeting must be called, noticed, and held within 30 days of receiving the petition. The enforcement mechanism is what gives this statute teeth:

If the directors fail to call or fail to give notice of the meeting... or fail to hold a meeting within thirty days... the board of directors are deemed removed from office effective at midnight of the thirty-first day.

So a board cannot kill a recall by simply refusing to schedule the vote. If it ignores a valid petition, every director is removed by operation of law on day 31. That removes the temptation to run out the clock.

The vote to remove

At the special meeting, removal needs a majority of those voting on the matter, and a quorum has to be present. The quorum for this meeting is at least 20 percent of the votes of the association, or at least 1,000 votes, whichever is less. If your community is split into voting districts, only members from the affected district vote on removing that district's director and count toward quorum.

For example, in a 300-home Fountain Hills HOA, a petition needs 75 signatures (25 percent), the board must hold the meeting within 30 days, and at the meeting at least 60 votes (20 percent) must be present to form a quorum. If 70 members show and 40 vote to remove, that majority of those voting carries, and the director is out.

How it connects to the rest of the law

A recall meeting is run under the open-meeting and notice rules of A.R.S. 33-1804 , and the voting itself follows the ballot and quorum rules in A.R.S. 33-1812 . Recall is often the remedy when a board ignores the conflict-of-interest duty in A.R.S. 33-1811 or stonewalls a records request under A.R.S. 33-1805 . All of this member power traces back to the recorded CC&Rs defined in A.R.S. 33-1802 .

Full text and source

Read the current section, including the voting-district rules and exact thresholds, on the legislature's site: View A.R.S. 33-1813 on azleg.gov .

Before you circulate a recall petition, confirm your association's exact vote count, since the 25 percent and 100-vote thresholds turn on that number and a miscount can sink an otherwise valid petition.