Devonwood Recall: Residents Rise Up Against HOA Board President

Devonwood resident Leticia Thomas was sick of feral cats using her potted plants as a litter box, so she attached a lattice to her courtyard fence to keep the kitties out. She didn’t realize the act would push to a head an escalating tension between the residents in her community and the small group of homeowners that rule the land over in Devonwood.

“We’re pretty much in violation for everything and anything,” Thomas, who has owned her condo for 19 years, said about being a resident of Devonwood, which is governed by the Devonwood Condominium Owners Association Board of Supervisors.

The Hercules community of Devonwood is in the midst of a recall election to remove board President Lorraine Walsh, who has held her title for over 20 years.

The recall effort was started by Thomas and other residents who say the association’s board has micromanaged their neighborhood for too long, giving unfair and unequal treatment to its members and hindering a sense of community in their neighborhood.

Devonwood is a tidy grouping of yellow and white residential buildings — one of a handful of condo villages at the east end of Hercules Avenue, tucked beyond the train tracks. It has 168 units, with some vacant and bank owned. Only condo owners can be members and they pay about $310 in regular monthly dues. Five board members run the association with the help of management company Massingham and Associates, which serves at the pleasure of the board.

• According to association board meeting minutes, residents have been fined $350 for single violations including using a blue blanket as a window covering and keeping potted plants on a fence rail. Residents have also been in violation for keeping flower pots too close to sidings or working on projects in their garages.

• Warning notices were sent out without indication of which rules were in violation.

• Children are restricted from tricycling or bicycling on HOA streets.

• The association's management company and board members make regular sweeps of the neighborhood, taking photos of residents' homes to levy fines.

• Non-board association members have only one meeting a year, which is generally not attended by the board president. And board member meetings, while open to the public, are set up in a way that deter non-board members from attending, with private, executive sessions positioned in the middle of the meetings.

COMING TO A HEAD

Fine notices have gone out to residents for years, Thomas said. But it wasn’t until last summer, when she took guard against the feral cats in her neighborhood, that the problems between members and their association became apparent.

After the association sent Thomas a notice, which if unanswered would result in a fine, for attaching a lattice to her fence to keep cats out of her courtyard, Thomas challenged the board to show reason for the warning.

Thomas said she knew she could face a fine if she deviated from the rules, so she carefully followed the architectural guidelines for the fence. She got a notice anyway and was summoned to a hearing in front of the board. The board eventually conceded that Thomas was in compliance with its rules. The problem was that she hadn’t submitted a written request and received a written allowance from the board to attach the lattice, which put her in violation.

After challenging the board, between the months of June and November, Thomas received six fine notices for violations including having seedlings in her courtyard and a dead potted plant on her front porch. Thomas said the seedlings were decorative moss between the stones in her front patio and that the potted plant was not dead at all. She also received a notice on Nov. 16 for having a holiday wreath up on her front door. The notice said wreaths were only allowed from the day after Thanksgiving until Jan. 7.

Also between June and November, the board moved to change the architectural guidelines to prohibit lattices altogether, association records show. And it sought to change residents’ front patios from exclusive-use common areas to common areas. An exclusive-use common area meant the homeowner or renter had exclusive use over an area such as a front patio or porch. Changing those areas to a common area would allow the board to place more restrictions on them.

After her attorney contacted the board, Thomas said the board offered to drop the pet fence issue if she would remove her fence and replace it with one made of deer wire.

Thomas decided instead to circulate a petition, asking residents to vote against the board’s proposed fence and common-use rule changes. She went door-to-door, talking to residents about the rules.

Residents voted against the changes, and Thomas kept her existing fence. She decided not to stop there.

THE RECALL

“The more that I was talking to people, the more I realized this was bigger than a fence issue,” Thomas said. “It’s now about how unfair this is and how (Walsh) has people afraid…” she said.

Thomas said she spoke to residents who felt they were fined unfairly. One resident said she had $4,000 in fines, “but mostly for things that were already in existence when she bought the condo,” Thomas said. She said she also noticed that while some residents were being noticed by the association for things like keeping a pumpkin on their doorstep, others weren’t. She said that while “welcome” signs were prohibited from front doors, board members were allowed the decals. The same went for having flowers that grew too high or keeping a bag of trash on a front stoop.

 “As I started talking more to people, people starting talking to each other. You started to get this connection—it’s happening throughout this place,” Thomas said. So in January, she decided to circulate a petition to recall board president Walsh.

“Having held her position for over 20 years, (Walsh’s) leadership has become authoritarian and oppressive,” the recall petition said.  “Rather than recruiting and developing the talents of homeowners, this leadership style discourages homeowners from becoming involved and does not promote the concept of “community” that protects the neighborhood’s property values,” it said.

“This is terrorizing behavior — what we’ve been getting from the board,” said Ron McGee, a 20-year Devonwood resident, who supported the recall effort. McGee was punished by the board for having a freestanding, rolling pet screen on his second-story balcony to keep his cat from jumping off.

Devonwood residents are only allowed four types of items on their patios or balconies – outdoor furniture, a barbecue, live potted plants and a free-standing hose caddy with some restrictions on those items, according to the association’s governing documents. “You have to request anything if it’s not one of those (items),” McGee said.

Eight-year Devonwood homeowner Simona Mandochi had a barbecue at her Devonwood home Labor Day weekend. She said the festivities ran late, and so instead of throwing out her paper bag full of barbecue kindling, she set it on her balcony overnight. The next morning, she found a notice that an inspector left, warning her to remove the bag of kindling.

Mandochi said some of her neighbors can’t seem to avoid getting penalized by the board. “They just keep getting fine after fine for things like having leaves on their deck,” she said. One neighbor had six sets of tenants who moved out in a two-year time span, she said. 

Although Mandochi said the fining is excessive, what bothers her more is how the association rules seem to inhibit a sense of community in Devonwood. Rules that prohibit children playing, for instance, work against a neighborhood feel. “There are a lot of families that live here, where the only place they can play is their driveway and sidewalk, but they can’t do that,” she said. “These families can’t afford to move to a bigger home with a backyard.” And although a community newsletter said neighborhood children should play in nearby parks, there aren’t any playgrounds or parks on that side of town, she said.

ODDS ARE SLIM

Proponents of the recall say they probably won’t prevail in the election. The predication doesn’t necessarily come from a sense of overwhelming support for Walsh’s presidency. It comes from the association’s governing documents, which call for a cumulative vote in a board director recall.

The provision makes it so 84 percent of pro-recall votes are required to oust the president due to a provision in the association’s governing documents. California Association of Homeowners Associations President Richard Monson said recall elections are usually done with a simple majority voting method – 50 percent plus one. Monson said a cumulative voting method for an HOA election is highly unusual. “With the many, many elections and many recall elections (I have taken part in), I have never seen that.”

Homeowners association law information website Davis-Sterling.com says cumulative voting is problematic. “There is not a single municipal, county, state, or federal election that uses it…cumulative voting makes it easy for disruptive, fringe, and single-issue candidates to get on the board. Moreover, once a bad director has been elected, cumulative voting makes it almost impossible to remove that director from the board.”

The recall will need a minimum of 141 “yes” votes to be successful, while less than 30 votes are needed to block the recall, according to a letter from the board to association members.

Massingham and Associates Spokeswoman Carol Piering told Patch in an email that the cumulative voting method" is called for in the bylaws of the association for the election and recall of Directors.” The board is responsible for adopting and amending the association’s bylaws, which include election procedures.

The board decided to use third party to handle the recall, Piering said. It hired an attorney to act as the elections inspector and prepare and mail the ballots to members.

Thomas said once the recall election is over, successful or not, her hope is that the effort would have shaken up the board’s mentality, especially Walsh’s. “It might be a wake-up call for her. It might just make her realize that, (she) won this time but (she) might not next time.”

Patch was unable to reach the association's board members. None were listed, and none who received a letter requesting an interview from Patch responded. Walsh did not respond Patch’s requests for comment.

A count of the recall votes is scheduled for Monday, April 9 at 6 p.m. in the Foxboro Community Center.