The Poudre Overlook HOA held a Special Meeting at the beautiful Fort Collins North Aztlan Center on the warm evening of October 20, 2010. The purpose of the meeting was to consider the removal of Director Mowery, but it was clear from the botched notice and intentional exclusion of those who aren’t comfortable with in-person meetings, that this was a Kangaroo Court – which was exclaimed by one homeowner who wasn’t given a chance to speak. Another recommended a “cage match”, as it was clear all this effort was nothing more than Mr. Flanary attempting to smear and defame Mr. Mowery because he doesn’t like this blog.
The effort appeared to backfire on Director Ballweber, who was exposed as actually being behind the removal action and essentially taking direction from homeowner Walker Flanary. It’s now evident that Mr. Flanary is acting as a “Puppet Master” to direct and control the POHOA Board without being in a position to be held accountable. Director Ballweber abused her power throughout the meeting – by creating arbitrary “ground rules” that he allowed Mr. Flanary to flagrantly violate, but then interrupted Director Mowery throughout, ultimately cutting him off before he was allowed to address all points raised by Mr. Flanary.
As a result, sympathy and support for Director Mowery was evident throughout the meeting, and resulting in him getting more substantially more votes than he had in prior elections.
Recordings of the meeting (done in 3 segments) are here:
Part 1 – https://youtu.be/w5x3BlbLjV4
Part 2- https://youtu.be/np1tk-M7cmA
Part 3- https://youtu.be/Setmw-rHxIg
Former Director Mowery’s support is rising in the past year, in spite of being cast as the HOA scapegoat for its dysfunction. In December of 2021, he ran for the Board of Directors, and only received 3 votes which wasn’t sufficient to get a seat. In May of 2022, he ran for the Board of Directors and received 5 votes – but this time, because there were 5 open seats, and only 3 homeowners were willing to volunteer, he did win a seat. In this Petition to Remove, 12 households voted to retain Mr. Mowery. That’s a 240% increase in support since May, and quadruple the votes from a year ago.
This isn’t insignificant.
The meeting opened, as per usual, with some bizarre declarations by Director Ballweber, who is more or less acting as Dictator of the HOA, not Director. Director Jones is simply ineffective as a counterbalance to her abuses of power, even if he’s a nice guy. She has neither the awareness or appreciation of the boundaries on the processes for meetings, and takes personal offense when they are pointed out to her.
Her first move was to delay the beginning of the meeting (which becomes significant later) by allowing Director Clay Jones to make an announcement regarding the “dog incident”, which was not an agenda item. Director Mowery had performed a document request with Larimer County Animal Control, and this revealed some significant facts. Whether or not these should have been disclosed at an open meeting, including the name of the dog owner, will be determined in the future.
The next move was to take issue with the Zoom Meeting which was in progress with about 8-10 people online viewing. The Zoom invitation made it clear that Director Ballweber was unlikely to allow Zoom participants to vote, so no expectations were created by allowing them to hear and see the meeting remotely. But, she declared it would not be allowed.
To the gasps and guffaws of those in the room, she moved towards the AV cart (provided by The Aztlan Center) as Director Mowery said “Don’t touch my personal property”. She then dramatically found the power cord drooping from the AV cart, had to lift some carpet to find the floor plug-in, and yanked it out.
Because Director Ballweber has almost no clue about any technology, she was unaware that all she had one was turn off the projector which was displaying the Zoom screen showing the boxes up on a projector screen in front of the room. The computers were still running, connected to Zoom, so those viewing remotely . . . were still viewing remotely. Director Mowery, realizing she was oblivious, sat silently and didn’t protest at this comical and ineffective action.
The meeting proceeded to the next most interesting segment: Who were the Petitioners and what were their grievances?
Director Mowery had raised the issue with Directors Ballweber and Jones privately with no response in advance of the meeting. And, this blog also pointed out the lack of consistency with the process in 2019. Some homeowners pointed out that they were being asked to vote with literally no information, and some raised the issue of hypocrisy.
Director Ballweber then made the unforced error of revealing that she consulted with Walker Flanary about how to set up and run the meeting, or whether or not to reveal the Petitioners. And, in spite of acting as a Dictator on the issue of the Zoom meeting, she tried to punt/deflect to Director Jones about whether to allow the names of the Petitioners to be revealed.
As the room grew uncomfortable, Mr. Flanary eventually revealed he was one of the Petitioners. But, he initially refused to say what the grievances were. Because . . . it’s not required?
The reveals, once again, the issue of minimum or technical compliance, which is no longer the law in Colorado. After C&C Inv. v. Hummel, Colorado Courts have made clear that seeking to find the most minimal way to comply with Colorado Statutes and the Governing Documents isn’t good enough. This applies whether you are trying to foreclose on someone’s home, or whether you are trying to remove a Director – or enforce HOA Covenants.
So, after additional comments about this being unfair and unreasonable, Mr. Flanary stood up and moved to the center of the room to address the audience in the room. HIs monologue was a disaster, politically speaking. In spite of Director Ballweber’s arbitrary rule that no one could talk about anything before May 25, 2022, Mr. Flanary chose to raise the issue of Director Mowery filing litigation and a CCRD in 2020 that was settled in June of 2021.
The only current issue he raised was regarding Director Mowery filing an insurance claim after being accused by Director Ballweber of committing the crime of “impersonation” … to the FBI. Director Mowery asked American Family Insurance to provide legal defense against the false claim, and they denied the claim not because it wasn’t true, but because court proceedings hadn’t yet begun (and there was not a current expense). Mr. Flanary chose to misrepresent this as them determining “no defamation”, which wasn’t the claim at all.
But, he chose to do his monologue as a comparative analysis repeating “I’m not the one who . . . ” in front of a series of sentences that were nothing more than smears and character assassination, you know, defamation (that he mocks Director Mowery for pursuing legally). He wasn’t presenting facts, or in any sense, accusing Director Mowery of actually crossing a line in his duties. Mr. Mowery is just a terrible human who blogs things Mr. Flanary doesn’t like. It was naked aggression – and attempts to re-litigate settled lawsuits and create new false narratives. It didn’t land well with many – except people like Mr. Denenberg who was smirking in the front row.
Well, and one homeowner who later suggested that Mowery and Flanary simply have a “cage match” to settle the matter. With Festivus just over the horizon, a community meeting for “The Airing of The Grievances” followed by “Feats of Strength” may be an appropriate call.
Director Mowery, however, was never allowed to address all the points raised by Mr. Flanary, with Director Ballweber displaying inappropriate bias by interrupting him, and ultimately stopping his rebuttal prematurely to call a vote. She displayed over and over that she was actually the party who called for removal, and should not have been chairing the meeting.
In spite of the meeting starting late for the dog incident news update, Directory Mowery was literally not allowed to complete his thoughts or sentence, but he yielded – which contradicted Mr. Flanary’s claims that his “demeanor” was a reason to unseat a Director. In fact, it’s projection, as anyone familiar with the grievances from the 8/27/19 meeting, which unseated Flanary, pointed out that his demeanor at meetings was not only a partial reason for his removal – but the basis of the CCRD claim and District Court litigation by Mr. Mowery.
So, Director Ballweber called for a vote to extend the meeting (which took up considerable time, when time was allegedly the issue), and it was revealed that Mr. Flanary was holding 17 proxies (his own declaration). While less than half of the Petitioners actually showed up for the meeting, Mr. Flanary and his political group held more than half the votes ultimately cast against Director Mowery.
In perhaps the most unnoticed unforced error, Director Ballweber, after counting the votes, declared that it takes a 67% majority to remove a board member. She said that was 29 votes out of the 42 cast. The problem is, the actual rules are in Bylaws Article IV Section 7 Paragraph (b):
“A director may be removed only if the number of votes cast to remove the director would be sufficient to elect the director at a meeting to elect directors”
Since Directors are elected by simple majority vote, its the same standard for removal. They only needed 22 votes for a simple majority, not 29. And, they had 17 proxies going into the meeting.
The fact that Director Ballweber came to the meeting unprepared, after an embarrassing insufficient notice (which calls into question the validity of the action), and then an even more embarrassing redo with an email that exposed everyone’s email address. She literally fails on every occasion to know or understand the actual rules, and acts before even bothering to look things up. This evidence on its face of incompetence and abuse of power is now in the open for all to see.
PROXY HOARDING
In the days leading to the meeting, Mr. Flanary was observed going door-to-door with paper slips reminding people of the meeting, and soliciting proxies. This is how he operates, and as one homeowner pointed out at the 9/13/22 meeting, solicitation of proxies while defaming others to get their proxies is arguably the issue leading to Hostile Environment Harassment, which was the basis of the CCRD case (not defamation).
When Director Mowery informed those at the 9/13 meeting that SB-059 attempted to limit “proxy hoarding” by statute by creating a limit of 5% of the total votes for any one proxy-holder, there was only one person in the room who protested – Walker Flanary. He and Irve Denenberg have used this political strategy of smearing their political opponents in combination with proxy solicitation and hoarding to wield power – without accountability. Homeowners are starting to figure it out, which is probably why Mowery got more votes than in prior elections.
Mr. Flanary then uses that proxy power to install . . . Directors who act on his direction. And, they are generally uninformed patsies who simply take direction without becoming independently informed. Director Ballweber has repeatedly shown that she is taking direction from Mr. Flanary, who is also acting as our de facto HOA General Counsel – even though he is neither a practicing attorney, nor was he ever licensed in Colorado. And, he has zero experience in litigation with Colorado HOA laws. He has, again and again, taken up issues in enforcement that are eventually outlawed.
He was behind going after people for signs that advocated love. He went after people (4 times, costing us considerable legal expenses) for parking RVs. He went after people for their fence heights after they had variances. He tried to fine people $5000 for having a different roof color shingle, when the rule said “or similar”. And, he tried to take away pet ducks from young children. Over and over, Walker Flanary has tried to impose his bizarre views of what the rules are – without being in a position where he can be held accountable when he’s wrong (actually or ethically) or acting non-compliantly with statutes or the governing documents. And, he’s willing to fraudulently claim that his views came from the actual HOA general counsel – which should be a clear signal that no one should give him a proxy to enable this behavior.
And, now that we are facing a contentious issue over a “dog incident”, some are quite uncomfortable with Mr. Flanary being the legal advisor on potential actions against that homeowner. Particularly when the dog isn’t owned by the actual owner of the house.
Moving forward, it’s likely that Director Ballweber will stack the Board with her cronies in the Poudre Overlook Advocates (POA) political party. This is the same group we once called The Niners – whose behavior at meetings was the basis for litigation and CCRD complaints. So, we’ve come full circle. This is the Empire Strikes Back part of our ongoing Trilogy.
Some of the homeowners who supported Former Director Mowery made clear that this blog is the only means of transparency, as it is clear that Director Ballweber and Mr. Flanary are running the show in secret. Until we have an HOA that stops operating in secret and playing these political games, this blog will continue to document and inform the community.
But, what Director Ballweber and Mr. Flanary fail to acknowledge is that the original audience for this blog is . . . LEGISLATORS. Their antics are factual documentation that they rarely receive. Most of the time, reports of bad faith behavior are dismissed as “he said, she said”. It’s why recordings are crucial, and why requests for documents (and their spoliation) are relevant, even if homeowners in POHOA are coaching into thinking it’s an offense worth removing a Director.
This blog arrived at the conclusion in August of 2019 that ultimately CRS 7-128-109 would need to be used to get a Court to bar Mr. Flanary from his influence on this HOA. We probably aren’t there yet, but because Colorado does not have laws protecting whistleblowers from retaliation, because there’s not an Ombudsman’s Office that has enforcement powers over rogue boards, and because litigation is cast as “suing your neighbors” (when it is the ONLY means of enforcement of CCIOA, and arguably a duty), the only thing that can be done is to ask a court to bar his participation.
While 12 votes isn’t enough to make this happen, the momentum against Mr. Flanary’s tactics and actions is growing. And, when the full truth is shown to people, he loses support. Which is why Director Ballweber (and others) try to shut down efforts to say it out loud, or put it in “print”.
Sunshine is the best disinfectant, and Mr. Flanary and his political proxy party are their own worst advocates. Watch the videos.