HOA rejects own committee's recommendation

How does the Ahwatukee Board of Management spell diversion, set-up and please let us ignore you further? C-O-M-M-I-T-T-E-E.

Last spring my Center Court neighbors and I started getting letters threatening $200 “attorney’s fees” for doing what many of us have done for 20 years – park an extra car on the public street in front of our homes. How do we know we weren’t the only residents? When we raised the issue, a crowd of nearly 100 homeowners crowded the August board meeting to protest.

From the beginning our stance as neighbors hasn’t been that we don’t know we live in an HOA or don’t know our CCR’s. Our stance is that a vaguely-worded parking CCR in print for 20 years and not enforced or referenced, has by precedent not been equally enforced by the board. When staff say “It’s always been enforced” – we as neighbors know by experience this can’t be true. Only this year did the ABM begin zealously sending out multiple parking notifications. The board said “nothing’s changed.” But a board vote in June 2009 reworded the CCR in question, removing all flexibility. ABM staff say “nothing’s changed.” Then later at a board meeting ABM management says it has new software that enables them to send out more violations than ever before.

So the real rub boils down to integrity. The ABM had backed itself into an honesty corner – they don’t have a hope of enforcing something now, if they can’t say they have before. Therefore, they have to say they’ve enforced something, even though they haven’t. The deadliest legal phrase to any HOA is “unequal enforcement.”

Sure there were dissenting opinions. Some folks just don’t want to see any cars, ever. And at the core of the issue is the difficult enforcement conundrum that any ABM drive-by inspection is only a “snapshot in time.” Cars come and go. And there are many legitimate reasons why a car would be parked on the street – if in fact it’s even your car in front of your house.

At a crowded August board meeting, when asked if the board could help make room for the overflow crowd, board member Karl Kjellstrom refused to budge and kept his back turned to a room full of people behind him. Most board members followed suit. To his credit, board president Chris Gentis stood and faced the crowd for the entire meeting, and did his best to moderate a heated, public discussion. But Karl’s actions spoke volumes ...

The net result of the August board meeting was a homeowner committee. The committee of 12 was hand-selected by the ABM from a much longer list of volunteers. Don Zella, a board member, volunteered to serve and advise the committee and Robert Blakesly, as the manager of the ABM, was appointed to work with residents and help devise a solution.

The committee played fair. The board did not. ABM staff did not.

The committee presented a compromise recommendation approved by the ABM attorney to the ABM board meeting on Oct. 22. General Manager Robert Blakesly, who in committee offered a solution of instituting a 48-hour wait on violators, reneged at the board meeting and said it would cost too much to implement. Explain to me how it could cost so much when his own staff says Center Court is inspected only once every six months?  Don Zella then proceeded to vote against the committee he offered to assist. Only board president Chris Gentis and board member Dick McKenna seemed to sympathize with the work of the homeowner committee the board itself had commissioned.

So I ask myself why am I still so angry about what some people consider a minor thing – street parking? And I realize the core issue here is that three values I hold dearly – decency, honesty and fairness – have been violated in this process, and can’t be mediated back. I am far more bothered by how things have transpired, and the pervasive “we against them” arrogance both the ABM management and the Board of Directors clearly demonstrate towards fellow homeowners.

Trust the ABM? No way. Believe ABM management? No way. Elect some new board members? It can’t happen soon enough.

Katrina Shawver was selected to be on the committee formed by the ABM to find a compromise on the parking issue.