Two ten-day clocks, not one

The statute contains a second interval that is easy to collapse into the first. Subsection (c)(2) requires the notice to contain “instructions for a person to notify the property owners' association of the person's interest in serving on the architectural review authority, including the date by which the person's notification must be received by the association.” Subsection (d) then constrains that date:

“The date established by a property owners' association under Subsection (c)(2) by which notification of a person's interest in serving on the architectural review authority must be received by the association may not be a date earlier than the 10th day after the date the association provides the notice described by Subsection (c).”

So the response window is at least 10 days after notice goes out, and the appointment may not occur earlier than 10 days after notice goes out. The two run from the same starting point but govern different endpoints, and a response deadline set on day 10 leaves no gap between the close of candidacy and the earliest lawful appointment.

Notice as a condition of eligibility

Section 6 of the act moved the old Section 209.00505(c) into a standalone Section 209.00506 and added a new first requirement. Subsection (b) now reads that, except as provided by subsection (d), “a person may not be appointed or elected to serve on an architectural review authority unless the person timely notifies the property owners' association of the person's interest in serving on the authority in accordance with Section 209.00507.”

The pre-existing conflict rules survive as subsection (c): a person may not serve if they are a current board member, a current board member's spouse, or “a person residing in a current board member's household.”

The escape valve in subsection (d)

Both restrictions bend when nobody comes forward. Section 209.00506(d) provides that if a vacancy remains after every eligible person who timely responded has been appointed or elected, “the association may appoint any person to fill the vacancy, including a person not otherwise eligible under Subsection (c).”

The sequencing matters. The relief is available only after the solicitation has run and every timely, eligible respondent has been seated. At that point the association may appoint anyone — and the cross-reference to subsection (c) means the household and spouse disqualifications fall away too. A board member's spouse can lawfully sit on the architectural review authority of an association where the solicitation produced no other takers.

Scope

Both new sections apply “only to an architectural review authority to which Section 209.00505 applies.” Section 209.00505 is itself limited by association size, so the smallest Texas associations sit outside this machinery entirely. The threshold question is therefore Section 209.00505's coverage, not the new sections' own text.

What to watch next

Neither section states a consequence for an appointment made without the required notice. The statute makes the notice a condition of eligibility rather than a procedural step with a stated remedy, which leaves the status of decisions made by an improperly constituted authority to general Texas law on association acts. No appellate decision has addressed it.