We all understand that mistakes can happen. Good organizations learn from them and avoid repeating them. The Pine Hollow HOA Board seems to thrive on repeating the same mistakes. And once again it raises questions as to whether they are trying to control the outcome of the election.

Last year, the Board mailed out ballots for the annual election without first soliciting candidates. The ballots contained only one name on them, the name of the Board’s pre-chosen candidate. When other residents complained at the annual meeting that they were not given an opportunity to be on the ballot, the Board’s solution was to issue proxies which had no candidates’ names. What kind of organization runs an election with blank ballots because it has failed to solicit candidates in advance?

To make matters worse, the email address on the May proxy was invalid. Residents who followed instructions for emailing their votes to the management company did have not have had their votes counted because the emails were kicked back to spam folders.

After all these snafus, one would expect this year’s election to run more smoothly. One would be wrong.

Again this year, the Pine Hollow HOA Board has distributed proxies and ballots for the annual election which contain only one candidate’s name. Again, the Board never solicited the residents to see if anyone is interested in running. Again, this year, there are candidates who want to run but who were not given the opportunity to be on the ballot. So again this year, the Board is trying to control the outcome of the election by managing which candidates get free publicity by being on the ballot.

To top it all off, guess what happened again this year with the email address. Yup, wrong again. Any resident who sends his or her vote back to the management company using the email address provided on the form will NOT have his vote counted. Are we expected to believe again this year that it was just an innocent mistake?

As homeowners, we should not allow our association to be run this way. All homeowners should have input, have the right to be heard and allowed to participate in the governance. At a minimum, the Board needs to follow state laws governing HOA’s and to adhere to its own governing documents and guidelines, even when doing so does not serve the private agendas of current Pine Hollow HOA Board members.