ADRE complaint process
I am looking in to filing a complaint with ADRE. I was asked to leave a Board meeting. No agenda was specified. I had in my hand the Open Meeting statute. I was told I was wrong and that the VP has 10 yrs of Board experience and that he knew the law. He never bothered to look at my docs.
This board rarely has a board meeting, but the last one held rendered a decision so bad that I felt compelled to attend. The decision was never revealed to the homeowners.
So, I am looking into filing a complaint. After printing out the complaint form I do not feel confident in the process. I am being asked to state my complaint in 20 lines handwritten. I would feel better if I could present my case to a ADRE agent with evidence. I am not a legal writer and my handwriting is not the best.. $500 is a lot of money for a retired person.
Dennis is being helpful and I really appreciate it
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Joe;
You don’t need to worry or be nervous. You can simply use “see attached” on the form and type out your petition on a separate sheet. Be as brief and to the point as you can be. You want to make sure that the issue you are concerned about is valid. You had mentioned earlier that this was an executive session and members are not allowed in executive sessions, if this was an executive session they would not normally provide agenda other than to the board member themselves. The notice for this meeting was required to identify the specific exception that allowed this meeting to be closed. Your concern is that you believe that they were discussing issues in executive session that was not allowed by statute. That is fine, however you bear the burden of proof so if your are to spend $500 on the petition you need to prove your case by the preponderance of evidence. Not by speculation or assumption. Look at it this way, knowing the law could you convince someone that that happened directly violated the law? if not don’t file and save your money for another day. If you believe that you can and feel that the issue is significant enough or if you have evidence of this happening on several occasions than go ahead and file the petition, You need to be prepared for the attacks that you will get from the board to the community. They will try to paint you as a trouble maker for costing the community to defend themselves from this baseless petition. You are not alone this happens to everyone. They violate the law and because they control what the community hears they paint you as the villian for calling them out on this issue. I’m not trying to either encourage you or discourage you from filing please separate yourself from the emotion of being kicked out of a meeting and ask yourself is this worth it. I will tell you that I started my advocacy work based on open meeting law violations for my own community. I won and the hate campaign against me by the board member that are still in office has continued for years. I don’t regret my decision in the least the blatant and total disregard for the open meeting laws that had gone on for years, had to stop.
Dennis