I am a great admirer of Acorn missives from Wes Clark and I will miss his dulcet soliloquies now that he is past-President, but in tribute to him, here is how I imagine he might describe in the next Acorn the start of our 2025 Annual Meeting:

“The parking lot was full and the room crowded with residents, whose excited state of anticipation was palpable to all, especially to the Dedicated Directors sitting at the head of the room.  The humble and all-caring President convened the meeting with a powerful “rap” of the gavel.  The room quickly became silent as he and his fellow Board members recounted for all their amazing accomplishments of 2024.  The audience gasped in collective, appreciative astonishment…”

…or something like that!… but to get it really right there would also have to be references to Socratic dialogs and thoughtful collaboration.  (NOTE: I won’t object if future issues of The Acorn use Community Notes verbatim, attribution optional).

After Wes’ short, 10 minute speech, the meeting then proceeded with one of the homeowners pointing out that the minutes of last year’s annual meeting were wrong: they had the wrong year and several misspellings.  OOPS!

Then came the financial report from Treasurer Nick DeVito…and sitting very close next to him, non-Board member Phil Danford, former Treasurer and Keeper of the Spreadsheets.  Nick said hello, spoke a few words about cash, then deferred to Phil, who talked numbers for 10 minutes.  Things are OK, Phil reported; yes, expenses are up but what isn’t, and the Board really did do a fantastic job overall.  Phil mentioned where costs increased last year: security, insurance, and a few other places.  The funny thing is that Phil did not mention the racquet club, where there was an unbudgeted $32,000 loss in 2024, larger than any other expense overrun in 2024…but that is a subject for a different edition of Community Notes.  (I couldn’t help but notice that whenever Nick was speaking, Phil’s lips seemed to move slightly, almost as if Nick was Charlie McCarthy to Phil’s Edgar Bergen…but I was in the back of the room, so who knows?)

We got an ARC report from Carole Miller, telling us how many people painted their homes in 2024, how many people did some landscaping, yada yada…important stuff!

Three volunteers departed to the Board room to count ballots.  To tell the truth I was interested in the results…because I was one of the candidates.

Before the election results were reported we all had to endure the Open Forum.  The first question from the floor was directed to our HOA attorney, who was present for the meeting.  It was a simple question: “How many lawsuits were filed against the HOA in the past year?”  His equally simple answer: none, in fact none since 2023.  NONE!!!  Why this silly question?  I report…you decide: people in the community were alleging that I had filed TWO lawsuits against the Board (oh my God, can you imagine?), and the awfulness of me filing multiple lawsuits against our hard-working, volunteer, selfless Board was more than sufficient reason to righteously oppose my candidacy.  Except now, the attorney put the spotlight of truth on that lie…but you know, sometimes the end does justify the means…so what’s wrong with a little bit of lying, especially if you’re caught-out only after the voting is over?  Still, I was grateful for the question and delighted by the unimpeachable answer.

But the attorney kept speaking and then something surprising did happen.  He went on at great length to explain that, upon careful review of my letter to the HOA, the attorney’s conclusion was that no one on the Board had breached fiduciary responsibility; nothing to worry about here, just move along…what a relief!  Except, I knew immediately that something was indeed VERY wrong: my letter never alleged any breach of fiduciary responsibility!  Does our HOA attorney know how to read?  Does he know how to provide accurate legal analysis and advice?  I’m not so sure…but whatever: each homeowner pays only 0.5% of the fees he charges the Board.  I guess some advice really is cheap!

The Vote

Eventually we found out what everyone in the room wanted to know: and what some readers of Community Notes will be pleased for me to report: I LOST, by a lot.

As I reflect on this, I am truly impressed by the campaign waged against me: the negative emails, the anonymous letters, the whispered conversations in the community: the lies and smears worked seamlessly to do their job.  I even heard reports of ballot harvesting…very impressive!!!  In fact, in the twelve years I have lived here, this is the first effort I know of where the Board successfully mobilized the community to get a result they wanted.

And congratulations are due to the winning candidates: I don’t know about you, but I was duly impressed by their disciplined and successful campaign tactic of saying and doing nothing during the election season.

An Amazing End of the Meeting 

At the end of the meeting something happened that, had I not been there to witness it, I would have never believed it.  Jay Baranzano is leaving the Board and he stood up because he had something to say.  A year and a half ago, Jay reminded all of us, there was a raucous meeting where Jay identified one of the homeowners attending as “the asshole with the mailbox” (I was there, and Jay really did say that!).  To my knowledge Jay never apologized, and the Board never censured the remark.  Well, that homeowner was in the room again, and after Jay repeated his slur, he looked at the homeowner and said: “I apologize to the USPS”.  That was it; perfect!  Jay showed all of us, better than I could ever describe, the way our Board actually regards us homeowners.