WHERE’S THE MONEY? Poudre Overlook HOA Won’t Release Financial Reports Or Explain Losses/Irregularities

Homeowners seeking answers on financial questions from two successive POHOA Board of Directors Panels are getting stonewalled, including being told that they have to pay $100 per hour and $0.50 per page for documents requested. Many, if not all, documents can be sent digitally, or, as has been the practice in past years, they are simply posted on the HOA website hosted by Frontsteps at www.poudreoverlookhoa.com

The first signs of trouble began when the POHOA Board did not post a 2020 Annual Report, well into 2021. When the report was finally posted in early 2022, it was a completely different format than prior years, or even the 2021 Annual Report.

Many POHOA homeowners aren’t even aware of where these documents are kept or posted. If you go to the Frontsteps website, the left navigation has a “Documents and FAQs” menu, which then opens up a page with folders. Only those with an active login will be able to use this URL: https://poudreoverlookhoa.frontsteps.com/folders

Here is a screen shot of what it should look like on a desktop computer:

Depending on the device you are using (it may not work so well on a phone), you will see a folder on the first page labeled “Annual Financial Reports” and another labeled “Monthly Financials”. If you click on either of them, you should see a grid or list of the actual files, which can be opened on your computer screen.

In the Annual Reports, you’ll see that the 2020 report is a completely different format, and was not posted for the entire 2021 calendar year. Note that the file name is different, and that the header is actually a “monthly” report: Here’s the file:

The first thing that is noticeable is the amount of money at the end of the year – $94,453.69. Each year, because we generally collect more than we spend, that cash balance increases. And, this is intentional, as we needed to build cash reserves for a major expenditure to replace our aging perimeter fences.

When the POHOA Board revealed the Annual report AFTER our 2021 Annual Homeowners Meeting (which means it could not be discussed at the meeting, with an agenda controlled 100% by that Board), we found that we LOST ~$29k in 2021. This is a MASSIVE amount of money for an HOA that only has revenue of a little over $53k per year. When asked to explain the losses, we got vague and generalized answers that pointed to “inflation” and “fences”. But, that’s the problem – ALL the fences were not replaced, and when tied to the other answer (that all the money for fences is GONE), we appear to have a problem.

Here’s the 2021 Annual Report:

To complicate matters further, when the POHOA Board presented the 2022 Budget, they did two major things that were a departure from prior years. First, they proposed a RAISE for Trademark (our Community Area Manager, or CAM), even though we were losing money! Second, they also increased our Legal Budget by 30-times the budget for the prior year, from $500 to $15,000.

Now, they proposed that VF-Law would charge $10k for “document revision”, but if you will notice, AFTER the Annual “Homeowners” Meeting, the put a massive amount onto the books in December, which was AFTER the budget was ratified. It’s kind of like post-dating money already spent, and then justifying it with a future budget increase. This is not normal.

It is further complicated by the fact that in the following months, the POHOA Board PRE-PAID VF-Law, even though they did not even produce DRAFT documents until late March of 2022 – after we had paid them, not $10k, but over $21k. When the Board was asked to explain the $11k overage, they resorted to a standard response of being “harassed” by such questions, and ultimately they all quit before answering them.

Well, except for one thing – they claimed to have gotten a partial refund of . . . some vague amount that is around $4k. But, where did the other $17k go, and what did the Association or it’s members receive for spending all that money? Anyone? Bueller?

While that Board produced 4 monthly statements, the 5th was produced by current Treasurer, Director Clay Jones, but if you’ll note on the header, he had the assistance of the former Treasurer, Former Director Jen Hutchinson. She is listed as “Consultant”.

Astute POHOA Homeowners may notice on Page 4 a curious stand-out number: We are showing Accounts PAYABLE as a negative number of $6,772.49. Generally, Accounts Payable is a positive number indicating invoices received that have yet to be paid. It’s rarely negative.

Of course, we have that VF-Law “refund”, but that appears later on page 5 as -$3,700.00 under “Document Revision”. The other ~$3k is a mystery, as are many elements of our POHOA financial accounts. And, now months and years are passing without direct intelligible answers to direct questions.

As a Director, I asked questions about all of this to both Director Ballweber and Director Clay Jones. Not only did I never receive a single response, I was locked out of access to the Quickbooks Account. I was never once allowed to see the current finances.

Then came the 6/15/22 Special Board Meeting, where Directors Ballweber and Jones advocated that we suddenly, and without thoughtful consideration, remove all of our money from First Internet Bank of Indiana where it was currently earning the highest interest rate available into the United States, into a “local bank”.

The reason?

As Director Clay Jones explains, he predicted the imminent collapse of our banks, currencies, and the entire global financial system. By moving the money to a local bank, he could hop in his car and get to the bank (vs. a bank in Indiana) to withdraw our funds and save the day. He held up a coin from the 1700s, explained his experience with failed currencies, and spoke about all of this without any sense of irony or sarcasm. See it for yourself:

If you will notice at the beginning of his speech, he advises that we have approximately $70,000 in assets, which is significantly less than what we had at the end of 2020 – by about $24k. This confirms that while we had a steadily increasing amount of cash reserves, something happened in 2021 that appears to be not just an expenditure on fences, not explained by inflation, and appears to be legal expenses that were NOT related to “Document Revision”, for which we allegedly got a partial refund.

But, this is in combination with another strange move at this 6/15 meeting. Instead of dividing the work between 3 Directors for President, Treasurer, and Secretary, Directors Jones and Ballweber kept all officer positions between the two of them, with Director Ballweber becoming BOTH President and Secretary. This is highly unusual, and 10 States in the United States forbid the arrangement in Non-Profit Corporations, leading to the proverbial adage: “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.”

When asked why not allow someone like me, who had both the technical skills and the prior experience as Secretary for the Association, Director Jones said: “We need speedy meeting minutes”.

That was curious and deserved follow-up. If you listen to the discussion prior to the vote to move the money, Director Jones, without providing any factual basis (or alerting me in advance, so I could come prepared with facts researched and in writing) or even allowing a single extra day for deliberation before making the move, said that we had to move the money the next morning because the whole system was about to collapse. More than 4 months since that prediction (as this is being written), there’s still no collapse. We have a Treasurer under the influence of extremist narratives and conspiracy theories that not even Fox News or Newsmax is willing to touch.

The best I could do is vote against the measure, and lose. What I counted on was the fact that “speedy meeting minutes” had to be APPROVED, and I verified this the next morning (June 16), with First Internet Bank of Indiana. Since the approval would require either another meeting or Action Without A Meeting, this strange action could at least be examined, and perhaps other homeowners could have the time to review the financials and prepare comments.

One of the things about Director Ballweber’s performance as an Officer, in this case the President, is that she unilaterally dictates the Agenda for all Meetings. And, by delaying the announcement until 2 days before the meeting, and only posting notice on the Frontsteps website (which few visit on a regular basis), she can essentially pass an agenda with little resistance because homeowners, and even other Board Members are left to only be able to do Instant Takes, and never have prepared documents or responses that may be influential. It’s an abuse of power that is evident upon its face.

Here’s the Agenda that was posted for the meeting (which is curiously no longer available on the Frontsteps site):

Note that under VI New Business Paragraph A, it is only noted as “Banking Options”. Not “Moving all of our money to a local bank because of imminent collapse of the financial system.”

Of course, that could be noted in the Meeting Minutes, but nope, not there either. Any watchful eyes who were not able to participate in a business meeting held in a field of grass would have no clue – unless they had access to a recording. That’s part of the problem, as Director Ballweber caucuses and consults with Mr. Flanary, who not only opposes recordings of meetings, but who is willing to call police on anyone who records a meeting he controls as he did on 6/13/19 and try to have them arrested for “trespassing”.

This is clearly a sign of non-transparency that is intentional, willful, and has a design to cover up information that may reveal incompetence or even malfeasance.

So, with Meeting Minutes that only records that Clay Jones made a motion to transfer the assets of POHOA from “the current bank” (does not even name First Internet Bank of Indiana – FIBI) to Bank of Colorado. The only mention of the vote is that it passed after debate. The minutes fail to capture my attempt to table the motion (no vote on that was taken), or that I abstained from voting on this matter because there was literally no factual information given, only Director Jones conspiracy theories about imminent global financial collapse. Attempts to amend the minutes to reflect any of this at the next meeting on 8/1 were not allowed. Our meeting minutes, which are the SOLE legal records of the actions of the Board, are a fantasy and a farce – a problem with the 2017-2019 Boards that led to their removal. They literally remove record of the opposition to motions, which undermines any continuity and sends us into repetitive patterns of mistakes and missteps.

But, what actually happened with our Bank accounts isn’t what Directors Ballweber and Jones promised.

First, they never produced the “speedy meeting minutes” they said were a prerequisite for moving the money from FIBI. Instead, they bypassed the requirements by . . . writing a check to Bank of Colorado to move our money there. How they changed the signing authority at FIBI without signed/approved meeting minutes is a question they have refused to answer, and the Bank itself was instructed by Directors Jones and Ballweber not to disclose either.

How do we know it was done in this manner? Because FIBI sent confirmation emails to poudreoverlookhoa@gmail.com. While Director Jones set up the new Bank of Colorado checking using his PERSONAL email address, the receipts from our existing account still went back to the original HOA email.

What they did was transfer money from the account earning us interest into the account that had check-writing available, and simply wrote a check sometime between 6/21 and 6/23, and opened a new account with a check – a HUGE check. If former Treasurer Jen Hutchinson did not participate, there’s a significant and legitimate question about security with our HOA funds. Even if there is no embezzlement, this demonstrates how easily our funds could be embezzled by any parties who get control of our HOA Board using PERSONAL EMAIL ADDRESSES.

And, it’s going to negatively affect both our books and budget process. If you note at 47:10 in the video, I asked Director Jones if it is possible that his “read” on the global financial situation is off. His response is that the move to change banks (or open up additional bank accounts) “does no harm”.

The fact that we can’t produce monthly reports, prepare a budget so that our Annual Meeting is not delayed, or creates additional CPA expense, then that statement can be challenged, as these “harms” may actually cost us, all of us, real money.

This is why the other 6/15 Agenda Item, “email options”, was also a trojan horse. Directors Jones and Ballweber tried to literally get completely rid of the HOA email address, without any plans to have any replacement. In their minds, we would just go back to 1979, and operate without email at all! Who needs it?

When they proposed that a PRIVATE email address would be used to manage financial accounts, several homeowners commented about what a terrible idea this would be. This discussion before their eventual motion to leave the gmail account alone reveals their plans and intentions to circumnavigate protections at the bank to ensure that only the email account holder, and those holding actual approved meeting minutes (which are legal documents) could move 5-figure sums of money. Somehow, Directors Ballweber and Jones found a way around it.

They had to use private email addresses to perform this Association Business, and when I made a request for documents, as a Director, they attempted to charge me $334 for copies of these documents, which is actually a violation of CCIOA that is subject to up to $500 penalties for each document per HB21-1229’s passage in 2021.

See the discussion here:

So, fast forward to today’s email from the POHOA Board, which announced that the Annual HOMEOWNER’S Meeting is now delayed, vaguely, into December. When I spoke to Director Jones prior to the 10/20 Removal Meeting, he said that he was struggling with Quickbooks, a program and system that was new to him. As someone who has been a business owner handling millions of dollars of money for multiple businesses using Quickbooks, I thought I would offer my assistance. He said he was required, as Treasurer, to “do it alone”.

This runs smack dab in contradiction to the May 2022 Monthly Report, which right in its header says that Former Treasurer Hutchinson, now acting as a homeowner-consultant, actually helped produce the report. Both things cannot be simultaneously true.

So, when asked how long it would take to get our books in order, he estimated that the Annual Meeting would likely have to be pushed into January, which would mean that POHOA would be operating in 2023 without passage of a new budget. And, because that budget carryover would include funding for a CAM (even though we didn’t have a CAM in 2022) and Legal Expenses that were over-budget unexplained in spite of inquiries, we would have to live with THAT budget in 2023, until and unless something new as passed.

Now, I don’t think those who do not use Quickbooks could understand what a mess we’ve created for ourselves, because we didn’t just change banks, we ADDED at least one Bank Account (at Bank of Colorado), but we ARE STILL USING First Internet Bank of Indiana! Yeah, that’s right, we never closed those accounts, and all of our monthly assessments still get deposited at that bank.

How do I know?

Because those very same email receipts are STILL going to the old email address (poudreoverloohoa@gmail.com), the email that these Directors have now declared they are ABANDONING? Apparently, they are either incompetent and don’t know how to change the email address at FIBI (or don’t have real access to do so), or they don’t care, or . . . .????

The first attempt to change the email address for the account was made on October 10th, but receipts from FIBI are still coming in. And, they are still writing large checks from one bank to the other. See below.

This is inexplicable and indefensible. A hot mess, as my friends from the South might say.

Now, again, those who aren’t familiar with Quickbooks probably won’t appreciate the complexity of taking in revenue at one bank, and then writing CHECKS to the other bank account, but it is wrought with accounting peril. If those checks are marked as expenses (or cost of good sold, if they get bad bookkeeping advice), we will have even muddier financial statements. Recall, we haven’t seen a statement since May, which was the month just before they made this rush to move all of our money out of fear of global financial collapse in June. Since then, we can’t see where our money is or going – at all. Nor can we create a set of books that allows us to create a budget for 2023 – and that’s impacting the timing of our Annual Homeowners Meeting.

When you create additional and unnecessary accounts in Quickbooks, it can have complicated and devastating effects on efficiency, planning, and actual management of our money. Plus, our Treasurer has not responded to inquiries about how much revenue we are losing from Interest (which was raised over 70% by FIBI in the interim) because there’s been no report about what interest we are earning at Bank of Colorado. The 6/15 comment about “no harm” in the decision to open new bank accounts is worth review and consideration by homeowners in upcoming elections.

So what is President Ballweber’s priority in the meantime? Trashing the old gmail account and google drive, bungling the use of the new gmail account, running me off the board, and kicking the can down the road on a “health and safety” concern with a “dog incident” while failing to take action or respond to inquiries for a month.

It’s time to hand off this Ball of Confusion to other homeowners who can maybe get answers. Clearly, I’m being stonewalled for noticing and attempting to discuss this as an agenda item. And, the retaliation to remove me is likely one of the unstated reasons to rush my removal. These are inconvenient facts that can’t avoid notice or action forever. I hope someone takes the cue and leads an effort to get our books opened, and explanations for all the very odd decisions and movements of money – and explain why we have no money for fences, how we lost almost 30 grand, and how we reset our budget back to the normal from 2020 and prior.