Misconduct Complaint Filed Against Laury Phelps
By Robert Holloway
UPDATE - December 2007
The misconduct complaint described below was filed in August, 2006. As of December, 2007, the Commission charged with hearing such complaints has not acted on it or set a date for a hearing.
After three years of battle with the board and two community managers, I am at last seeing some positive results and perhaps long-lasting results in my association.
In late 2006 Laury Phelps, the community manager, was removed at the request of the board and replaced by another employee of Taylor Management. Laury Phelps contributed greatly to the mistakes made by the board but it was never entirely clear to me whether the board or Ms. Phelps was most responsible for a series of mistakes that cost the association several thousand dollars and much wasted time and effort. But in any case, the board was negligent in not properly supervising Laury Phelps if the decisions were hers rather than the board's.
I have also filed a misconduct complaint against Laury Phelps. The Office of the Ombudsman has opened an investigation into the matter and indicated that they would let me know how the case is decided. The misconduct complaint is based on two actions of Laury Phelps that I believe constitute misconduct. One is her misrepresentation of the proposed new governing documents with regard to the effect of the device of "Special Individual Assessments" and the second is the fact that she held meetings with the board without notification of the unit owners. Notification of meetings to the unit owners is required by Chapter 116, so that the work of the board can be observed by the owners. The only case where owners can be exclulded is for executive sessions and executive sessions are limited to only a few agenda items.
I believe that it is important that these two issues be decided in order to protect other homeowners in other associations from these same abuses.
The board president, Joe Ervin, chose not to run again and two new board members were elected. Most likely these new members, having watched the mistakes of the outgoing board, will decide not to make the same mistakes. Most of the mistakes of the old board involved assuming authority that they did not have and having to pay a price for those poor decisions.
At the same time, many of the residents, previously silent, have taken renewed interest in drafting reasonable governing documents that do not include the objectionable and illegal feature of "Special Individual Assessments". It seems that my newsletter played a role in alerting these residents to the problems. Several residents, previously critical of me, have now acknowledged that my opposition to "Special Individual Assessments" was correct.
An interesting point came up in the last Association meeting that shows how management associations often don't view matters with an objective eye. There was a discussion of non-judicial foreclosure with most of the owners wanting to prohibit non-judicial foreclosure. Pat Taylor, of Taylor Management, argued for non-judicial foreclosure with the claim that non-judicial foreclosure and judicial foreclosure were the same except that non-judicial foreclosure can be accomplished more rapidly. She asked why the association would want to give up a useful tool. Apparently Ms. Taylor has never heard of the many abuses that have been caused in other states by non-judicial foreclosure. The fact of the matter is that there are substantial differences between non-judicial foreclosure and judicial foreclosure with the main difference being that courts are not involved in non-judicial foreclosure. This difference naturally increases the odds of unethical or dishonest behavior on the part of those who are foreclosing. The result of this discussion was that non-judicial foreclosure will not be included in the new documents, with no thanks to Ms. Taylor. As time permits, I will write a detailed description of the role that attorneys have played in the problems of Escondido Estates. For now it is enough to note that the attorneys for the Association did not cover themselves with glory.