June 8, 2022:
RECALL PETITION: WHAT HAPPENED AND WHY
Director Arthur Andelson advised me that a resident wrote to the Board asking what happened with the recall petition. The resident received no response so the resident forwarded his/her original email and asked for a response again. Arthur responded to the resident.
Because the question was important and the answer was equally important, Arthur gave me the text of his response to provide to the rest of the community, so here it is, unedited:
“This was neither an election nor a community vote. The total number of revoked ballots is not known by the rest of the board or Deborah because only the minimum amount sufficient to knock out the recall petition was produced. Residents don’t want to be bullied and lied to, so only the minimum number was used and the rest of the residents’ revocations remained confidential.
Once the recall petition was served on the property manager, it became locked or closed, by statute, which means that no other names can be added to it. Once the minimum number of revoked ballots was presented against the number of signatures on the closed petition served on the property manager, the petition became defective as a matter of law.
It was therefore withdrawn by the group who had served it on the property manager. Even though it was withdrawn, the service of it on Monday morning to the property manager cannot be taken back. So the service of the document locked in the total number of signatures obtainable by law.
If a special board meeting had been held, the board would have been required to reject the petition. In lieu thereof, the petition presenters chose to take back their now defunct petition, and the minimum number of revocations presented was also returned by the property manager. Therefore, those remain confidential as well.
As an aside, had this gone to court, it would have surely been determined that a large amount of signatures on the petition would have been thrown out. The majority of the members of the HOA in fact rejected the petition. That necessarily means that the petition peddlers at all times represented a minority of this community.
As a final side note, as many of the signatures that they did receive were obtained by fraud and deceit, harassment, and elder abuse, those would’ve been likely thrown out also. The petition peddlers were and are the true people who are causing the divisiveness in this community.
Best regards,
Arthur”