SIDE STREETS: HOA losers go down kicking and screaming

What is it about serving on a homeowners association board that some people just can’t give up?

The power? The prestige? The glory?

Whatever, serving has produced epic power struggles in Crystal Park and Woodmoor. And dramatic falls from grace.

But the recent losers are not taking their defeats gracefully.

Residents of both HOAs have voted to dump their boards and change the direction or their communities by installing new leadership.

Neither conflict has ended, however, at the ballot box.

The battle for control of the Crystal Park HOA board spilled into court Tuesday. A recent recall election saw 187 residents vote to oust the current board. Just 20 voted to keep the board.

Despite the overwhelming defeat, the board went down kicking and screaming, and driving up HOA legal fees, with a near five-hour hearing before 4th Judicial District Judge Larry Schwartz. They should have saved their money.

Schwartz ruled the recall effort was justified, recall leaders followed all procedures in calling a special election and conducted a fair election.

“The judge said this was about the voice of the people and they voted,” said Joan Powers, one of the leaders of the recall movement. “We won. It was wonderful.”

The interim board will serve only until a new seven-member board can be elected in a few weeks.

“We’re going to start fresh,” Powers said, vowing her group will not punish the losers but try to heal the wounded community.

If the Woodmoor Improvement Association board’s recent bizarre episode is any indication, healing could be a challenge.

A few weeks ago, the WIA board expelled three of its members whose allies lost their election bids in January. The turnout was huge and the loss overwhelming. The victors averaged 650 or so votes each to just 420 or so each for the losers.

The new majority quickly reorganized the nine-member board, stripping controversial president George McFadden of his title. And it started reversing the policies of the old board.

McFadden and his two remaining allies, Larry Goad and Mari Rollins, responded by going missing in action . . . they stopped showing up for board meetings. So, after consulting the HOA attorney, the board dumped them in May and in June installed new board members.

“They abandoned their fiduciary responsibility to our community,” said WIA President Chuck Maher.

Here’s the bizarre part.

McFadden, Goad and Rollins are howling mad and wrote an “open letter to all residents of Woodmoor” to complain of their treatment.

Goad told me “they don’t have the legal right to dismiss us the way they did.”

McFadden argued all absences were legitimate illnesses, vacations, funerals.

“But we are moving on,” he said, adding:

 “I wished I had never gotten involved with the WIA.”

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Read everything McFadden had to say to me on my blog at gazette.com/blogs/sidestreets