A man from Poinciana Villages is challenging the results of a recent homeowners’ association election. At stake could be the right for homeowners to be on the association’s board of directors, to know exactly how the homeowners’ association fees are spent and how the neighborhood is governed by the association.
February election results this year were nullified by the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation. It seems that the developers of the area were allowed to vote thousands of times for undeveloped lots that they still own in the neighborhood. The man alleges that the developers were allowed to do the same thing in the August election. A previous ruling by a Polk County Circuit Court judge allowed the developers to vote based on how many houses they can build on each acre.
A new hearing is scheduled for this upcoming November, with the man and his attorney asking the Polk County judge to throw out that ruling because it was interfering in arbitration.
Homeowners in the neighborhood have complained for many years that they have no say in how the HOA controls the budgets, sets the annual fees of $252 from each homeowner or how it attempts to collect overdue payments.
One advocate for the some of the residents of the neighborhood said that the HOA has “proven time and time again” they can’t run a fair election. The man who filed the lawsuit said that after spending many weekends trying to get residents to vote in the election held in August, it doesn’t even matter. All that happened is that there are now more legal proceedings to go through. He said, “Why should there be another election? [The developers] already did everything wrong. The state already gave [the HOA] rules to follow, and they didn’t do it.”
Are you frustrated with your homeowners’ association? Do you think that the HOA is not transparent enough with how fees are spent or with other proceedings? An experienced attorney can review the facts and see if the homeowners have legal options in their favor.
Source: Orlando Sentinel, “Poinciana homeowner contests association election again,” Ryan Gillespie, Sep. 14, 2017
