September 30, 2022:
Email from Director Arthur to the Rest of the Board Concerning Hurricane Shutters and Other Important Matters That Should Concern Everyone In This Community:
Date: September 30, 2022
From: Arthur Andelson, Director, CLRA, Inc.
To: Members of the community
Re: You have a right to know what’s going on and for that reason, I am reprinting here the email I sent to the HOA president and the Board earlier this evening, September 30, 2022:
“Jeff and All:
This is in response to Jeff’s email to me which was supported by directors Richard, Pat, and Harvey, lambasting me for positively and favorably responding to two residents who each separately sent the Board an e-ticket (an email to the Board through the HOA website) about their wanting to put up shutters in anticipation of a tornado.
This latest tornado issue arose during a hurricane/tropical storm watch and warning which was in progress at the time. The shutters were to be as a precautionary measure against any potential injury or damage from a cell emanating from this large event.
Before I sent those emails out to those two residents about my making a motion to allow resident discretion to close shutters (which I later repeated on the HOA Message Board), I predicted that you would find a way to remove my name from my intended motion and call it Rules & Regs or CLERT so that another director other than me, in this case, Pat, could control the narrative. Like clockwork, you did so, and your supporting directors of course chimed in, in support of what you wrote, like dutiful soldiers.
You are correct that the phrase “for the Board of Directors” should not have been in the email to the two residents and I apologize for that (it was not listed that way on the Message Board), and it will not happen again. However, you do not otherwise dictate what I write to a resident or on the Message Board as an equal director and your insistence on that mandate is out of line.
It is not the function of the Board to solely put out messages from the majority; that dilutes and destroys the requirement that all Board members are equal, and it disenfranchises minority voices on the Board who may, in fact, represent the majority of the community at large. In any event, even the minority of the community is entitled to a voice and so is every single director.
I will get my message out and the entire community will know that you are usurping my motion in this manner just like you did with my foreclosure motion which was I originally placed on the agenda to stop the monthly loss of HOA maintenance dues that we weren’t collecting, and for which the other 599 homes had to make up the difference.
And you all know for how long that’s been going on and it’s apparently because Richard was doing nothing about it. I found out about it once I became a Board member last March and became impatient because nothing was being done and that’s why I raised it.
You then scheduled two closed board meetings, the first for this foreclosure issue and the second to allow you and Pat and your cohorts to create illegal rules for veto power so as to prevent me from presenting essentially any motion from that point forward. You removed me from that agenda item and then put Richard’s name on it and had Richard make a comment about it at the open Board meeting, stating that we were proceeding with it, without taking the required vote at that meeting.
You claimed that it was given to the “most qualified” director to present, and you claimed that that was Richard for the bizarre reason that he’s the treasurer, which makes no sense to me, because there was no action contemplated until I raised it as an agenda item. I also questioned Richard numerous times about it, and I asked him multiple times in writing to provide to me the details and financials on it, and he flat out refused. My first question to myself was, “what is he hiding?”
Richard clearly prefers one-on-one meetings where he can rant and rave and curse at the questioning person, which was reported to me that he did to a resident/out-of-state licensed CPA recently and he purportedly told that resident that if he wanted the financial information, he should sue the HOA in court for it, notwithstanding the fact that the statute requires the records to be produced.
And as an equal Board director, I certainly am entitled to the financials that I requested, and I was denied as well. This is the opposite of transparency and raises other concerns which I will not address in this email.
And where is the evidence that this foreclosure that Richard reported to the community has proceeded? It’s still not listed on the Palm Beach County Clerk’s website which is public record, and it’s been since August 11, 2022 that you all had that secret vote to proceed. So it’s more than a month and a half as of this writing and the HOA is still hemorrhaging money for maintenance dues on this unit because nothing is formally happening as far as I can tell.
So that financial loss to the community continues to grow on the backs of the rest of the community and is likely not recoverable for reasons you all know about and which will become public if and when the foreclosure is filed in court.
So this is now the second time you’re removing my agenda items from me. I remember a time when Harvey was not liaison to ARB (former Board member Linda Arbeit was the liaison) and he put a motion to allow invisible dog fences on the agenda and his justification was that he represents all members, and he was correct.
We are all equal Board members and this nonsense about shutting down an equal Board member through these bizarre procedures designed in secret is embarrassing to the community and to you Board members who are promulgating this through your abuse of power. This latest shutters motion would never even be contemplated if not for my letters to the residents and my Message Board post indicating that I would place it on the agenda.
The Message Board has gone silent since my post indicating my intention to put it on the agenda. That is because people are happy about it. Jeff’s response to the residents who sent e-tickets to the Board (or at least one that I am aware of) was inappropriate and unprofessional in my opinion.
I say that because he advised the Board that he would be sending the one but was silent as to the other, and it really didn’t address the issue at hand, and I certainly never received a copy of either email officially sent to these residents. Where is it? Why wasn’t I cc’ed on it? I cc’ed every single one of you on my emails to them. Where is yours?
Furthermore, sending out an email as you contemplate doing, concerning resident discretion to close shutters, that directly contradicts the governing documents, is flat out wrong, and I will call that out, too. That is why I want to make the motion, so it is part of our documents and not just an email from you in flagrant disregard of the governing documents.
To be clear, this is crazy because not everybody is going to get the email, and if they have damage or injury because they were following the unchanged governing documents, and of course the governing documents control over any informal email you might send out, the HOA will be on the hook for those damages and injuries.
For reasons unknown, you seem to have trouble following the rules and you and your cohorts like to bend them when it suits you.
You also like to spend HOA money for lawyers who admittedly are not familiar with our governing documents and also make up authority that doesn’t exist to cover your tushies, and they bend over backwards to find lame justifications for your actions. They obviously want to stay in good standing with the four of you because otherwise they might find their retainer contract terminated, which I would do in a heartbeat.
I just cannot understand why you have such hatred and despising for whatever I represent and for me personally. Truly, in my opinion, it is irrational, and it is myopically clouding your sanity, and it’s ultimately inuring to the detriment of the community at large. And this is what is causing the divisiveness: your repetitive bad behavior and actions, not mine. Your obsession of trying to silence me from fulfilling my fiduciary duties to the members is what is churning this divisiveness in the community.
As to your intention to give my motion to the liaison to CLERT and Rules and Regs, first of all, CLERT has nothing to do with this. They go around and make sure everyone is ok after the fact; I know this because I’m a member of the Cascade Lakes Emergency Response Team and I have been since I’ve lived here.
Rules & Regs also has nothing to do with this just because there may be an amendment to our governing documents. Under that theory, virtually every Board vote on changing the documents would go to that Liaison only and therefore why have other liaisons? And what makes that liaison more qualified than any Board member representing members of this HOA?
And as a side point, why isn’t director Sue, who is hands down the one most qualified by far, no longer the liaison to Rules & Regs? She was the liaison and before that the Chair for years and now she’s left with cleaning up your messes during Board meetings because you can’t get simple wording right.
This tornado issue is embarrassing to you and your cohorts. It’s clear to me that you’ve never lived in tornado alley as I have. Having lived in Omaha, Nebraska and Wichita Falls, Texas, I can tell you that we were always under tornado threat during tornedo season which ran from approximately May to July (a lot of people have underground shelters and basements there) and I clearly have more expertise in this area than any of you. Hurricanes are not the same.
So, if you really mean what you said previously that the director most knowledgeable should be the one presenting the motion, because that’s what you said, then clearly, I am the most knowledgeable and experienced with respect to both tornados as well as mitigating damages because I held licenses in multiple states for property and casualty insurance and I was a District Manager responsible for many field underwriters in that context.
I am also a certified paralegal (state of California) and I dealt with insurance claims, both property damage and personal injury, so my knowledge of Rules & Regs is actually greater than any of yours in this area.
Now, I am going to be submitting for inclusion on the agenda my motion to amend the documents to allow for resident discretion on shutter closures, as I promised the community. If you remove it, refuse to list it, or give it to someone else who is obviously less qualified, I will have my remedies because this is not only vindictive and hateful but also not in the best interests of the community.
And by the way, the secretive foreclosure issue is not finished either. There still has been no vote before the community on this and no ratification if you’re intent on listening to the lawyer’s made up bad advice in my opinion. Either way, you’ve done neither.
The community deserves better than your behavior. And they also deserve to know what you’re doing behind their backs. If you look like a bunch of vindictive, hateful, incompetent people, that’s on you, not me.
Arthur”