Silly me, I had thought that Coloradans were fiercely independent. But one guy decides to put his car up on concrete blocks in his driveway, and rather than shaming him into getting rid of the eyesore they run like little children behind a covenant or gate and make every slight deviation from their idea of the norm an infraction with a fine.
Now that I'm living in an HOA I see both the good and the bad. There are certain things you can only get accomplished through an organized board and with the help of a management company. We've had lazy boards and bad management. We currently have an active (but not fascistic or nepotistic) board with decent management.
What I've also noticed is that very few members of the HOA ever attend board meetings. Even after being bombarded by all sorts of notices, with meetings being held at convenient times and locations, they mostly manage never to attend. They don't even show up when they have been fined and get a chance to make their case. They are too busy working, etc. to make their case. They have plenty of time, however, to craft lengthy emails on the injustices visited upon them by the HOA board.
The only time there are more than one or two people at the board meeting is after a new policy has been implemented, such as cracking down on dogs off leash. Then they start coming out of the woodwork to demand their rights, etc.
I fear for America not because our leaders are so clueless, but because the people are so damned apathetic.
HOA boards, no matter how incompetent or corrupt, can be dealt with, but that requires an amount of time and effort that most citizens aren't willing to sacrifice.
Maybe Florida is a special case. Maybe Floridians are so in favor of less government that they view HOA issues as being between private parties and should be settled by those private parties without government interference. If so, then people who join HOA's in Florida need to know ahead of time that they may have to take time out of their precious TV viewing schedule to fight the HOA, or heaven forfend, become part of the HOA when necessary.
We had a voluntary hoa in the neighborhood where i bought my cottate...
i served for 2 years on the board..
i quit when they started to want to interview the candidates before they went on the ballot..
i screamed that if this board even remotely attempts to interfere with an election, my first call would be to the michigan board of elections...
the dude that made that statement is now president of the board..
little hitlers/stalins...