You can read about the ‘pre-subdivision’ days by –> clicking here. C. J. Gerlach acquired part ownership of the property for Holiday Lake Estates from his father Charles J. Gerlach in the 1930’s. In the 1950’s, C.J. Jr. started developing the land he inherited to use it as a residential subdivision. Waterways, parks, and amenities were developed. During those early years, HLE was under Developer / Declarant control which means that all rules and regulations were created and enforced by the Declarant. In December 1961, the first HLE Subdivision governing documents were filed at Polk County. It may have been around this time that the original Bylaws were drafted, but I saw no documents of that original document in the Polk County Clerk records or the Texas Secretary of State records.
In 1963, amendments were made to the original Deed Restrictions to make changes. Keep in mind, that the majority of the subdivision lots were still owned by the Developer / Declarant. So, these changes would have a ‘majority vote of lot owners’.
In the 1967 records, there was a concern by the the committee that was governing the subdivision over building the community building on it’s current location. An attorney verified that the property was owned by the lot owners in the subdivision, so a community building was eventually erected. In 1975, an HLE committee sent out ballots requesting the property owners vote on becoming a registered corporation with the State of Texas. The votes were counted and a majority of the property owner votes were ‘FOR’ this action.
In October 1976, Sidney H. Smith, a legal representative for HLE, submitted the original HLE Articles of Incorporation (Certificate of Formation), Bylaws, and Constitution to the Texas Comptroller to acquire a franchise tax exemption and register the corporation ‘Holiday Lake Estates Civic Club, Inc., an incorporated non-profit corporation. The committee doing this work then mailed out copies to the property owners of the Bylaws and Constitution. Bylaws were still not recorded at the Clerk’s office, not sure why.
In 1972 ( pre-HLECC ) and 1982 ( post-HLECC ), additions were made to the Deed Restrictions for two new areas of the subdivision. I would suspect that the entire subdivision was still being developed, which would mean that the Developer / Declarant still had a majority vote to enable these changes.
In the HLECC meeting held April 30, 1977, C.J. Gerlach stated that title to the pool had been passed from him to the community. There were also discussion about the land that the pool sat on and the cost of the pool insurance. A discussion was started about charging for pool access. Also, a request was made, voted on, and passed for all potential HLECC Board candidates to get a list of all potential voters for the upcoming election. In 1987, all of these issues were once again revisited and C. J. Gerlach recorded a ‘Ratification Affidavit’ with the Polk County Clerk asserting the existence of the Holiday Lake Estates Civic Club, Inc and that it was the same entity as the Holiday Lake Estates Architectural Committee and that all monies collected were disbursed by the HLECC.
In September 1992, Vivine Stubbs requested that Ernie L McClendon, Jr., Atty, look into the matter of the wording on the Deed Restrictions for Section 1. To summarize, Ernie stated that the wording of the first paragraph of that document stated that the Restrictions for each section in the Subdivision by reference, so apparantly the Restrictions for Section 1 are also adopted as the Restrictions for Section 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7, with the exception that in Sections 6 and 7, some amendment were made thjat were not applicable to Sections 1 through 5. He also discussed the sale of Reserve areas and stated that upon the sale of a reserve area for any private purpose, that area would then become a ‘lot’ and subject to the Deed Restrictions previously discussed. His ending comment was “Ostensibly, the Subdivision was established for residential purposed only with the exception of Lot #1, Block#1, and those Restrictions should be enforceable in law and in the courtroom,if it is necessary.”
–>McClendon & Comptroller Letters, and Affidavit
–> Holiday Lake Estates Supporting Docs 600-85 thru 600-90
Very well put together, informative, easy to understand, & interesting!