It's actually not the home owners association for the home I live in - it's the HOA for the home I USED to live in, which I converted to a rental after I moved to my house just a mile away.
In the short six months that I've been involved, this HOA has made me want to vomit, scream and publicly disparage all of the board members.
If you've ever been involved with an HOA, you know that in many cases, it all boils down to this: POWER.
I will be the first to agree that apathy is a common and terrible thing, and the fact that anyone is willing to donate their time to a community cause is commendable.
The key word being "donate."
Donating time is not something that our HOA board members do. In a number of ways, they are totally compensating themselves for their time... despite bylaws that state that board members are not to be compensated.
* Newsletter editor keeps all advertising revenue to compensate for his time in designing and preparing the newsletter for publication. Never mind that the ad revenue averages between $900-1,000 each issue, and I have quotes from other graphic designers that would do the same work for $400.
* Board member who coordinated the neighborhood's first big (and pathetically underpromoted) community event - Spring Fling - got "reimbursed" over $900 for "receipts" that had not been turned in at the time of my inquiry (which was approximately two months after the event). Oh, and supposedly the cost of the event was totally covered by sponsors - but they won't release the names of the sponsors or the amount collected.
Oh, I could go on and on. And maybe I will, in another post.
The latest example of idiocy: the board member who coordinated Spring Fling provided some content for the quarterly newsletter on alternative energy sources for home owners. It was suspiciously well-written, and the only attribution was "Forwarded by [board member]."' After a ridiculously short search on Google, I found the exact same article on a number of realtor blogs.
I advised the board member that any articles we copy from other sources must be properly attributed. After asking the board member for the source, he replied, "She says SHE penned the article."
My response? "Huh. Well, she may be concerned to know that her article is everywhere on the 'Net (none of which have proper attribution to her)." And included about 10 links I found to the exact same article.
My hunch is that it is an article available to all realtors for marketing to consumers. Cool! Great! Let's attribute properly and not give copyright lawyers unnecessary work. But let's not take credit for writing something that clearly isn't your work.
As I'm writing this, I feel a twinge of pettiness and bitchiness. But this is my blog, and I can be petty. It's just part of life on Peach Street.
