DRIP, DRIP, DRIP: POHOA Board Slowly Reveals Election Proxy Info – But Still Not Fully Transparent

The POHOA Board quietly posted another 2-day notice (only posted at 136pm on 4/16) of yet another POHOA Special Board Meeting on Thursday April 18 at 630pm. The Agenda for this meeting is entirely another Executive Session, and therefore yet another secret meeting.

Since the “dog incident” is supposedly over, we are likely seeing a reaction to my recent Document Requests. There is a dispute over whether or not the request to see the Proxies from the last 2 elections should be produced for free (electronically), whether a $300 estimate is “reasonable”, or whether the Secretary should simply upload the documents to a service where the copies cost 3.2 cents per page (plus delivery).

I’ve been transparent about the fact that it would only cost $31 to go to Larimer County Small Claims Court to pursue the production of documents as required by CCIOA Section 317. And, in pursuit of avoiding that action, I’ve simply requested that they disclose the number of proxies, which had been the normal customary practice via our Meeting Minutes for many years.

Today, just a few hours after posting the notice about this secret meeting, the POHOA Board found the ability to send an email out to the community announcing the number of proxies.

But, if you are good at math and deductive reasoning, you can see that we have a claim that 34 members participated in the 12/5/23 meeting and elections, yet, at the 4/9/24 Board Meeting, the response to the 3/28/24 Document Request revealed that only 30 ballots were counted for Jeff Ballweber’s Election. One of the key issues in dispute is whether or not the POHOA Board counted all the votes – particularly those submitted via Directed Proxy. A direct question about whether MY proxy (and one from one of our neighbors) was counted is because, when the second open seat election occurred, instead of counting AT LEAST TWO handwritten ballots, Lora Ballweber, President and Chair of the Meeting, used two different methods to avoid accepting and counting them – neither of which comply with CCIOA, the Non-Profit Act, or our Governing Documents.

Similarly, AT LEAST TWO Directed Proxies were not properly counted for the 3/19/24 election either.

And, since the counting of the ballots on 12/5/23 would actually fill the seat, the second election to fill the same seat would be an invalid election.

Quite a mess, actually.

The only way to find out whether or not these Directed Proxies were or were not in the count would be to verify the actual documents. But, Secretary Flanary claims in his response to the 3/28/24 Document Request that he has the power to redact information on those proxies, rendering the purpose of the Document Request null or moot. While certain types of information may be redacted (phone numbers, email addresses, social security numbers, etc) are explicitly stated in CCIOA Section 317 as being legitimately redacted in such document requests, the form given by the POHOA Board does not contain this information. The names and addresses, however, are not protected information – any member can request the complete list of all homeowners at any time.

So, the only purpose for redaction would be to hide whether or not specific Proxies were counted, unless, of course, Secretary Flanary, who often holds a dozen or more proxies personally, is uncomfortable with the community knowing exactly who is giving him the power to be a super-voter at our elections. It’s these proxies that actually kept him from being removed at the 1/25/23 Special Homeowners Meeting, which demonstrates that they have an actual effect on outcomes of these elections.

Regardless of which of these two reasons, there is no such exception that the POHOA Board may legitimately use to deny a request. Which is likely why they have created an estimate of $300 of “costs” to see them.

The problem is that CCIOA Section 317 mentions that these must be actual legitimate costs – not inflated numbers, not administrative “profits”, or other means of deterring the pursuit of the documents. And, this, then creates the basis for going to small claims court – a dispute over whether $300 is or is not “reasonable” – the standard included in the statute.

I found a site that can produce copies and ship them for 3.2 cents per page, but then charge $18 to ship the paper to any address via UPS. Pricey, but arguably reasonable as they don’t offer much cheaper USPS shipping. The total cost to send 60 pieces of paper would be $22.57.

Since all that would have to be done is put a stack of these proxies in a feed-type printer and scan them into PDF documents, the extra step to print them on paper is not exactly reasonable. And, CCIOA has a “right” for a homeowner to receive document requests by email, if they choose. So, while the cost to print is no more than $22.57, the actual cost should be $0.00, as it would take 5-15 minutes to put the stack of paper into a feeder and scan them.

And, it could be argued that we should be creating a digital archive of these documents anyways, as we have a terrible record of keeping paper records. Anyone who has seen “the filebox” knows that much of the info from 2004-2017 was “lost” to various homeowners shuffling this box from home to home, with various Secretaries discarding items without an actual policy in place for when we discard documents.

The reason for having an in-person Executive Session, by the way, is because it avoids having written documentation of the deliberation or action taken via Action Without A Meeting (AWAM). The POHOA Board led by Lora Ballweber has all but discarded the practice because it would require transparency. While they had a few AWAMs with John Tunna on the Board in 2023, there is only one known AWAM (to lobby to the HOA Task Force) since May of 2023.

For full transparency, the correspondence with Secretary Flanary is below.