Ronald was furious. He started sending emails to the other board members calling the decision a witch hunt. He accused the property manager of being biased and he accused me of conspiring with the committee. He demanded a full board vote to overwrite the committee’s decision and the board met the following month. I was not there but I heard about it from my good neighbor who attended as a homeowner. And apparently Ronald stood up and gave this long speech about how the HOA was supposed to protect homeowners and not attack them.
And he said the balcony added value to the neighborhood. And he said that I was the problem, not him. He demanded the board overrule the committee. The board president, who from everything I’ve heard is a reasonable guy who just wants to run a clean neighborhood, told Ronald that the committee followed the process correctly, that the violation was clear, and that the board was not going to override it. He also told Ronald that several homeowners had complained about Ronald using his board position to try to influence the outcome of his own violation and that the board was going to discuss whether Ronald should continue serving.
Ronald apparently lost it. He started yelling about how he had built this neighborhood up, how nobody appreciated what he did, and how he was going to sue the HOA if they forced him to tear down his balcony. The board president asked him to sit down, but he didn’t. Two other board members told him he was out of line, but he kept going. The board voted to remove Ronald from his position because the bylaws allow removal of a board member for conduct detrimental to the association.
And apparently trying to use your board seat to dodge consequences for building an illegal structure over your neighbor’s yard qualifies for exactly that. Ronald stormed out of the meeting. That should have been the end of it. But Ronald was not yet done. He hired a lawyer just like he had promised. About 2 weeks after being removed from the board, I got a letter from an attorney’s office. The letter basically said that Ronald disputed the property line, disputed the HOA’s authority to order removal, and was asserting that the balcony was within his legal rights to build.
And the letter also said that if I continue to harass Ronald or interfere with his property, they would pursue legal action against me. I read the letter twice, laughed once, and then called my own attorney. My guy is a property lawyer at used when I bought the house, and he called me back the next day. This is not a complicated case, he said. The survey is clear. The county already cited him and the HOA already ruled against him.
