Hilton Head Plantation board enrages residents with vote on limiting meeting access

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Proposed amendments to Hilton Head Plantation’s property owners’ association rules have ignited a debate over transparency as the gated community’s leaders consider “invite-only” access to committee meetings.

Among other changes to the general committee guidelines, the revision would only allow property owners and guests access to committee meetings “at the discretion of the Chair of the Committee.” Previously, those meetings were open to any POA member in good standing with the association.

POA board vice president Margie Lechowicz and the community’s general manager Peter Kristian submitted the planned changes June 21 at the request of board president Carlton Dallas. The nine-person board of directors will vote on the proposal at 9 a.m. Tuesday during their monthly meeting, which is not open to residents and not publicly advertised. With a majority of five votes, the revision will pass.

Each member of the board of directors — comprised of five elected residents and four officers — heads a specialized committee, whose monthly meetings include a number of chair-appointed members and have previously been open to other property owners. Proposals made at each committee meeting are put to a vote at the monthly board meeting.

Hilton Head Plantation is home to about 10,000 residents, comprising nearly a third of the island’s total population. The privately owned POA is funded by member dues, meaning the association’s meetings are not subject to open meeting laws under the Freedom of Information Act, unlike public bodies such as town and city councils.

Dallas did not respond to multiple requests for comment made over the phone Tuesday.

Board member Rex Garniewicz, who leads the covenants committee, spoke out against the revisions on the neighborhood-based social media website Nextdoor and told The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette he would vote against the measure. His comments to the newspapers are not affiliated with the POA, he said, but represent his personal opinion as a fellow resident who cares about openness in decision-making.

“I will be voting against that proposal because I think we should be more transparent, and we should be engaging our community more with what we do — not reducing their access,” Garniewicz said.

Kristian pushed back against the online outrage, saying that under the new proposal residents could attend board meetings or committee meetings by asking either the board president or committee chair for permission. Property owners rarely attended these meetings either way, he added.

“No one has ever been denied the ability to attend a committee meeting if they’ve asked ahead of time,” Kristian said in a phone interview Monday afternoon. “There’s nothing that changes that in the document that’s being considered.”

But many Hilton Head Plantation residents report feeling left in the dark on the timing of those meetings, making it difficult to secure permission in advance. In a recently created blog titled “HHP360,” a group of property owners claim the dates of committee meetings “have never been announced,” despite the current version of the general committee guidelines requiring the dates of regularly scheduled meetings to be communicated in advance. This stipulation was removed in the proposed revision to the document.

Kristian also cited alternatives to committee meetings that are open to residents, such as “Coffee with Peter,” a presentation with community updates and other relevant news held every other month and attended by all board members. Last month’s event, featuring a special update on the U.S. 278 corridor project from State Sen. Tom Davis, was met with a “blowout crowd,” he said. “So it’s not as though they don’t have access. That’s about as open an access as you can get.”

But many property owners disagree, advocating for open access to meetings instead of updates received months later. Garniewicz emphasized that the recent calls for transparency have united a large number of residents who might not typically agree on politics.

“If you look on Nextdoor, what you will see is both people on the left and people on the right — neither side likes taking their ability to participate in things away,” he said. “So unlike a lot of other issues, this one does seem to be bipartisan. They do not want their rights to be decreased for no reason.”