Just a narrative update about the meeting tonight. Deb and I left at 7:15pm during Clay’s umpteenth sales pitch for gold coins in a year+. When I decided to take pictures of his slides (he didn’t give out copies of his powerpoint stack, as would normally be done at a meeting like this), President Ballweber decided to interrupt the meeting and declare me “recording the meeting”. She might have said I was “out of order”. I honestly wasn’t paying attention that well, and, of course, as Irve reminded us, recording isn’t allowed at the meeting. Which is reason #387 why recordings of meetings are not just a good idea, but necessary.
Of course, even if there was a recording, as there was at the 1/25/23 Special Meeting, President Ballweber proved that such evidence can be swept aside. When attempting to amend the meeting minutes, and bringing up the fact that she said my resignation was accepted three times, she disputed it per her recollection. I mentioned that we could, of course, play the recording if she preferred.
She then did what any normal person would do. By normal, I mean a person who can’t ever say they were wrong. The concept of “point well taken” still mostly eludes her. She had the gumption to suggest that while she was willing to record into the minutes that she ruled my resignation “out of order”, recording the fact that she affirmed the resignation was a bridge too far. She said that she was merely “offering her opinion”, and that she would work on making it more clear in the future when she was actually making a ruling, and when she was just “offering her opinion”.
This includes the very clear statement: “Andy IS resigned” in response to a homeowner demanding that the resignation not be accepted.
When she told me that taking a photograph was some sort of violation or being out of order, I had to bite my tongue and not ask “Well, is this a ruling, or just you sharing your opinion?”
What President Ballweber and this group that now has an iron grip of control over our HOA doesn’t understand is that when they display this type of irrational behavior, it’s not just fodder for deserved sarcasm, but it drives people away from meetings and leads to broad distrust. She thinks she’s putting on a good show for her supporters in shutting me down, but what she’s actually doing is demonstrating that the rules simply do not apply to her – or any of the Board she sites with.
How bad is this driving other homeowner’s away?
Well, attendance at this meeting was literally the worst that this HOA has ever had – including through 3 years of pandemic restrictions. By my rough count, there were only 15-16 homes (out of 87) physically represented at the meeting. Maybe 23-24 people in the room, but the quorum count was 39 homes.
This means that for the first time in our history, there were more proxies in the room than actual voting. It was just last year that I raised the issue of Proxy Reform, which had come up in the Colorado State Legislature (didn’t get out of committee) in 2022. I couldn’t make out who was holding all of them, but little blue index cards were held by several in the room – totaling at least 23 votes of 39.
In recent past years, we would see 60-79 homes represented, and a vibrant filled room. Now, all that’s left are the core homes that have dominated the Board since 2017. In fact, it’s worth mentioning that of the 15 or so homes represented, 10 of them had been or currently on the Board. That includes myself, by the way.
While the play-by-play will bore some, there’s some key highlights:
- The 1/25/23 Meeting MInutes were amended to record that the Board voted 4-1 to accept Mowery’s resignation
- Treasurer Jones gave yet another presentation about why buying gold makes him the smartest person in the room
- Treasurer Jones announced he was exposed to 50-60 people on Friday and Saturday and had become very ill, but he was “getting over it” (someone retorted “thanks for exposing us”, as I put on my mask)
- Jeff Ballweber, spouse of President Lora Ballweber, is now elected to the Board
- My self-nomination was rejected, and it’s unclear if the remaining seat was left open.
Now, this is the first time Poudre Overlook HOA has had to deal with the possibility of spouses serving. We have already seen the shift from one spouse to another with Gloria and then Clay Jones. But, never before have we seen two spouses serve at the same time. And, in this case, now one household has HALF the votes of the Board. And, when we get into the issue of Open Meetings Act, we now have two board members who can meet over he dinner table – daily.
Any other two persons meeting outside of an open meeting would be violating the law. There’s just no way to avoid the fact that they will be discussing, planning, and perhaps even acting on HOA business without an open meeting.
It’s not just me that takes issue with this. Do a google search.
Example: What to Know About Spouses Running for Your Condo/HOA Board
“Florida law also doesn’t prohibit this, but many governing documents do. “There’s nothing in the condo act that prevents this,” notes Jennifer Biletnikoff, a shareholder in the Naples, Fla., office of Becker & Poliakoff, who has represented condos and HOAs for more than 15 years. “But I’ve never seen a set of bylaws that allows spouses to run.”
Ditto Colorado. “It’s not prohibited under Colorado law,” says Elina Gilbert, a shareholder at Altitude Community Law in Lakewood, Colo., who has specialized in community association law for 20 years. “The only way it’s prohibited is if there’s something in the bylaws.”
WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL?
Well, the same article spells out the concerns repeated on sites throughout the Internet:
“The Drawbacks Stack Up
Overall, our experts advise against permitting spouses to serve, though they recognize the burden that places on small associations.
Polomis includes such a ban when she drafts documents. “I include it when I’m drafting the bylaws,” she says. “Then it spreads the voice of the people over more households. It also avoids the appearance of impropriety that spouses are colluding in their voting or concentrating their voting power in one household—that’s especially important in small communities.
“But smaller associations that have trouble filling their board sometimes say, ‘No, we don’t want that; we have a hard enough time filing positions,'” she adds.
Gilbert includes such a prohibition, too. “That’s where board qualifications come into play,” she says. “When we draft documents, we put that in, that only one member from the household can serve on the board.
“The biggest reasons is that permitting it creates a perception of impropriety,” she says. “The rest of the board usually gets upset about it, too; they feel like husbands and wives have the same opinion. There’s often negative visceral reactions from other board members and homeowners when they see it being done.”
Biletnikoff has seen a similar erosion of trust. “I think it causes a wealth of problems,” she explains. “The biggest problem it can cause is a conception on the part of the members that now there’s a united front, that one unit gets two votes on board matters. That creates a level of distrust.“
There’s really no HOA governing documents anywhere that explicitly permits spouses to serve. I challenge anyone to produce an example. But, not only do experts and HOA attorneys advise against, Altitude Law, who we return to again and again for advice over these years, explicitly advises against it – particularly when doing document revisions.
*EDIT 12/6/23 652pm* EMAIL PROOF RECEIVED: A former Director has furnished an email from an HOA Attorney on 2/2/23 demonstrating the entire Board was made aware that the Amended Bylaw was not effective until it is signed. The Board has not responded to this disclosure, which appears to prove wanton and willful action creating legal liability at odds with fiduciary duties.
But, more than anything, we knew in advance of this meeting that the POHOA Board was having extreme difficulties recruiting anyone . . . to even a committee. I wrote about that just last month in DESPERATE RECRUITERS. They seated 3 persons on a 5-person committee (some new extra Architectural Committee that was never explained), and I volunteered – but they literally could not find one other person. So, of course, they shut the committee down.
So is it any surprise that facing a challenge to try to keep me from the board, they resorted to the spouse of the President to fill a seat? In spite of all the experts and attorneys (and homeowners) who say that it creates for bad appearances and distrust?
When I gave the news to one of the majority of homeowners who could not attend, their response was “Brazen.” Valid.
But, more than anything, the diagnosis I am offering that this is yet another sign of desperation by this Board appears to have more evidence. I mean, it’s not good enough for them to have 3 of 5 seats, never allow any other Director to add to the agenda something that they don’t like (including former Director Tunna), or to shut down dissent and objection with limitations of comment to 2 minutes at meeting.
The one thing about authoritarians is that that they never know when to stop, or when they’ve gone too far. And, with a failure of homeowners to show up to vote against such abuse, or to recognize it actually harms their self-interest, the pattern seen in HOAs that allow this to go forward is that they then step up their abuse and harassment of homeowners that they wish to drive out of their homes.
It’s no longer a “conspiracy theory”. It’s an obvious pattern for which there is insufficient evidence against to dismiss it. What we are observing is how a significant plurality, armed with a bunch of harvested proxies, can dominate and control an HOA as though they get to decide who lives here – and what they can do in their homes. Once they realize those who take note of the abuse can be isolated and targeted, they move in for the kill.
It’s a pattern repeating over and over throughout over 12,000 HOAs in Colorado. And, while foreclosure is a tool just recently taken away, the use of “enforcement” to make people uncomfortable enough to choose to leave themselves is already apparent. First, you stop recordings at meetings (march of 2023), so you can create a false narrative through control of warped reality meeting minutes. Then, you begin to persistently accuse the targets of being “out of order”, or “violations”, to develop the narrative of the target being deserving of the abuse.
And, then you attack their livelihood by attempting to make what they were doing yesterday a violation today.
There is no question, whatsoever, that the change to create a Home Occupation Policy out of THIN AIR is targeting my wife and I. We didn’t agree to this when we bought our home in 2007, and maintain that an HOA cannot simply “deem” something into reality. Over a freaking garage sale. Yet, here we are.
Now, with moving in a spouse onto the Board, it’s clear that they have a plan and are conspiring to finish the job. The reason I know it is true is because they NEVER EVER say “Of course, Andy, we want you to live here.” Never.
As Deb and I left the meeting tonight, someone muttered “good”. Clear as day what this HOA is up to, and I retain the right to document, with or without recordings, every step of this. Because it is a pattern repeating over and over in Colorado. And this is why I continue to work with the Colorado HOA Homeowner Advocates, and report my experiences to the HOA Homeowner Rights Task Force.
It shouldn’t be this hard to own a home in an HOA, and it is one of a growing list of reasons to conclude that the HOA governance model is broken. It doesn’t describe every HOA all of the time, but it describes what happens in almost every HOA sooner or later. It appears to be our turn, now.