HOA Meeting Tonight: WTF!

After all these years, I finally made time to attend my first open meeting of the HOA for the Great Northwest. Though I could only manage to stay for the first two hours, I got to witness the small assembled crowd made up of existing board members, previous board members, possible future board members, and then one or two curious onlookers like me.

I'll post a few notes of interest as soon as I get a chance, but initially, I'd just like to say that as a homeowner, I appreciate the fact that these people take the massive amount of time it takes to volunteer for these unpaid positions. I got the feeling though that the board and the participants in the audience were people who all feel as though they have been wronged in some way by other people there. I'm not trying to be some junior social counselor, but honestly, I could have turned on two hours of Hannity and Colmes if I wanted to sit there and listen to people play the "gotcha" game.

One example of that is where the board was faced with a person up and quitting from a very critical position within the community on a Thursday. The board made herculean efforts to meet just 24 hours later and hire a person who had previously worked in the same position in the past, someone with knowledge of the HOA, and hire them as a contractor to fill the position if only temporarily. I was immediately proud that the board of directors had acted to go above and beyond to correct the situation - remember, these are volunteers on their own time - and a gentlemen got up and berated the board for failing to meet some unexplained EEOC policy and for failing to get three bids from other contractors.

I'm sure this guy meant well and I'm sure he had some valid point he was making from a previous lifetime; I also remember being deployed to Bosnia because neighbors were fighting over atrocities that occurred a thousand years earlier.

Life is too short. Why is it that I have lived in this neighborhood since 1999 and not once have I been motivated to appear before the board and complain about somebody who is volunteering his or her time? Because I have a life.

Perhaps a sad and pathetic existence spent working and jotting down notes and taking silly pictures for a blog that only a hand full of nice people read, but a life nonetheless.

I'll post more about this tomorrow, assuming I don't get a restraining order from the lawyer of the lady who seemed to think that a group of neighbors who wanted to get together and ride their motorcycles twice a month as a group would be a liability to the HOA. Sweet baby Moses on a Razor in the pool area spraying graffiti on the park; what a piece of work.