Annual Meeting May 8th

Is there anything in our HOA regulations that would allow us to have a re-vote? I agree it's sad that the number of people who voted was pathetically low, but it also doesn't seem right that Van Metre can cast their vote and get the equivalent of 100% voter turnout for their block of 3,000 votes.

Not to mention it's absurd that in a 14+ year-old community that's basically entirely built-out, Van Metre can somehow have 3,000 votes for unbuilt units. Definitely worth talking to the press about this. Get enough negative press out there about how Van Metre manipulates communities, and eventually it's going to start hurting their sales.

 

So essentially our votes are a complete waste as VM can swoop in at any time and just vote for who ever they want. Sad. So who officially "won"? If the State of VA has already determined that moving forward the kind of business contracts OB, MCDEAN and VM have done with SouthernWalk and Lansdowne are illegal. It's just a matter of time before their gravy train runs out......they can only buy votes for so long before they are exposed. What they fail to realise is that the "few minority riff-raff" that are opposed to them only grows in numbers as their antics are exposed, and only causes Erika to become more of a nightmare for them.

 

So that means VM has 3,026 homes unbuilt that belong to broadlands area? Where are the bleep these "homes" located???? This is an outrage and I think the media ought to be called about this...I cannot fathom that VM is still allowed to pull a stunt like this as they aren't technically residents and secondly, why do they have such a vested interest in staying on the board?!?

I guess VM doesn't have anything else better to do except twiddle their fat cat thumbs.

 

The OB-type contracts are now illegal in VA, but I don't think this is the same situation. From VM's point of view, if they truly intend to build and sell more homes in the neighborhood, they need to retain voting power to prevent a rogue HOA from making all kinds of changes that would kill the value of the properties they (VM) still own, regardless of how long that takes. That's different from signing up the HOA for a multi-decade contract with a vendor.

I don't think VM really cares about our (or any) HOA election that much, I think they just saw Erika was involved and thwarted her out of spite because of her role in the lawsuit and making VM/OB's long-term-contract business model illegal.

I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise that a company willing to sell us to OB would also engage in this kind of childish behavior in an election.

 

What amazes me is the 3,000 Van Metre votes came in after the polls closed. They sent in their 1 ballot at 7:40PM, polls closed at 7:10PM I have sent an email inquiring about this and contesting the election. If the Residents voted me in, why would Van Metre usurp the will of the residents. And why did the HOA allow for Van Metre's vote to count if the polls had closed.

 

If--and IF--the board accepted VM's votes AFTER the polls had closed...this smells like fishes to me and should be investigated. Pronto. This doesn't smell right to me at all.

 

VERY INTERESTING!!! This whole thing is completely

 

Sadly, its "politics" at its best.

 

Ha! Maybe they wrote a clause in there somewhere that allows them to cast their votes at the time and place of their choosing

 

Just and FYI in past elections the board has allowed residents who showed up late to have their votes counted if the election had not yet been certified. This is because according to the agenda the election is much later in the evening but to get everything counted and certified it takes time. Thus the residents attending have allowed the board to move the voting up on the agenda. I am not saying this is what happened this time. Just saying it is not unheard of for late votes to show up.

Staci

 

I'd also add, in the past 9 years, 4 of which I've served as an election inspector (ballot counter) I've never seen Broadlands Associates LLC use their votes. In fact, if we were to get 100% of the resident members to cast a ballot (that will never happen) we would only beat them by about 681 votes. SO it's easy to assume that while the resident members are on the board and do control it, if they so wish it, Broadland Associates LLC could easily control the board by voting in who they feel will exercise Broadland Associates LLC agenda.

 

Probably due to the archaic method of voting (I did vote though). The should have made it electronic on the Armstrong connect site or something..

 

I'm sure one of the "winning" board members has the same views as you and you could work via proxy or something seriously though, that stinks.... nobody has answered about why VM has 3k votes... is that for undeveloped units/etc?

 

I think so (for undeveloped units for voting count). I'm still wanting to hear more from Erika's challenge. Where did she get the 7:10 poll closing time from? Personally, I've been to every annual meeting (except this one - had to send in a proxy) for about 12 years and I've never even heard of a poll closing time. I can't find it in any docs either.

 

They have 36 votes that belong to their apartments. The other votes are for "undeveloped" units. The way the documents are written to allow for turn over from HOA control to resident control at 75% completion the developer has 1.5 votes per unit. However, unlike a lot of HOA documents Broadlands has an exact number of total units and votes that triggers these numbers. Since the community was planned for more units then what was actually built Van Metre still has control of those votes as they did not disappear when the units were not developed. This number however is no where near the 1900 units (2990/1.5).
Where the majority of the votes comes from is the apartments. When the Terrabrooke was the developer they wanted to make sure that the apartments could not come in and control what residents were on the board and who was not so they changed the vote from 1 vote for 1 unit to 1 vote for 5 units. However they again never decreased the total number of available votes from the developer. Terrabrooke had no intent of staying around to "develop" this community so they did not see the need to go through the added work. However not long after they made the changes Terrabrooke sold the development of Broadlands to Van Metre and we have the situation we have today. Since the documents were never amended Van Metre has control of the extra votes from the apartments plus the homes that will never be built making their vote 3026 (some of these votes are the new units that they are building but only around 300)
Cliff had spent years trying to fight for the community to get this changed and I know this as I helped him when we served on the board together. He initially tried to get Terrabrooke to correct it followed by Van Metre. He tried to get the county Board of Supervisors involved and even went as far as trying to get Richmond to intervene. As some of you may remember a few years back before we were able to get to resident control Cliff and I tried to make the community aware of all of this and get residents upset but no one seemed to care. This is exactly what we were trying to prevent.

Sorry for being long but there is 12 plus years of history to get us where we are today

Staci

 

Thanks for the great explanation. That is really shady on their part. Too bad we can't issue a special assessment on their phantom units.

 

John,

The 7:10 time is an assumption on my part. The nominations from the floor were closed shortly before 7:10PM and the election officers had already started counting.

As I have already indicated to the former & current HOA Board members, Van Metre's actions completely discredits the HOA's basic election process. If the current board allows Van Metre's votes to stand it sends a very clear message to future volunteers and every election from 2012 forward will be critically scrutinized.

Just because Van Metre "can" cast their 3,026 votes doesn't mean they "should" - given that our HOA is under resident control. Van Metre's 3,000+ votes basically vetoed nearly 200 resident votes. And frankly that is a problem.

 

This is a brilliant idea. Why can they vote for undeveloped units but not have to pay special assessments on them? Maybe I shouldn't open my big mouth though... I could see them trying to get us to pay OB fees on them as well!

 

When we did the special assessment for the snow a few years back we did do it on each and every apartment (not the 1 in 5 that get to vote)

Staci