We Get to Make Our Own Rules

For the last several months, a small group of neighbors has been working through Lakemoor's bylaws line by line — comparing our current document against state law, against other associations' bylaws, and against the question that matters most:

Does this actually protect the neighborhood, or does it just exist?

That work is some of the most important work happening at Lakemoor right now, and it’s going to shape our organization for decades.

The Difference Between the Floor and the Building

Washington law sets a floor for how homeowners' associations have to operate. Right now that floor is RCW 64.38. By January 1, 2028, Lakemoor will be fully governed by RCW 64.90, a newer and more detailed statute that replaces it. Either way, the floor exists so that no association can fall below a basic standard of fairness, recordkeeping, and accountability to its members.

A floor is not a building. It tells you the minimum height a structure has to clear before it's allowed to stand. It doesn't tell you whether the structure will hold up in a storm, whether it has enough support to carry weight it wasn't originally designed for, or whether the people living in it will be able to trust that it's sound ten or twenty years from now.

Bylaws are where an association decides what to build on top of that floor. The statute tells us what we're required to do. The bylaws are the structure of the association that we want to be. If we start with the purpose of our organization - to protect the lake - we can work outwards and build a structure that enables us to do that well, ensuring continuity even as our board changes over time.

Why "Meets the Minimum" Isn't the Same as "Works"

What we're finding as we go through this comparison isn't dramatic. It's structural. Our current bylaws, for example, don't say much about how the Board is supposed to engage with the advisory committees that residents volunteer their time to serve on — committees can do the research, bring recommendations forward, and then have no defined path for what happens next. That's not against the law. It's just a gap, and gaps like that are where community support - the very thing volunteer associations rely on - falls through.

Other things we're finding are already required and just aren't written down anywhere anyone would think to look. And some of what we're finding is layered in a way that takes real digging to catch. Our covenants already permit certain home-based businesses through a cross-reference to Olympia's municipal code. A separate, more restrictive list in the Rules and Regulations doesn't override that — under Washington case law, narrowing what a covenant already permits takes a formal declaration amendment, not a board vote. That's not a bylaws issue exactly, but it's the same underlying problem: rules that exist on paper in three different places, pointing in three different directions, are not the same as rules that actually govern anything.

This is what "additional protections" means in practice. It's not about adding restrictions for their own sake. It's about closing the space where confusion, inconsistency, or silence lets real problems sit unaddressed until they become expensive, contentious, or both.

What We're Actually Comparing

To do this work carefully, we're not just reading our own bylaws in isolation. We're reviewing:

• Lakemoor's current Amended and Restated Bylaws, article by article

• A full draft restatement, prepared with legal drafting support, built around Washington's current and incoming statutes

• Bylaws from three comparable Washington associations, to see how other communities have handled the same open questions

• Research in organizational best practice, to ensure that every clause achieves the intended purpose and support the LCC

Some articles are further along than others. What's consistent across all of them is the same underlying test: does this section tell a resident, five years from now, exactly what their rights are and how to exercise them — or does it leave that resident guessing, dependent on whoever happens to be on the Board at the time?

You can read some of the recommendations and reasoning, and then add your thoughts through the Homeowner Document Review:

Read the Articles

Why This Is the Work That Protects the Neighborhood

Bylaws are one of the only tools an association has that outlasts any individual board, any individual conflict, any individual bad year. A well-built set of bylaws doesn't depend on the people currently in office being reasonable. It works because the structure itself makes fairness the default, not the exception.

Every Wednesday night, our neighbors decide, in writing, what it owes its own residents — and we want to make sure sure that promise doesn't depend on who happens to be reading it in any given year.

We'll keep sharing updates as more articles move through review. If you want to see what a section-by-section comparison actually looks like, or you have questions about where a specific provision came from, reach out. This is exactly the kind of work that benefits from more eyes.

This is our neighborhood, our neighbors, and our lake. Let's talk about it.

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