Half-a-Car, resolved!

At least, it's gone. Rumor has it, the sheriff towed it.

Sorry for the boring ending to the story.

The Half-a-Car problem

So, there's half a car parked on the sidewalk/lawn in my neighborhood. One of the other directors noticed it, and I guess complained to the management company.

I'm sure the management company is thrilled at this kind of thing; it's big, obvious, and expensive, and implies some recent trajedy they can capitalize on.

There's no resolution yet, but here's some recent e-mail. I asked if anyone has actually spoken to the owner of the car.

Alliance company commented:

HOAEater, in accordance to the Texas Residential Property Owners Protection Act, all of our communication is sent out in writing so that we will have a paper trail concerning the correspondence for fining purposes.

Not-the-Treasurer followed up:

The Board has always let the management company handle communication with property owners simply because there does need to be a paper trail.

I replied:

Right -- reading the Act, though, it doesn't preclude non-written communication. It just requires written communication before enforcement. Specifically, certified mail, return receipt requested (I assume that's what Alliance does). But talking isn't prohibited.

ref: The Ironically-Titled Act

Of course, if the problem is resolved before fines are levied, nobody gets paid, so I guess it depends on what the board's motives are. :)

So we'll see where this goes. Can't wait for Monday's board meeting.

Investigating your HOA is so BORING

So boring, I haven't posted here in a while.

Quick recap: I did get a pile of papers that appears to resemble a General Ledger. As far as I can tell, my HOA is spending about 40% of its money on just general & accounting (G&A) expenses.

In the meantime, two of the four board members resigned, presumably because I kept sniping at them on the mailing list. And now I've been appointed Vice-President of the Board. Thus ends the first chapter of my quest to consume my HOA.

Now I get to deal with all the weird HOA business that the board gets to deal with. For example, yesterday, I was asked to vote for one of two or three courses of action on how to deal with some woman who refused to take down her Christmas lights. I say it was two or three because the options were kind of scattered and rambling and I didn't really understand them, aside from that they all seemed to involve suits and attorneys and associated BS.

So, I took my newfound powers as Board Vice President, and went to the woman's house to check out this eyesore. She happened to come out of the house, so I talked to her a bit, and she said she didn't have a ladder. I told her she could borrow mine. I dropped it off today, reported this back to the board, and they agreed to drop whatever pending action there was going on, much to the disappointment of the attorneys, I'm sure.

Seemed a lot cheaper than lawsuits.

I can't wait to get the docket of all the pending actions to see if they're all as easily solved.

Next up: Someone has 3/4s of a car parked on the sidewalk in front of their house, for some reason.