HOA Instructs Residents: "Park Your Car Here," and then Tows Your Car

I followed the HOA's instructions about where to correctly park my car, and then the HOA towed it.

You heard that right. Quail Valley HOA towed three cars illegally during the early morning hours of Monday May 23, 2022. My car was one of them. (Note 1)

Weeks before, the HOA's property manager instructed residents to get their cars out of the way on the day that concrete repairs would be made on their street. "Vehicles can be parked on Quail Valley Boulevard or in the pool parking lot." Several hundred residents received those instructions, in email messages from TMGA, Inc. (The Management Group Associates, Inc.)

Weeks before, the property manager also had a legal obligation to send a short memo to the towing company: "Cease towing for the duration of this construction project." Writing such a memo would have been very elementary business practice. Common sense.

Here is what has made jaws drop: in the property manager's own words, she deliberately, and with forethought, considered the task to be unnecessary. (Note 2) She did not perform due diligence.

I spent two hours figuring out what had happened to my car; corresponding with police, property management, and other residents about what had happened; retrieving the car from the tow lot; and documenting the whole sorry incident. That was an inconvenience for me, but ...

What harm could TMGA’s careless error have caused families, as they struggled to live through Monday morning without their cars? Were children delivered late to school? Did anyone miss a doctor’s appointment, or miss a flight, because their car was towed? Did anyone lose annual leave hours as they corrected the error and fetched their own car from impoundment? These examples suggests just some of the harm that could arise from this property manager's failure to perform due diligence.

Needless to say, the community has lost faith in the longstanding members of the HOA board of directors, who continue to employ this property management company despite its poor performance. Perhaps three new HOA board members can do something about this situation, which is so harmful to the residents, day after day, as we have documented for more than a year.

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Note 1: MCPD provided this incident number, 2200134790, in response to my phone call about my missing car. Here is the towing incident number, filed by the towing company the night of the event: 2200133627. The property manager admitted fault, paid the bill for the wrongful towing of my car, and has offered to pay for my Lyft ride to the towing yard where my car was sitting. I’ve also billed TMGA, Inc. $600 for two hours of my time that day, to compensate for what was taken from me (time) without my consent, on a busy working Monday.

Note 2: This passage is very revealing, but probably not in the way intended by its author. Ruchita Patel, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of TMGA, Inc., and Property Manager for the Quail Valley HOA, offered this "explanation" to residents,

“In the past 5 years, I am not aware of any vehicles being towed from the pool parking lot without specific authorization from Quail Valley. The fact that they [the towing company] decided to do so yesterday may have been as the result of a neighbor calling in [to complain about cars parked in a parking lot] or purely coincidental. If this was something that they [the towing company] did regularly, or even at all over the past five years, we certainly would have told them not to while the paving project is underway. However, since they have not done so, there was no reason to anticipate that they would suddenly decide to tow vehicles from this area without us requesting them to do this.” [May 23, 2022, 4:14 PM. Bold added.]

Wrong. There was indeed a very good "reason to anticipate" this fiasco: the contract between the towing company and the HOA. A sign in the parking lot says, NO PARKING, 12AM to 6AM (see 1st photo.), and provides the phone number of the towing company.

Let's unpack that passage. Notice the whole rhetorical formula, which we have heard so often at community meetings and read so often in emails. This banal formula is deployed any time that accountability needs to be eschewed. If the HOA and/or property management are caught in wrongdoing, then they apply the formula, by ...

* Reminding the residents of their omniscience, power, and command over the scene ["I am not aware ..."],

* And yet expressing "surprise" [We are shocked! Shocked!] at the turn of events. How could a towing company tow a car without first having my official approval? It's literally unthinkable!

* Shifting the blame to muddy the waters ["since they have not done so" ... could've been "a neighbor" who initiated this mess; indeed, one of you readers might even be the culprit!],

* Using complex syntax, such as double negatives [since they have not done so, there was no reason] and lots of pronouns [Does the word "they" in the second sentence refer to the towing company or the Quail Valley HOA? We try to clarify meaning by providing the nouns in brackets, offering our best guesses],

* Asserting how "rational" their own actions always are, of course ["there was no reason to anticipate ..."],

* Stating how heartfelt and caring they are about it all ["we certainly would have..."], and finally,

* Being careful NOT to mention what's at the heart of the issue: the towing contract, and Ms. Patel's professional responsibility to be aware of it.

Most residents of Quail Valley HOA recognize obfuscation and malarky when they hear it. This is an example of a professional failing to perform due diligence.

In such matters, the senior members serving on the HOA board of directors and the property management company have lost the respect of many residents. We don't trust them. They have betrayed the community's trust (as they betrayed me on May 23). More than 100 residents signed an online petition in 2021 asking the board to hire a new property management company. The time has come.

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Steven Sellers Lapham is a 21-year resident of Quail Valley. A retired editor, he can be reached at MuskratMusic@gmail.com. The "Living on Cuckoo Court" collection of essays is on Patch.com. Read about the nationwide problem of "HOA corruption, dysfunction, and abuse" at Independent American Communities.