Well, it’s been a little over 6 months since my last post. Shortly after the post, which was actually positive about actually addressing the stormwater drainage maintenance, the POHOA Board decided to send out a personal note telling me how they really feel.
I am sure that when they sent the letter, they were unaware that I was actually going to praise them for finally addressing an issue for which I had spent considerable time and effort to accomplish a very simple goal: proper maintenance of our stormwater drainage systems.
Realizing that my efforts to get action were taking up significant amounts of my time and resulting in retaliation such as the letter sent out the neighborhood regarding this blog, I decided to take a step back and see what would happen if I let the new Board configuration with Jen Hutchinson try to simply do what I had been asking. And, in some areas, this actually worked. They finally mowed on time, the water stopped flowing behind Headwater, and the drainage culverts were cleared. Progress.
But, after attending a meeting in November that was largely mundane until I asked a question that they didn’t want to answer, I learned that the hostility towards me would never end. It doesn’t matter if I email or blog, they are going to treat my wife and I with hostility indefinitely. There’s no forgive and forget. And, the “settlement” from 2021 after I took legal action was just a piece of paper they have no intention to honor. We are the enemy, period.
Therefore, because this Board intends and actually does act without transparency, it is necessary for SOMEONE to attend meetings and offer a perspective not found in the meeting minutes – which don’t tell much of anything to anyone. Given the hostility towards journalism and journalists that is now basically a political platform, stepping into this role is political suicide. I can’t win enough votes to overcome the abuse of proxy voting in this neighborhood. And, the visible hostility and retaliation are making everyone else apathetic.
So why do this?
Because the concept of an HOA is to replace local government with volunteer quasi-government, which means it is part of our overall democracy. A democracy cannot function without informed voters. So, I will continue to provide information in that effort. I would prefer to simply record meetings, but that has been outlawed for the time being. So, I am left with having to do my best to present objective facts combined with my editorial opinions . . . and hope new homeowners eventually realize that their home values aren’t being defended or supported by Boards that act in this manner.
I honestly don’t think 2024 is the year anyone will volunteer to be elected to the open seats. Most likely, we are setting up for the continued domination by a small group in the HOA who thinks their absolute control of the HOA somehow benefits others. Maybe I’m wrong, so in a sense, making this post is hopeful.
STORMWATER DRAINAGE FACILITIES MAINTANCE
The key dispute on this issue since Clay Jones assumed dictatorial control over all contracts as Treasurer in 2022 was the timing of the mowing of the outlots/backlots. In June of 2022, after hearing many homeowners complain about the grass growing several feet tall, and watching weeds invade, I wrote this article: New Board Diddles While Front Landscaping Goes To Hell
And, I followed up with more articles in 2023. Then 2023. And, again into 2024:
ANNUAL MEETING AGENDA: What Should POHOA Prioritize in 2023?
BACK TO BASICS: An HOA Director Campaign Platform
GOLD COIN PUSHER: Director Jones Beats Dead Horse Again & Forces Vote
LAME: Board Finally Mows Outlots After Weak Excuses Fail Scrutiny
HOT POTATO: PID Claims POHOA Responsible For Outlot Concrete Drainage
FINANCIAL TIME BOMB: POHOA Ignores Stormwater Drainage Infrastructure for Decades
HOT POTATO, AGAIN: Landscape Committee Bounces Stormwater Drainage Maintenance Back To POHOA Board
It took all of this effort, and yes, many emails, to get them to finally do what had been done from 2004 through 2020 – mow the freaking outlots before they are 3-5 feet deep in grasses and weeds!
So, the first review in this report card is for finally doing the right thing and mowing in May:
GRADE: B-
The finally hired a contractor who had the right equipment and right instructions to get rid of the debris that was accumulating and causing drainage backups at the culverts. While the issues with drainage at the East End were fully resolved after 2 years of follow-ups, it is noted that the North drainage has concrete that is completely obscured by debris accumulated in years past. Therefore while a sold step forward from the Grade of F for 2022 and 2023 on the issue of stormwater drainage maintenance, there is still room for improvements.
SUMMER WATER FLOW IN SOUTH HEADWATER OUTLOTS 2020-2023
Also a factor in this grade is the fact that from 2020 through 2023, we saw a continuous flow of water coming from a broken pipe near the right-turn lane into the subdivision on Overland. Both as a director and homeowner, I inquired about and asked for action as homeowners on Headwater literally had a small creek running behind them all summer every summer for 3 years – leading to excessive growth of the outlots for grasses and weeds that were already problematic due to the mowing schedule.
But, even more than a footnote is that this change led to SAVINGS. Treasurer Clay Jones noted at the November Regular Board Meeting that while the HOA was going to see a financial loss for 2024, the fact the mowing in advance of the hotter months led to the grasses going dormant – and not needing to be mowed a second time in August or September. That mitigated some of the losses, per Treasurer Jones report at the meeting (which of course won’t make the meeting minutes, and isn’t allowed to be recorded per this Board’s policy). Literally NO ONE showed up for that meeting, held at a new obscure location at the Mall. I was the only person besides Clay’s wife Gloria and Linda, who make up our Landscaping Committee and were there to give a report.
So, while there were various theories voiced at several meetings about the source of this water and who could be contacted to stop it, somehow it stopped. Whether the Board is due credit remains an open question. Maybe something they did stopped the flow, maybe it just stopped on its own. The Board’s lack of transparancy, a recurring theme, means we are left with speculation.
Therefore, giving the Board the benefit of the doubt that something they did positively affected the outcome.
GRADE – A
RESOLUTION OF THE “DOG INCIDENT”
The Board took seriously an issue where one homeowners dog attacked and bit another homeowner’s dog. The witnesses reported stressful and harrowing experiences, and some homeowners demanded action. They got it, so for those calling for the dog to be forced from the neighborhood, they got their way. I’m sure they get an A from those who advocated for such action.
I wrote about this many times, and emailed the Board a few times as well (including while serving as a Director). But, once again, this issue was dealt with in a very non-transparent way, including regarding how much money was spent for the outcome.
From inspection of the monthly legal expenses over the duration from 2022-2024, I would guess we spent somewhere between $5000-7000. And, as someone who did the initial research with attorneys, that would fall well within estimates of $3000-10,000. Some might argue we did well.
But, in the context of having two years with negative income (2021 and 2024) in such a short period, it does raise the issue about whether pursuing such agendas is something we can actually afford. Did we have an obligation to take the action and spend the money, or was it discretionary. Homeowners will have to judge that for themselves.
Because the financial impacts are questionable, while this may receive a passing grade, the subject of legal expenses is a recurring theme with this board. We had more than a decade with a $500/year legal budget, and had boards that found a way to live within those boundaries. Lately, we have Directors who literally ignore the budgets, and rationalize the expenses – and verbally attack anyone who questions them.
GRADE: C
ELECTIONS & RELATED POLICIES
One of the core disputes with the Board was the manipulation of the 2023 elections whereby the Board attempted to block me from self-election to an open seat with, among many things, putting our first SPOUSES on the Board simultaneously While this is outright forbidden in many states (for non-profit corporations or HOAs), the Board saw fit to Jeff Ballweber into one of these open seats at the 12/5/23 elections – for which only 26-27 homeowners voted, with the majority giving their proxies to Director Flanary (presumed – which became the fundamental dispute over releasing the details of the proxies in a document request).
After realizing keeping the seat open was potentially a liability, they decided to hold another election in March where we saw yet another absurd action – putting someone PAID as a CONTRACTOR (which was later deemed a “consultant”) onto the Board. Signing the Conflict of Interest policy while spending yet another $500-800 per month was blessed by this Board as AOK, when literally anyone with common sense asks how or why this is the best choice we can come up with filling a seat – all in an effort to block me from being the losing 4-1 vote and representing other points of view for the homeowners.
While I have basis for legal action to force the Board to disclose the documents (even though they deemed it “abandoned”, which isn’t a thing), I ultimately decided that the fact that they were willing to twist themselves into illogical pretzels to avoid disclosing who is giving Director Flanary voting super-powers by giving him blind proxies is self-evident. Only the Emperors are not self-aware of their lack of clothes.
The movement to change nominations to only be “from the floor” while failing to provide remote access, allow nominations in advance of elections, or pretty much do anything to increase participation, this has earned them a hard F. Utter failure to recognize their actions reek of desperation to have absolute control the affairs of the HOA.
GRADE – F
TRANSPARENCY
I’ve written extensively about the problem that has been perennial with various configurations of the POHOA Board. They just can’t seem to find a way to be actually transparent.
What we have seen in 2024 are meetings that are essentially the Board and perhaps 1-2 homeowners attending – when we used to have robust attendance and participation. And, part of the reason is that the agendas are so cryptic that you really can’t tell what is going to happen at the meeting, and even if you have inside info, good luck getting any question actually answered at a meeting without getting your head chopped off.
If you wish to add something to the agenda through “new business”, again, good luck. It hasn’t happened in the 3 years since Lora Ballweber became President. She and she alone decides what can and cannot be discussed at a meeting.
And, more concerning, now “Executive Session” is a permanent fixture at our meetings – where everyone is shuffled out of the meeting, sometimes rudely, so they can do business in secret. There’s NO NEED for such secrecy in an HOA that has two primary jobs – mow the lawn and keep the fences standing. At least in terms of percentage of budget.
Therefore, I cannot in any sense consider anything other than a failing grade on this topic.
GRADE – F
BUDGET
This POHOA Board has an odd way of oscillating between wanting to appear like they are being conservative with our money and spending money without any regard to the budget – and blaming to justify blowing the budget. Worse, we now know that they actually manipulated the books in 2021-22 to push legal expenses into the following year to fool homeowners in the 2021 elections.
One of the key issues is the fences. And, once again in 2024, fence repairs drained our funds. We not only will not contribute anything to our reserves, we drew thousands from them this year. Treasurer Jones, who, once again has dictatorial control over contracts and contractors, blamed “inflation” and threw his hands up at what he described as an increase in cost from our fence repair contractor of over 30%.
While lumber prices are significantly lower than their peak during the Pandemic in 2021, what we didn’t hear is how our Board or Director Jones negotiated any discounts, or found any creative ways to not fully drain our income for the year. The Supplemental Assessments we collected in 2018-20 were supposedly all spent fixing the fences on the North side of the subdivision, which happens to be out the back windows of nearly all the Directors – while the fence on the South side was allowed be blown over and laying on the ground for months before action was taken.
But, at the November meeting, when I asked Director Jones whether the Board had ANY OTHER OPTIONS than to raise assessments through MORE SPECIAL ASSESSMENTS, he said he couldn’t think of any other options.
The fact that we cannot have a Board that maybe considers the possibility that spending $5000 to $21000 annually on lawyers, or spending $500-800/mo to pay A HOMEOWNER to do volunteer work (when no one else is allowed to see our Quickbooks, even if they have the skills), it demonstrates a tax-and-spend mentality with this Board. They claim there’s nothing they can do when, in fact, they can. It just means abandoning this freewheeling approach to legal and accounting expenses for an HOA who, again, has NO FACILITIES and merely has to mow the lawn and repair the fences.
We need a Board that can live within its financial boundaries.
GRADE – D
POLICIES
The POHOA Board approved several policies in 2024, some of which were self-serving, some of which were required by changes to Colorado laws. One of them the is illustrative of the issues with transparency, budget, and creating unnecessary conflict.
In 2023, the POHOA Board attempted to enforce an alleged violation over a garage sale. When it was pointed out that there was no actual basis in the governing documents, they created a Home Occupation Policy that obviously targeted the homeowners who raised the concern.
When the Board was asked in November of 2023 whether the policy was written or reviewed by our HOA attorney, they admitted that they didn’t even run it by them. Every other policy had, but this one, they decided to wing it with our homeowner-attorney-directors.
Then, just a couple months later, Senate Bill 178 was introduced and passed the Colorado legislature with literally one single vote against it. There’s NEVER unanimous agreement on HOA bills, but this one made an obvious an simple charge – HOAs should not attempt to regulate home occupations. And, had the Board simply consulted with our competent attorney, David Graf, they could have avoided the embarrassment of having their newly minted policy overturned by a nearly unanimous legislature.
So, instead of complying with this new law in August, instead they decided to simply create yet another Home Occupation Policy that, once again, was not reviewed by an attorney. Basically, the policy has obvious plainly written contradictions with the new law, but they proceeded anyways. And, the reason not to have an attorney review it for maybe $200-300 – because they are sensitive to the legal expenses (when they are overspending the legal budget in 3 of the past 4 years).
The policy doesn’t do anything but target homeowners they don’t like, and create conflict and unnecessary legal expenses. An utter failure in this instance, but, to be fair, a few of the policies were well-drafted by Moeller Graf and passed without controversey. So, a passing grade overall.
GRADE – C-
MEETING NOTICES & AGENDAS
The POHOA Board continues to pursue an unwritten policy of minimum compliance. Unless Colorado state law REQUIRES them to do something, they just won’t do it. Even if it objectively the best path.
Meetings only get notice posted on the website barely 2 days before, and we’ve seen instances where the physical sign-board wasn’t used.
Meetings for the ACC and Landscaping Committee are held outdoors (hard for some of our owners to hear) and during working hours when most cannot attend.
But, the primary questions remain: Why will the POHOA Board not simply send email notices at least 7-10 days in advance? Why is remote access not allowed?
I know the answer: They are terrified of there being recordings that create an objective record vs. their useless meeting minutes, which are rarely informative or a reflection of what is actually discussed.
The agenda of meetings has been in the tight grip of just a few homeowners for several years. Anything other homeowners wish to bring up is met with hostility – including demanding that homeowners leave because they must, absolutely must, start their secret Executive Sessions. Most agendas are cryptic, uninviting, and are often crafted to hide the actual topic that will be discussed and/or voted upon.
It’s no wonder virtually no one attends meetings any longer.
But, because the bar is set to the absolute minimum of what CCIOA, the Non-Profit Act, and our Governing Documents require, they consider this to be a passing grade. Sure, but a D- is not an indication that the community is being served by such policies.
Grade – D-
LANDSCAPING
With the expansion of the Landscaping Committee from 1 to 3 persons, we now have some community input and participation. But, after attending one of these meetings in February at Me Oh My Cafe, I was literally forced to sit at an adjacent table with loud background noise – so I could barely hear! And, participation was treated, once again, with hostility by Gloria Jones.
We did see an overhaul of the island as we enter the neighborhood. It looks much better. But, we continue to see the connection at the end of Bubbling Brook ignored, which looks run down and literally crumbling (the masonry). We learned from the adjacent homeowner that Gloria doesn’t think that the land is actually ours (she thinks it’s the Larimer County’s responsibility, according to owner Paul Janov), so maintenance and improvement continue to be kicked down the road.
And, since we share this connector with the next subdivision, I connected Gloria with the person who has gathered volunteers to improve the area annually from 2005-2020. But, Gloria shut down the effort without really explaining why. For some reason, it appears that she really just doesn’t want that area to look good or be improved. And, without communication we can’t understand why.
Meanwhile, the front of the property continues to have ups and downs with weeds, browning out, and nearly all the shrubs have died along the fence. No real plans appear on the horizon to change any of this, and the community apathy doesn’t really push us to do anything. Meanwhile, since the budget is focused on legal wars and giving one homeowner 15% of the budget to do quickbooks, there’s really not financial means – when we also have to spend large amounts to fix fences that won’t stop blowing down in the wind.
In addition, we have this HUGE area of lawn in the center of the neighborhood that uses HUGE amounts of water – and benefits very few people. It’s mostly an extended backyard for the dozen or so homes that can see it from their property. Given the ever-increasing cost of water, returning at least a portion to “natural area” by turning off the irrigation seems to be worth discussion. But, once again, with tight controls on the agenda at the board and committee level, any homeowner who might support this is wasting their time trying to discuss it at meetings – if they can react to 48-hour notices of such meetings and actually attend during business hours . . . or at some location 15-30 minutes on the other side of town.
Grade – C-
COMPLIANCE WITH CCIOA CHANGES
The Colorado Legislature continues to update and revise the laws that governing HOAs annually. The HOA Task Force was dominated by industry interests, and the participation by Lora Ballweber on behalf of the HOA was mostly airing of grievances against me for my efforts in the legislature since 2019.
Some of these changes require changing our policies, yet, for some reason the POHOA Board chooses to cherry-pick when they want to comply. We have waited more than 1-3 years in some instances, and because there is no ability for anyone to add to the agenda, the topics cannot be discussed at meetings. And, given the letter (see above), trying to get action by email is being rejected with hostility and arguably retaliation – sending a passive aggressive letter to the members complaining about this blog being the most visible action.
For instance, in 2023, laws were passed that require an update to our Landscaping Policy and Guidelines, which have not been updated since 2006. Director Tunna attempted to take the lead to get this done, and even he could not get action – so he resigned.
In the past year, a new law forbidding an HOA from having prohibitions on home occupations, so instead of complying, the POHOA Board decided to modify an already poorly written policy (without a lawyer reviewing and approving) to try to act on enforcing government policies – which isn’t even a thing.
Yet, on other changes, including the new requirement to comply with a federal law on transparency, we did see compliance. So, it’s a mixed bag.
While the policies that were written by Moeller Graf are perfectly acceptable, and would result in a much higher grade, the fact that the Board is literally being defiant on the changes that they don’t like, the grade gets dragged down to barely passable.
Grade – D
OVERALL GRADE
While there are probably a number of other issues for which we could do a deep dive into the details, there’s a very simple resolution: WE NEED NEW DIRECTORS.
We are currently heading into our NINTH year of self-governance (with a brief try of a management company in 2020-21), and for near the entire time, the same small group of homeowners has literally pulled every trick in the book (and some that shouldn’t be in any books) to maintain absolute control of the HOA Board. It’s sad, nuts, and has left us with a reputation that extends beyond our boundaries.
The Board, realizing it had a PR issue, decided to use the forum of the HOA Task Force to air their personal grievances with me. Embarrassing and entirely inappropriate.
Which is why, after receiving the letter at the top of this article, I decided to simply let the year play out, and see whether or not anything improved. And, to my surprise, a few things did. Credit given where due.
But, on the core issues of transparency, budget, elections, and policies, this Board remains in a failing or near-failing position. They maintain control by manipulating elections by changing our bylaws and policies, and abuse the proxy rights to essentially cause most of the homeowners to simply abandon their rights to vote in apathy.
And the main reason: They see letters like the one above as obvious signs of retaliation by a Board that simply can’t handle legitimate concerns with basic functions like mowing lawns in a timely manner, or keeping drainage systems free of debris. So, they don’t want a target on their back.
So, while the Board from 2023, which saw one of the best volunteers we have ever had, Dr. John Tunna, resigning in frustration, was an overall Grade F for the year, I have to admit that 2024 appears to be an improvement.
There’s a chance that the addition of Director Hutchinson, while controversial due to her being paid, is at least a mitigating factor in the irrational and poorly conceived decisions from the rest of the Board. And, in the world of volunteer HOA Boards, sometimes we have to accept that volunteers aren’t perfect.
But, this Board, who now has Directors Ballweber and Jones seeing the end of their terms simultaneously, gets a D for the 2024 year. While a passing grade and improvement from 2023, there’s still a long way to go.
When asked directly if they were running for re-election, they were like deer in the headlights. For some reason, NO ONE GETS TO KNOW WHO IS RUNNING. And, given their manipulative approach, the complete apathy of the rest of the neighborhood, and Walker Flanary carrying 17-24 proxies to each meeting, it’s highly unlikely that anyone who disagrees with them will either be elected, or even choose to waste their time casting losing votes.
It’s time for new homeowners to volunteer and help get this HOA out of the ditch. And, I absolutely do not recommend support for the re-election of Clay Jones or Lora Ballweber at the upcoming election on December 10.