Rees-Broome

SB 1489 Flops Before Even Reaching the Theatre

February 6, 2009 By LakeHolidayNews

SB 1489 is dead. It’s hard to say which was a bigger flop: SB 1489 or its 2008 special session look-alike, SB 6016. Both of these bills were nearly identical. The 2008 version stayed alive for only 4 days but did get through the Senate before it failed. The 2009 version, SB 1489, was introduced on January 22nd and stricken from the docket of pending bills by Vogel herself on February 4th – before it ever even came to a vote in a committee.

We’ve previously outlined why SB 1489 (like its predecessor SB 6016) was a bad bill. Had it become law, it would have allowed the deed to an owner’s property to be changed in unforeseen and undesirable ways without that owner’s consent. The amendment provisions in the deed itself would be ignored. The prospect that “in whole or in part, any provision of a declaration” could be changed would have manufactured uncertainty for tens of thousands of property owners in associations in every corner of the state. That uncertainty would have destroyed property values across Virginia, all in an effort to meddle in a lawsuit involving Lake Holiday, the Bemis Case. That case is now before the Virginia Supreme Court.

That SB 1489, like SB 6016, was nothing more than an attempt to tip the outcome of an active court case is beyond dispute. Shortly after SB 6016 died in the Virginia Housing Commission on 6/26/08, Bob Diamond and Todd Sinkins went back to work to try to change the law to tip an active court case in favor of their clients. Diamond represents Miller & Smith in the Bemis Case, and Sinkins’ firm, Rees Broome, was Lake Holiday’s initial counsel in the case before withdrawing.

The changes Diamond and Sinkins came up with are outlined in a July 1, 2008 memo to “Interested Parties.” This memo proposes even more far-reaching code changes than Vogel included in SB 1489. This proposal and Vogel’s bills share a central theme: to permit re-writing property deeds without the consent of owners Diamond’s description of honoring the terms outlined in a deed to amend it: “impractical.” We can apply Diamond’s reasoning thusly: If a small property owner has rights granted in a deed and Miller & Smith, one of the largest developers in the state, doesn’t like that, well, that’s simply “impractical” and the law needs to be changed. In his testimony to the Virginia Housing Commission, Sinkins characterized re-writing owners’ deeds over their objection as a “minor” change.

Diamond and Sinkins offer up this contradictory message acknowledging the impact of their proposal:

Although these changes may have an impact on the Lake Holiday project, we do not think that they can affect the outcome of the current litigation.

Perhaps they claim to believe that their proposed changes can’t affect the outcome because they know that an attempt to retroactively change vested property rights is unconstitutional and won’t pass careful scrutiny. It’s about time that Diamond and Sinkins learned the Code of Virginia is not their personal rule book to deliver the whims of their clients.

In late December, 2008 the Lake Holiday board met to consider the changes Vogel would later introduce in the Virginia Senate. Despite a dissent from 1 board member, the Lake Holiday board approved pushing the legislation to solve their “problem.”

Any claim that Vogel’s effort is anything but an effort to tip the outcome of an active court case doesn’t pass the laugh test.

Now that SB 1489 is dead, it’s important to reflect on the future. That future rests squarely with the Virginia Supreme Court. Backed by hundreds of years of Virginia property law and countless decisions from the state’s highest court (including 3 on point cases, the most recent of which was decided in January 2008), the Bemis plaintiffs take the position that their property rights and obligations are to be found – and can only be found – in a properly recorded deed in the chain of title to their individual properties. The Bemis plaintiffs are fully prepared to honor those deed obligations.

Lake Holiday has a history of collecting fees and dues far above those authorized by the applicable deeds. Its officers and lawyers have known about the unauthorized collection for some time. That creates a sticky and serious legal problem. To solve that problem, Lake Holiday would like to unilaterally change those deed obligations. That’s why Vogel, following the direction of Diamond and Lake Holiday, tried to change Virginia law to permit re-writing property deeds.

Fortunately, they failed a second time.

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Jill Holtzman Vogel and SB 1489: The Sequel To A Flop

February 1, 2009 By LakeHolidayNews

Most sequels are flops. That’s why good actors usually stay clear of them.

In June 2008, Sen. Jill Holtzman Vogel (R-27), supported by Sen. Richard Saslaw (D-35) and Del. Beverly Sherwood (R-29), introduced SB 6016, a bill that would have allowed re-writing property owners’ deeds without their consent. For very good reasons, that bill failed to become law.

At the 2009 session of the Virginia legislature that began on Wednesday, January 14th, Vogel returned with her sequel: SB 1489. As first introduced by Vogel, SB 1489 differs from SB 6016 by only 5 words. It’s noteworthy that while Saslaw and Sherwood publicly attached their names to last year’s SB 6016, Vogel alone is championing this year’s SB 1489.

SB 1489 is a bad bill. It’s a naked attempt by Vogel to interfere in active litigation, a point made clear by the headline posted on Vogel’s own website: “Lake Holiday suit spawns legislation….” (Like most of the images on our site, click on the image itself to get a better view.) It’s also unconstitutional on both state and federal grounds, because it attempts to retroactively change vested property rights.

The prospect that a property deed can be rewritten over the objection of owners introduces a degree of uncertainty for any buyer contemplating a purchase in a community affected by Vogel’s bill. Who would ever buy a property in such a community, knowing that the deed governing that property could be re-written? Vogel’s bill allows “in whole or in part, any provision of a declaration” to be changed. Current upheaval in the financial markets has made clear one thing: uncertainty destroys value. No buyer would touch any property in a community affected by Vogel’s bill because of the risk that the property deed could be changed in unforeseen and undesirable ways. The irony: if Vogel’s bill passes, it will destroy the property values of tens of thousands of Virginians, including those at Lake Holiday. Vogel may not devote a lot of thought to the impact on the property owners she destroys as she contemplates her move to a $5.5 million mansion. When a buyer spends that kind of money, changing “any provision” of the property deed isn’t tolerated.

It’s no surprise that Vogel’s bill will have significant unintended consequences on tens of thousands of Virginians, consequences that Vogel lacks the expertise to properly evaluate. By her own admission, she’s not an expert on property law. She also has a record of distorting the facts in a desperate attempt to make her case. For example, the articles on Vogel’s own website refer to her claiming there are “more than 9,100 property owners associations across Virginia….” According to Virginia’s own Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation, there are only 3148. One doesn’t command very much knowledge in the field of Virginia property associations when one doesn’t even know how many of them actually exist. If Vogel had a basis to claim there are more than 9100 associations that would be impacted by her proposed legislation, that is all the more reason why her changes should be carefully studied rather than hastily enacted into law.

Vogel’s own website refers to her observing that:

similar problems regarding the language in the act are likely to raise issues with each of the other 9,111 property owners’ associations throughout the state.

In the entire history of Virginia’s POA Act since it was first enacted in 1989, there have been only 3 Virginia Supreme Court cases that challenged whether the Act applied to a homeowners’ association, and 2 of those cases involved the same community. Vogel’s notion that the state is full of “similar problems” is a distortion that isn’t supported by almost 20 years of legislative and judicial history.

The most blatant of Vogel’s distortions – one she made to her own colleagues in the Senate – is her false claim that plaintiffs support her effort:

I explained that some of the plaintiffs [in the lawsuit against Lake Holiday Country Club Inc.] were overall good with it.

To be absolutely clear, the plaintiffs in the case are opposed to both of Vogel’s bills and are strongly against her effort to permit retroactively re-writing property deeds. In Vogel’s words, plaintiffs are not “overall good with it” as she falsely claimed. Through their counsel, plaintiffs in the case unambiguously communicated this strong opposition to Vogel herself. Following the original publication of Vogel’s statement, plaintiffs’ counsel demanded to Vogel that she publicly retract this obvious lie, but to date Vogel has not done so. Instead, she re-published the lie on her website.

Along with Vogel’s bad facts and distortions, in its present form SB 1489 contains an emergency clause. Since other associations aren’t storming to Richmond to fix a non-existent problem, the emergency to which Vogel refers must be that the plaintiffs in the case have filed their brief with the Virginia Supreme Court.

Curiously, Vogel’s web site includes 3 articles describing her efforts to introduce 2008’s SB 6016, but there’s no mention of that bill’s ultimate fate. SB 6016 failed to become law, a failure that took 4 days to come about.

At the June 26, 2008 meeting of Virginia’s Housing Commission, where SB 6016 met its fate, the only members of the public to speak on that bill were representatives and lawyers for the parties in the Lake Holiday case – the very case Vogel claims her bills don’t target.

One of the lawyers who argued in favor of SB 6016 at that meeting was Bob Diamond, an attorney from Reed Smith that represents Miller & Smith in the Lake Holiday lawsuit. Diamond is a member of the Presidents Club of the Community Associations Institute. Diamond has played an important role in pushing for the legislation Vogel has introduced. One wonders if Diamond is using his position to claim to have identified a non-existent problem and propose a fix solely to advance the interest of his client. His client is a party in the very lawsuit Vogel’s legislation targets.

If the history of sequels is any guide, the future doesn’t bode well for Jill Vogel and her SB 1489. As Entertainment Weekly observed on the subject of sequels:

…[S]ome are so ill-conceived, so cynically calculated, and so aggressively inept that they need to be called out and held accountable in the public square.

Every property owner in Virginia needs to work hard to see that Vogel’s sequel suffers a defeat more swift and resounding than her failed original.

To track the outcome of SB 1489, visit Virginia’s LIS System. To see the reactions of other Virginians, check out Richmond Sunlight.

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Jill Holtzman Vogel’s VA POA Act Amendment Is Tabled

June 27, 2008 By LakeHolidayNews

Sen. Jill Holtzman Vogel’s (R-27) emergency effort to amend Virginia’s Property Owners’ Association Act has been tabled for the special session still going on in Richmond. Her bill, SB6016 (our link is to a PDF redlined version of her bill provided to us by her office), Virginia Property Owners Association Act; reformation of declarations, was originally introduced in the Senate on Monday 6/23, where it was quickly referred to the Committee on General Laws and Technology. At a vote of that committee on Tuesday, the bill was reported out, or sent to the full senate. On Wednesday 6/25, the first vote on the measure in the full senate failed, but after a recess, a second attempt narrowly approved the measure by a single vote.

Following approval in the Senate, SB 6016 made its way to the House of Delegates, where it ended up in the Committee on General Laws. The next stop: the Housing Commission. And that’s where it stopped. Both we and others raised a number of concerns about the proposed legislation, perhaps the biggest of which was a serious question of constitutionality at the state and federal levels. The Housing Commission unanimously decided to table the bill for the remainder of this special session.

According to the Winchester Star, “Vogel repeatedly has stated that her bill is not related to an ongoing lawsuit against Lake Holiday Country Club Inc.” She continues to maintain this position. Bob Diamond, an attorney from Reed Smith representing Miller & Smith, and an attorney from Rees Broome, who happens to represent LHCC, were among the very few attendees commenting to the commission. Given their Tyson’s Corner offices are about 2 hours from Richmond, it’s an odd coincidence that attorneys for 2 defendants in a lawsuit happen to be about the only ones showing up to champion a bill that its chief senate patron said is “not related” to that lawsuit.

Start to nothing in 4 days. The legislative process is pretty quick in a special session.

We’ll discuss this further in due course.

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Bye, Bye, Bleckster

April 9, 2008 By LakeHolidayNews

Rick Bleck, who did not meet the 1 year ownership requirement for nomination set forth in LHCC’s bylaws and was invisible on the campaign trail but was elected anyway, resigned from LHCC’s board on January 30th. Bleck, aka the “Bleckster” (see his own email address), sent a resignation email to Wayne Poyer. He resigned essentially the day after attending the January board meeting which included an Executive Session focused on LHCC’s litigation issues. He wished the remaining board members “Good Luck to all with this one” and with that, he was gone. He may not have left a lasting impression, since GM Ray Sohl mistakenly identified him as “Bill Bleck” when forwarding his resignation email. Maybe the community that allegedly elected Bleck to the board didn’t leave a lasting impression on him either. In 2 instances he referred to Lake Holiday simply as “Holiday.”

We suspect Bleck was duped to keep his name on the 2007 ballot even though he didn’t meet the nomination requirement to block the election of Bill Masters. Masters has been critical of the board, and the board is intolerant of criticism, however justified. Caught in a place where he would not be able to make a meaningful contribution or independently become familiar with the challenges facing Lake Holiday, Bleck would have little more than a marginalized role on LHCC’s board. However, Bleck himself opted to take on this marginalized role by allowing his name to remain on the 2007 ballot after he learned of a legitimate challenge to his nomination. Although he put himself in a difficult position, he should have stuck it out.

At the March 27th board meeting, LHCC’s board decided to appoint Bleck’s successor. The deadline for expressing an interest to serve was March 18th, and only 2 prospective candidates responded by that date: Bill Masters and Mike Sweeney. Just as with Bleck’s nomination, there’s a big problem here. Mike Sweeney is the husband of Robin Pedlar, one of LHCC’s current directors. LHCC’s Articles of Incorporation contain this simple sentence:

A Lot shall not have more than one membership, but the single membership shall be shared by all owners of the lot.

Since Robin Pedlar and Mike Sweeney jointly own only 1 property at Lake Holiday, there’s only 1 possible membership in LHCC to go around. But to serve on LHCC’s board, one must be a member. Robin Pedlar is already serving on the board, so she must be a member. That leaves no membership for Mike Sweeney. Case closed. Not so fast. Wayne Poyer said he reviewed this issue “quite thoroughly” and that usually translates to getting a legal opinion to trick trusting owners that this is somehow, someway legitimate. Here’s that legal opinion from Juan Cardenas of Rees Broome as read by Wayne Poyer:

Assuming Mr. Sweeney is a member of LHCC and in good standing, he is eligible to serve on the board of directors per the Bylaws. The fact that he is a co-owner of a lot with Ms. Pedlar does not invalidate his eligibility to serve, nor would it affect his right to vote on matters as a member of the board on matters before the board of directors as the Bylaws do not regulate, much less prohibit, the possibility of two or more co-owners of one lot serving on the board at the same time. The Bylaws make clear that Mr. Sweeney and Ms. Pedlar share voting rights with respect to their lot as members of LHCC on matters before the membership, as only one vote is assigned to each lot regardless of the number of co-owners. But again, this point does not affect the issue of eligibility to serve on the board. I hope this further explanation is helpful. (emphasis added)

Bill Masters challenged whether Mike Sweeney is a member of LHCC, and he specifically referred to that statement under LHCC’s Articles of Incorporation. Cardenas avoided all mention of the Articles and instead tried to focus attention on LHCC’s Bylaws because there’s no way around the unambiguous statement in the Articles. His opinion has a more fundamental flaw. He assumed the very result he should have been asked to evaluate, whether Mike Sweeney is a member of LHCC. Given that Robin Pedlar is an existing director and thus a member, LHCC’s Articles make clear that Mike Sweeney is not a member of LHCC. Therefore, as long as Robin Pedlar is using that membership by holding office, Mike Sweeney is ineligible to serve on the board. We suspect that Mike Sweeney himself knows that this arrangement doesn’t pass the laugh test. That’s why he put the onus back on the board and expressed the hope that the board “reviewed all the documents” and would act in “good conscience.”

We also wonder why Cardenas filled his opinion with arguably true statements that are totally irrelevant to the real issue of whether Mike Sweeney is a member of LHCC. Did he do this as a slight-of-hand trick to draw attention away from his circular logic? Did Wayne Poyer accurately frame the question to Cardenas or read Cardenas’ entire response to the board? We may never know. What we do know is that the LHCC board will blatantly violate its own governing documents without blinking an eye.

During the vote to appoint Bleck’s successor (the first part of which is covered in the above video and the second part here in Breaking the Rules Pt 2, Robin Pedlar abstained and gave no reason for her abstention. We doubt that she needed to explain to other directors that Mike Sweeney was her husband. However, given that Robin Pedlar and Mike Sweeney have different surnames, that fact may not be obvious to the rest of the community. She had a tough choice: be silent or make it crystal clear that she is Mike Sweeney’s wife and explain her abstention, which would have only drawn attention to the illegitimacy of Sweeney’s appointment – attention that clearly LHCC’s directors did not want. Given a tough choice, a Silent Sitter will usually choose to keep silent. Congratulations, Robin Pedlar! You’re our Silent Sitter award winner for the March 27th board meeting.

Robin Pedlar is our 6th Silent Sitter award winner, and the 2007 board is about half-way through its tenure. We thought it was time to create a Silent Sitter page honoring all the winners, with a little background on the award itself.

If your own wife can’t openly vote in favor of whatever you’re trying to do, there’s a problem with it. And she knows it.

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Quick Takes on the March 27th Board Meeting

March 30, 2008 By LakeHolidayNews

Wayne Poyer, Pat Shields, and Dave Buermeyer

Here’s our quick take on the March 27th board meeting. We now include video thumbnails directly in posts. If you click on the thumbnail, a video player will pop up and begin playing the video. Look for this feature in future posts. If you have problems using this feature, make a comment on our Help page.

We’ve uploaded 15 videos from the March 27th meeting, representing over 1 1/2 hours of about a 2 hour meeting.

One of the first orders of business: fill the board seat vacated by Rick Bleck, who did not meet the 1 year ownership requirement for nomination set forth in LHCC’s bylaws and was invisible on the campaign trail but was elected anyway. There were 2 candidates: Bill Masters and Mike Sweeney, who is the husband of board member Robin Pedlar.

LHCC’s own Articles include the requirement that “A Lot shall not have more than one membership, but the single membership shall be shared by all owners of the lot.” Since Robin Pedlar is a director, she must be a member. If there’s only 1 membership for a lot, there’s no membership opportunity left for Mike Sweeney. LHCC’s directors get around that major roadblock by obtaining a legal opinion from Juan Cardenas of Rees Broome. That opinion starts out “Assuming Mike Sweeney is a member of LHCC….” As far back as Aristotle in 350 B. C., this con job has been understood to be a logical fallacy, often referred to as “circular reasoning.” Check it out: Assuming pigs can fly, then pigs can fly. Use it, like Wayne Poyer did, to impress passive directors and gullible neighbors. Just don’t actually try to fly, because that will expose the fallacy pretty quickly. Buermeyer gave a speech intended for the camera that encouraged diversity on the board yet offered Masters the hope of joining the board only if he became a clone of Buermeyer himself. Buermeyer and Pedlar abstained; Murphy and Marcus avoided controversy by skipping the meeting. Task #1: pass a resolution to make the vote on this charade an open vote. Watch LHCC’s rules trampled on and tossed away in these 2 clips, Breaking The Rules Pt 1 and Breaking The Rules Pt 2. This action shows the board will recklessly violate LHCC’s own governing documents to keep its grip on power.

GM Ray Sohl gave the management report, Mar 08 GM Rpt Pt 1 and Mar 08 GM Rpt Pt 2, in which the topic of the effectiveness of the Roving Patrol was raised. Is it effective? The board moved that question to Executive Session, so members will never know just what the roving patrol led by Zeb Brevard, the roving patrol supervisor, actually does all day. Treasurer John Martel, who sometimes struggles with accounting issues, offered a friendly health tip in his Treasurer’s Report. Wayne Poyer raised a concern that an owner/builder was possibly blocked from using white garage doors, which should automatically be approved, in our clip Garage Doors and asked Judy Platt about stocking the lake with non-native fish.

There have been 2 serious accidents on West Masters Drive, so the topic of guard rails (Guard Rails Again Pt 1 and Guard Rails Again Pt 2) came up again. We’ve heard reports that a driver was very seriously injured, perhaps paralyzed, in a recent accident on West Masters. If guard rails had been installed, the seriousness of these accidents may have been reduced. Steve Locke did offer a suggestion: put up caution tape. Action on the guard rail issue was “tabled” because of LHCC’s “serious financial headaches.” Estimates for dam culvert work (just 1 part of a much bigger project) came in at approximately $175,000 compared to a budget of $45,000. This $130,000 surprise didn’t find its way into Wayne Poyer’s April 2008 President’s Report, which discussed dam costs.

Changes were made to construction guidelines, apparently requiring a member to be in good standing for all properties owned, rather than the property for which construction approval is applied, before approving new construction permits. If allowed to stand, this will just about kill any new construction at Lake Holiday. The board also discussed taking more aggressive action against serious compliance violations. That could mean spending more money on lawyers at a time when money is in short supply. With her husband’s help, Robin Pedlar outlined the plans for 2008 social activities and suggested that LHCC in effect have a second set of books to get around the troubles created by accrual accounting. Directors seemed comfortable they could find a way to shift expenses from one time period to another to make everything work.

Dave Buermeyer led a discussion of changing LHCC’s water conservation rules, but most of that discussion focused on eliminating the single word “services” from a motion actually made by Jo-anne Barnard. Barnard was concerned about expressing positive comments about Aqua Virginia’s services when there have been so many complaints from Lake Holiday homeowners that Aqua Virginia’s service is “not at an acceptable level.” Buermeyer lost control of his own topic, and in the end, voted against the resolution he presented. John Martel seemed to have no idea what he just voted on, since he voted against Buermeyer’s resolution but said that he wanted the resolution to pass. Maybe that one word “services” was the glue that held everything together. Maybe some would pout and block their own ideas if they couldn’t have it their own way.

The Middleton story that we previously covered has recorded a new chapter, after he put “No Trespassing” signs on his property. Wayne Poyer vowed to “do it much more crisply than we did the last one.”

Water Conservation

2008 Activities

Serious Compl Violations

Construction Guidelines

Mar 08 FYI

Guard Rails Again Pt 1

Guard Rails Again Pt 2

Non-native Fish

Garage Doors

Mar 08 Treas Rpt

Breaking The Rules Pt 1

Breaking The Rules Pt 2

Bd Vacancy The Sequel

Mar 08 GM Rpt Pt 1

Mar 08 GM Rpt Pt 2

We’ve also added a link on our sidebar to SchoolMatters, a Standard & Poors website with test scores, demographics, district finances, parent reviews, and other information on schools nationwide. It’s easy to compare schools. Our link is for Frederick County, VA schools. Check it out.

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Defendant Steve Locke Will Stop At Nothing…

August 28, 2007 By LakeHolidayNews

At the June 25th board meeting, LHCC directors debated defending against the Masters lawsuit. Directors evaluated whether they should use Rees Broome, a Vienna-based law firm that LHCC Treasurer John Martel compared to an “ambulance chaser” with “extravagant” rates or the lower-priced Segan Mason & Mason. (For more on John Martel’s evaluation of Rees Broome, watch Use Rees Broome Pts 1 & 2 on our Videos page.) The board also considered whether LHCC should defend the 5 directors individually named in the Masters suit: Dave Buermeyer, Suzy Marcus, Ken Murphy, Noel O’Brien, and Steve Locke.

On this last point, defendant Dave Buermeyer suggested that the individual defendants recuse themselves or abstain from voting on whether LHCC should defend the 5 directors. After all, it would be very self-serving for these 5 directors to vote in favor of a motion to get LHCC to pay for their defense. But that created a little problem. Earlier in the meeting, with everyone – including Steve Locke – in the room, LHCC President Wayne Poyer announced that director Chris Allison was “called away unexpectedly.” At no time during the 3 hour meeting did Chris Allison appear and, in light of Wayne Poyer’s comment, there was no reason to believe that Chris Allison was nearby.

LHCC has 11 directors. With 1 absent, that left 10 directors. If the 5 director defendants recused themselves from voting on that motion, that would leave only 5 directors able to vote. However, 6 directors are required for a quorum, or the minimum number that can transact business. The 5 non-defendant directors actually present at the meeting would not be able to approve a motion to pay for the defense of the 5 defendants.

To get what he wants – a motion passed for LHCC to pay for his legal representation, director Steve Locke suggests:

I can go outside and in 30 seconds get Chris Allison’s signature on a piece of paper. I’ve been trained. I’ve watched and observed how to do that. Yeah.

Since Chris Allison was “called away unexpectedly,” he is not in the immediate vicinity. Obtaining his legitimate signature in 30 seconds is an absolute impossibility, particularly if Chris Allison were allowed any time to review what he is asked to sign. It’s pretty clear what Steve Locke is suggesting to the board. Steve Locke will do whatever it takes, even if it means coming up with the signature of a director who is not even present, to pass a board resolution authorizing LHCC to pay for his legal counsel.

Instead of a negative reaction to Steve Locke’s repugnant suggestion, he gets a warm reaction. Pat Shields can be heard on the video interjecting in a complimentary way: “You had training.” When Steve Locke says that he has “watched and observed how to do that,” one senses that this is business as usual. This conduct reminds us of defendant Noel O’Brien’s suggestion that LHCC fabricate costs for non-existent employees as a response to Masters’ information requests. Fabricating things must be, as Pat Shields and Steve Locke remark, part of the Lake Holiday training. Ray Sohl, the current GM, sat through this entire episode and said nothing. We can imagine that former GM Dave Ingegneri witnessed equally troubling episodes, yet said nothing.

When Bill Masters heads to court on Thursday against Steve Locke and the other defendants, these are the kind of people he will be up against: soul-less people who will stop at nothing to get their way.

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The Pitch You Weren’t Supposed To Hear

July 3, 2007 By LakeHolidayNews

On June 21st, LHCC’s board of directors held a special meeting to discuss their recently announced Utility Extension Program (UEP). The audience was filled with the likes of former LHCC directors Frank Heisey, Harriet Smith, and Tom Wallace. Apparently, no Membership Lot owners showed up, which is thoroughly understable in light of the treatment they’ve received by LHCC’s board. Besides, since meaningful participation is only available to board cronies, virtually no one shows up anymore.

It’s Time For Answers

February 19, 2007 By LakeHolidayNews

Bill Masters, a longtime Lake Holiday resident, has sent an email to John Martel, LHCC’s Treasurer, and most of the other LHCC directors. His email addresses a topic important to us all: money. He makes a request for additional documents and asks to get answers to certain questions.