ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — The leaders of an Orange County HOA refused repeated requests by community members to turn over documents showing how much money they were collecting and spending, and on what, after the association spent thousands of dollars building unauthorized speed bumps.
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The Wetherbee Lakes HOA first fell into the spotlight in March, hours after the dark-colored speed bumps appeared overnight. Property owners weren’t warned and some claimed their vehicles suffered damage.
Orange County staff members said no one requested a traffic study or permission to build the bumps on the publicly-owned road and the builders did not follow modern design practices and signage requirements. They forced the HOA to quickly tear them out.
That day, several property owners began attempting to obtain the HOA’s financial information.
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Several made written requests to the HOA’s president to view records stretching back years. None were answered.
Joey Casella sent the president a certified letter in April. Florida law requires records to be made available within 10 days of a certified letter being sent.
Casella said the president refused to pick the letter up.
“The financials were never given to me,” he said.
When the HOA hired a new property management company a few weeks later, Casella requested all financial records the HOA gave to the management company. The company’s staff uploaded the documents to a portal, which WFTV was given access to.
As of Thursday, the portal contained 19 monthly financial statement from the past 10 years, far short of the 7 years’ worth of records an HOA is supposed to maintain.
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“Failure to keep them for that long could be a breach of their fiduciary duty,” real estate attorney Mark Lippman, of Lippman Law Offices, explained.
None of the documents showed any mismanagement of the neighborhood’s finances.
Lippman said HOA members are supposed to have full access to their HOA’s financial information, but they often only care when dues go up or special assessments are sent out.
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“I can’t say it enough. Everybody who’s in an association should go to their meetings, and make sure that they have meetings so the board is aware that they’re being observed,” he advised.
The HOA president did not respond to multiple attempts to contact him to ask if copies of the missing records were being maintained and why he did not respond to Casella’s letter.
Lippman said if someone cannot get access to their neighborhood’s documents, they can report the HOA to the state or file a lawsuit.
“I’m not saying you have to go to every meeting, but at least be aware of what’s going on in your community,” Lippman said.
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