HOAs: The 3 Minute Limit

As I said before, the HOA board doesn't want your attendance at Board meetings unless they feel you'd make a recruitable candidate as well as a great seat warmer. They are especially interested if you have not read the governing documents, "don't worry", said Boris Badenov "I tell you everything." Never forget that when Natasha Fatale asked Boris what he thought of the new neighbors his response was: "I think he is as dumb as a sack of hammers."

If you attend and tape board meetings the first thing you'll learn is that the meeting minutes are not reliable information. They'll sound familiar but the MC, secretary or president will likely alter them for a favorable spin. What you think of as draft minutes have been thoroughly vetted by the board. If you attend and raise issues, your comments will be reduced to "the troublemaker attended and made comments". The board does not want to alarm other members of problems. Even better this is effective at making the member irrelevant. What's left out of the minutes is more important than what is said and that's why your attendance and taping of meetings is necessary. Governing documents do not require meeting minutes be honest or even reliable. That's correct, they can and do spin them however they want. Not to mention, approved minutes are easily revised after the fact. Don't trust minutes (or even your board).

You've likely noticed the board is made up of a group of friends ... like the mob. They rely on each other to protect the others back. In other words it's a tyrannical social club. Look back at the minutes before you started to attend and you'll likely notice the meetings were 2+ hours long. The moment you start attending meetings are shortened to 35+/- minutes. But not so fast, the social club AKA board holds the Executive Session (secret meetings) so they can enjoy themselves at the Members expense for another 90 minutes or so.

To discourage real conversation, the board limits the troublemaker to 3 minutes. That's the recommendation of mobster attorney Randy Cohn: "Never address an issue. Have it fester so I can make lots of money resolving it in court". Boy howdy, can they stretch out the costs ... fast! So fast in fact that HOA insurers are tired of the losses wracked up by HOAs and are leaving the market ... ie: Liberty Mutual. How do you intend to sell your property if the HOA isn't insured and will you disclose that? Do you even know if your HOA has a valid Certificate of Insurance?

If you have suffered HOA abuse, contact HOATruth.com. Dennis Legere is the principal advocate. Or you can reach me at EarsUp@iCloud.com. Full disclosure, we are not attorneys. We just don't like bullies. It's a free service.