TRASH TALK: Pres. Ballweber Attacks Mowery in HOA Task Force Testimony

President Ballweber:

• Lobbies against Basic Training for HOA Board Members
• Requests that Laws be created to limit homeowners engaged in good faith compliance enforcement on HOA Boards
• Claims Mowery litigation in 2020 was “frivolous” in spite of Court ruling case brought “in good faith”
• Dredged up dispute over old Gmail account, accusing Mowery of theft or failing to obey “directives”
• Gave demonstratively false testimony about the old Gmail account, defaming Mowery

In an odd turn of events, President Ballweber showed up at the HOA Homeowners Rights Task Force Meeting on January 2, 2024 to make a personal attack on me to justify creating a new law against . . . complaining to or about a Board (or its vendors) about non-compliance. While I have been a regular at stakeholding meetings since 2019, I was surprised to hear “Lora Ballweber” called as one of the first people to give testimony.

Her initial testimony was 3 minutes, but the meeting facilitator allowed over 15 minutes of time in follow-up questions which allowed President Ballweber, who claimed to be authorized to speak for the entire POHOA Board, to make some factually challenged claims about me that were by any objective measure, a personal attack of me.

You can review the YouTube recording of the meeting here (her testimony begins about 4 minutes into the video after introductions and ground rules):

One of the key points raised by President Ballweber was a request for new legislation, apparently aimed at my good faith actions to address Board non-compliance with CCIOA, The Non-Profit Act, or the Governing Documents.

Her request combined a complaint labeling me as “combative” for raising concerns frequently, but fails to address one legitimate reason such concerns would either be frequent of voluminous: Because the POHOA Board so frequently finds itself unwilling or unable to comply with the law or governing documents, and when called out, to simply say “point well taken” or admit even the slightest error, even if a truly innocent mistake.

To justify this position, it was necessary for President Ballweber to attempt to discredit me. And, for this she most likely relied upon Walker Flanary’s often-repeated trope: That my 2020 litigation was “frivolous”. The verifiable fact is that the Larimer County District Court said out loud during the phase where they attempted to make me pay for their attorney’s fees, that my case was brought “IN GOOD FAITH”, but due to a claim of it being filed 3 days too late, it was dismissed on what I would term a technicality based upon a falsehood – that the case tolled from an email mentioning the word “harassment” that wasn’t actually related to the core claim.

In other words, the merits of the case were never considered . . . until they attempted to have the court assign legal fees to me. And, when the Judge reviewed the factual evidence, found that there was a legitimate basis for filing – but due to procedural errors by my attorney combined with the claim it was filed 3 days too late, she had to dismiss the case. As a result, I was not assigned ANY legal fees, and my attorney who made the error was only required to pay for costs associated with 1 single motion.

In other words, the court did not find the case itself to be frivolous. It was simply the result of a Pro Se litigant who is not a millionaire attempting to use an attorney who was not equipped to handle the case because it was all he could afford. Quite different in all senses than that narrative.

But, during the Q&A section of her testimony, which forced President Ballweber’s narrative to be cross-examined by several HOA Task Force Members, she offered a claim that can proven to be demonstrably false. She made a claim that in 2022, while I was serving on the POHOA Board, I “fail[ed] to comply with board, um, approved, um, directives“

In other words, President Ballweber was referring to her demand that I give her the administrative password to the old gmail account, poudreoverlookhoa@gmail.com. While she and Clay Jones had FULL ACCESS that simply required them to have individual logins to the account (which in turn would create tracking of whether or not they attempted to delete emails or files), they preferred to have absolute control of the account.

I had raised the concern at the 6/15/22 Board Meeting when President Ballweber proposed, in all seriousness, that we DELETE the gmail account, and run the association without email at all! Why in the world would an HOA Director who has fiduciary duty to PROTECT critical records, seek to actually destroy years of communications?

There’s a LONG article going through President Ballweber’s attempt to destroy the old email account, which then pivoted to a battle to force me to give her administrative access. Ultimately, she and Clay Jones outvoted me demanding that they get access and full control.

The problem with President Ballweber’s claim is simple: I actually sent the password via USPS Certified Mail. Clay Jones signed for the letter/parcel. And, instead of simply logging in and moving on, President Ballweber declared that she was simply ABANDONING the old gmail account.

So, how WEIRD IS IT that over 1 year later, she uses the forum of the HOA Homeowners RIGHTS Task Force to make this false claim that I disobeyed some “directive”, which then requires legislators to create A LAW to give them the tools to deal with this allegation?

Well, as Task Force Members continued to ask questions, it was apparent President Ballweber was caught in a false narrative, and couldn’t adequately explain herself. She tried claiming that there was no “Code of Conduct”, but was schooled by none other than CLAC Member Lee Friedman, that such codes were inherent in the Non-Profit Act. I’ll bet a nickel Lora had no clue.

But, what’s odd is that my original dispute with the POHOA Board in the Spring of 2019 was due to my effort to ESTABLISH A CODE OF CONDUCT!

Rep. Ricks alluded to the fact that if a Board Member failed to obey some “directive”, it was the Code of Conduct, not some new statute, that would be the place to start.

So, President Ballweber came to give testimony to lobby for a law that is literally targeting a single person – me. By simply using negative descriptive terms, but providing no evidence to substantiate her claims, she, in fact, defames me with false allegations. The reason they are false is because it is very easy to prove elements of her testimony are false or reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of HOA Governance:

1. President Ballweber claims that I refused to obey a “directive” to turn over the Gmail account.
2. President Ballweber claims that the refusal gave her “no other option” than to abandon the account.
3. President Ballweber seems unaware that a Code of Conduct that would address how ALL DIRECTORS SHOULD HAVE EQUAL ACCESS TO ALL ACCOUNTS (Gmail, Google Drive, Quickbooks, Frontsteps) would actually put her at odds with her own actions

As I outlined in a follow-up email to the Board and HOA Task Force, in October of 2022, I followed up with President Ballweber while still remaining on the POHOA Board. I had sent the password for the “old” Gmail account she had abandoned via USPS Certified Mail, and Clay Jones signed for it. Why didn’t she simply log in with that full access that factually disputes her claim that her “directive” was some type of “absolute” refusal?

Furthermore, I had accepted that President Ballweber preferred to abandon the old account for a “fresh start”. Since the best I could do was create a backup (and several other prior Board members had created copies for themselves AFTER resigning on 5/25/22), I decided that while they may spoliate records, at least there would be factual proof of what was previously in the account. I emailed the USPS Tracking and asked that President Ballweber agree to import the emails and files from the old account into the new account (takes minutes).

President Ballweber never responded to this email, including multiple follow-ups going into October. The last email was sent in October of 2022 confirming Clay Jones had received the USPS delivery (and signed for it), so why didn’t they simply log into the account, or have any interest in preserving the records?

More importantly, why did she tell the HOA Task Force that she was somehow forced to abandon this account, when it was clearly an elective decision by her. And, that she literally avoided recovery of the information in the old account (and still has to this day!).

The HOA Task Force was notified of the false and misleading statements given to the committee by email on 1/2/23. President Ballweber and the other Directors, as well as the HOA Attorney, were copied on the communication.

I will update once there is a response from any of the parties involved.

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TRANSCRIPT OF LORA BALLWEBER’S TESTIMONY

LORA: “Okay. Thank you. My name is Lora Ballweber. I am president of the Poudre Overlook HOA in Larimer county. I’ve been authorized by the board to provide the following comments our HOA is 20 years old. Until recently, homeowners were actively involved in our HOA. We operated on the premise we were all neighbors first and may disagree, but respected differences of opinion and were civil and acted responsibly and respectfully.

But a negative shift has occurred within our association because of the undue influence of a single combative homeowner who can rarely rally one or two others to his cause.

This has resulted in a hostile environment, with most homeowners now unwilling to participate in anything other than the annual meeting in order to protect themselves and families from personal attacks and potential litigation.

The homeowner has a social media blog where the HOA and those that try to serve it are denigrated. In addition, this small minority has caused two management companies and an attorney to terminate their contracts.

The last management company stated it would cost roughly $4,000 a month to try and accommodate the constant requests and demands we have an email account whose address is provided to all owners, but gets massively overwhelmed by this single homeowner.

FACILITATOR: Laura, you’ve got about 35 seconds left. I apologize.

LORA: Of my three minutes?

FACILITATOR: It’s 1 minute and 30 seconds. Sorry. It was too small. I didn’t see it. I apologize.

LORA: We have an email account whose address is provided to all owners. In 2023, the board had 425 emails of 667 printed pages. Of these 425, the single homeowner was responsible for 39% 39% accounted for 478 pages of mostly negative commentary, or 72% of all pages generated.

We have a website where records are readily available to all homeowners. However, litigious homeowners can use document requests for wild fishing expeditions for discovery. For potential litigation.

The single homeowner filed a frivolous lawsuit against the HOA board and certain board members and despite not being decided in the homeowner’s favor, continues to constantly threaten additional litigation.

So we respectfully ask you to consider legislation to protect the people that comprise hoas from combative neighbors that thrive on manufactured conflict. Specifically, avoid placing new procedural reporting or training requirements on volunteer boards, as they will only further discourage homeowner participation.

Define unacceptable combative activities and provide clear enforcement mechanisms to discourage such actions. And while we’ve been fortunate to we . .

FACILITATOR: Going to need ten more seconds to Wrap up your thoughts

lora:

… rarely need collections. We believe HB 20 211 37 should be revised to decrease secure interval and streamline collections processes.”

END OF TESTIMONY

Q&A FROM TASK FORCE MEMBERS:

LALLIS JACKSON: I did not. You spoke quickly. What was the name of your association? And what type of association is it?

LORA: We are the, uh, Poudre Overlook homeowners association in Larimer county.

LALLIS: And it’s single family?

LORA: Yes.

[discussion]

CONNIE VAN DORN: No worries. So, um, thank you for your testimony. And one thing that you said I just would like a little clarification on is what do you mean by avoiding new training that might discourage volunteer homeowners to be, I guess, board members?

LORA: Well, the, um, previous, uh, task force meetings have discussed training and certification of boards. And if that’s required, um, homeowners are less likely to become involved in the boards.

[discussion]

PETER SIEGEL: Yeah. Um, thank you. Um, Laura, you mentioned for, uh, the task force, take a look at legislation that protects homeowners, and then I lost you from there.

LORA: Uh, protect the people that comprise hoas.

PETER: So protects the board or protects anybody?

LORA: It would. Apologies. Protect board members, committee members, um, any homeowner.

PETER: And it was in relation to your comments about frivolous lawsuits? Correct.

LORA: From combative neighbors.

REP. RICKS: Could you expand or elaborate a little bit more about what you mean by combative neighbors and what might legislation that you are proposing look like.

LORA: Um, combative neighbors again, are those with, um, uh, frivolous lawsuits against Hoas and the board members, constant threats of lawsuits, um, which we are always under with this particular person, uh, perhaps, um, uh, conduct of. I know that we have conduct of meeting policies, perhaps, uh, a little better behavior at meetings. For example, failure to comply with board, um, approved, um, directives. What do you do when you ask someone to turn something over and they absolutely refuse?

REP. RICKS: What do you do now? I guess would be the question. Um, there’s always the one off situations sometimes, but.

LORA: Uh, well, right now we’ve had to abandon a few things [REFERRING TO THE POHOA GMAIL ACCOUNT] because what other choice have we got?

We had an email that was supposed to be turned over to when we had a switch and change in board, and we couldn’t get the email account turned over, so we had to start a brand new email account.

REP. RICKS: And this is someone that, in the.

LORA: Old email, was lost.

REP. RICKS: So, ma’am, let me just get clarification. This is someone that was serving on your board as your Hoa, left the board or something? Okay.

LORA: They were currently serving on the board and had been instructed to turn over the email, which they did not do.

REP. RICKS: And this is a volunteer board?

LORA: Yes. We are elected by our members, but we are volunteers.

REP. RICKS: So you have a code of conduct that they sign before they get on the board as to what the behavior should be, and they were not complying with it.

LORA: There is no mandate for a code of Mhm.

REP. RICKS: I mean, maybe that’s something where you should start. I mean, there should be code of conduct for someone who will serve on an HOA board, dealing with homeowners and the biggest asset that people have. So maybe that’s a good place to start.

LORA: I agree.

REP. RICKS: Okay. Well, okay. I mean, it sounds interesting. Um, you would think that there should be at least some standards for board members, and they should understand what they’re signing on to. Okay, well, thank you.