Comments (4)

  3. Dave and Cindy Dyal

    Thank you, Tim. Excellent synopsis of 3 hours of intense discussion. As we intentionally did not respond directly to each other on the panel to avoid conflict and to maximize the time the Members had to ask questions, my tongue is sore from biting it so much, ha!

    I hope folks take the time to replay that session. It was illuminating to see the definite differences in political philosophy for how our HOA is to be operated to the utmost benefit of the property owners and our right to maximize our values.

    Thanks again for your insights. Always right on target.

  4. Timothy Senak

    What a fantastic Q&A and the turnout filled the room. Thank you to all the candidates for bearing with the questions for almost 3 hours. It is great to see that after 3 years from when John Patten turned over the HOA to us neighbors we now have enough of us informed to make our own logical decisions on the direction of our community. Please listen to the Zoom replay if you were unable to attend as there are very real differences in the candidates to which we are selecting. The following is my summary of the main points from my own viewpoint. The entire 3 hour session is recorded for your listening pleasure but you may use this summary to focus on specific areas of concern for you.

    – Intros – Everyone wanted better communication. Property rights vs. Community Standards. Stop “neighbor vs. neighbor.” We all pay for both sides of all of these lawsuit’s. None of the candidates directly disagreed with these points so it will be up to us to decide which will take actions to correct all of this.

    – Question regarding Seawalls. St John vs. Flagler County “Susan” vs. SSLFB ARB .
    – Question regarding recusal – All candidates said they would recuse themselves from voting as a member of the board on anything involving their own personal property. Some pointed out that they would vote as members of the at large community should a member vote be called.
    – Questions regarding ARB rules being made with little or no membership involvement. Please review the answers to this issue from your notes or the Zoom replay. Some members voiced an intent to remove the current ARB as the animosity over the past 2 years has been staggering. Other candidates wanted to keep the present ARB membership with more “direction.”
    – Question about Rules and Regulations. Another vibrant discussion that we all need to review. Two candidates seemed to want the current rules to largely stand and make adjustments as necessary. The same two made comments about “precedent” keeping the Board/ARB from allowing any exceptions. I will comment on this at the end of this summary. There was a comment by some candidates “we all signed on the purchase that we would follow the rules of the HOA / ARB. One of the candidates, Larry Hobbs, that it seemed to him much of the Patten Documents, and that 99% are unchanged from what was turned over to us, were boilerplate and not tailored to OUR community.
    – Closings by all candidates.

    Tim’s thoughts and opinions. We ran out of time for the majority of us to ask questions so here are some of the discussion I would have liked to start. These are just mine (and Pat’s for the most part) so stop here if you have no desire to understand my thought and concerns. As some may know I get pro-bono legal advice from two of my children who are practicing attorneys.

    – It is frustrating to hear Board or ARB members state “we can’t allow this because it would set a precedence for future decisions.” Both of them laughed at this statement. Stare decisis (presidence) is a principle followed by courts in their decisions. It has no relevance to civil suits nor HOA/ARB decisions. Florida, and most other states, have given broad discretion to community HOAs in standards. My son pointed out Florida cases where the courts upheld allowing certain home colors then disallowing those same colors after a certain unstated number had been reached. This mystery number was never in the HOA documents but never the less the court allowed the seemingly arbitrary and unwritten rule to stand. In my mind this makes the people we choose for our boards very important, and for us even more important as OUR ARB is APPOINTED not elected. Even more scary is the Duff decision where the HOA/ARB acted improperly and was fined $70,000 in punitive damages. If that happened with our HOA/ARB it would be us homeowners who would be splitting that cost plus lawyer’s fees. Is it likely, no, could it happen, yes. I shake my head at some of what the ARB has done, so we better pick wisely.

    – The “these are the rules we all signed” also peeked my interest. I purchased my lot directly from John Patten prior to any roads or infrastructure. Like many of you I looked at the uniqueness and beauty of the land and Pat and I said this is what we worked for our entire life. John showed us the preliminary drawings and where the roads would be, along with the plans and documents to that point. John rightly pointed out that when owners took over the HOA we were free to make everything “ours.” I knew this was correct as I was the HOA President for over a decade in Indiana where we rescinded the developers filings and replaced them with our own common sense documents without legalese where we were able. In my tenure, and to this date a few decades later, that HOA has never filed or defended a suit by any neighbor. It can be done and my son says contract law classes are now being taught to stop the ridiculous technical writing they had done in the past. I say hurray to that .

    – John Patten and his company boast on their website they have constructed 600 communities in 36 states. I have looked at a random sample of those communities where the HOA documents are publicly accessible and what Larry Hobbs stated seems to be true. Except for geographical or differing state regulations the vast majority of those documents appear to be “cut and paste” across them. I for one (two with Pat) don’t think our 100 home Florida community has much/anything to do with 1000+ home developments in California or New York. While I didn’t get to ask questions about this in our forum some candidates seemed to answer other questions around this point supporting looking at what we have now and tailoring those to us.

    Pat and I love all of our neighbors and we are looking forward to friendships here for our lives. Thank you all and here is welcome to the next board to move us forward.

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