The Mods think that becausecit was a Senator from another state it violates the only local issues policy.

A data center possibly being built here makes it a local issue.

We will pay more for everything, water, power, and everything the data center uses because we operate on a market economy. It there is more demand for resources, the price goes up.

It's a given no senator from Utah will be protecting us. They are bought and paid for by billionaires. So we should consider ourselves lucky some other state's senator will be trying to help us.

HOAs are not a money making business. They exist only to manage the land, the property, the Owners' units share.

They don't make a profit. They don't make any money. It is just a group of homeowners working to maintain their property.

They have unique vulnerabilities that creeps detect and exploit for financial gain. Stealing from HOAs is the like going in and picking the pockets of hundreds of people. After stealing from an HOA, the fees have to go up to cover the theft. Because there are no profits. It is not that kind of business. The only income is from fees.

To me, it is the lowest kind of crime. Getting hired with the intent of stealing from your employer because they are vulnerable takes a real lowlife.

And just as bad as the theft, is the way corrupt management companies totally remake the governing documents of the HOA in order to take total contol of them. They victimize people who are just living in their homes and suddenly their community feels like a prison.

They fight tooth and nail to stop audits. One man living in a Joel Prince managed property has been trying to get an audit for eight years.

Only a thief would oppose audits.

Having normal protections stripped from your HOA by an employee is devastating. And that is just the beginning. No vendors other than those suggested by the employee are permitted. No attention to complaints of services costing four times the cost of other vendors. No concern when someone is paid five times what other people can be hired for.

To go in and steal and alter their system to make it hard to stop the theft, so much so that living there becomes a nightmare, you have to be depraved.

When a board or management company withholds the owners' contact list from owners, they are ANNOUNCING that they are corrupt.

They are sabotaging the intent of the governing documents of an HOA. They are doing that to keep control and preclude the actual power in the HOA from stopping them from harming a business that belongs to each and every unit owner in that HOA. The system depends on owners contacting each other, to know what is going on in their HOA. Contacting each other to mobilize to stop things, like, say an innocent Owner being wrongfully driven out of his home by the board.

If a business is set up so that all the shareholders need to connect with each other to provide oversight or to fire problem employees or board members, and the board and management cripple that from happening, by withholding contact information, they are corrupt. They are actively working against the business they are supposed to be working for.

The power in an HOA always resides in the owners. That does not change when a board of directors is elected to oversee the needs of the community, the property. The owners always have all the power in an HOA. ANYTHING a board does can be overturned by the owners.

Virtually all HOAs started out as direct democracies. Where each unit holder had one vote and elections were held for major issues. Because each unit owner was a stranger to every other unit owner, people who just happened to buy units in the same community, a democracy is the only logical way an HOA can work.

Corrupt management companies started corrupting HOA boards to gain total control over a business that was created only to manage everything to do with the land, the property, that each unit holder shared with their neighbors. After a while, employees of those businesses, a management company, started working to gain control of a business that exists only to serve the needs of each condo owner in an HOA. Like everthing else, HOAs have vulnerabilities that dishonest people, criminal minded people, discover and exploit for their own personal gain.

An HOA is just the name of the business created, as a legal device, so that separate homeowners could live on the same property. Until some smart people developed that plan, condominiums could not exist, legally, because separate homeowners could not share one piece of land. In an HOA each unit owner shares the land, the property on which the condominium community is built, with every other unit owner.

A hired hand, the management companies, do not own any part of that property, but they devised a plan in which they could corrupt the system and take over total control of the HOA and boss the actual owners of the homes and the business around. They gained access to all the assets of the HOA and siphoned off funds at will.

The creators of HOAs never intended it to become its own separate "country" with severe, petty rules made by a board that would for no legitimate reason, give homeowners in an HOA less freedom than their neighbors in surrounding single family homes. Requiring your dog's DNA is just one of the insipid rules boards run amok have concocted.

Unfortunately, pretty, rigid, controlling people are often attracted to any source of power they can claim. When those kind of people get on boards and dismantle existing systems, agreed to by all owners in an HOA, the whole idea of HOA living starts to feel like a prison.

When those kind of people go further and ignore the rules, agreed to by everyone, and start acting as individual agents, hiring management that further corrupts the intent of an HOA, owners have to rise up and throw those people off the board.

When an HOA board starts working against the interests of owners, by including rules that harm owners in elections in which they cheat, to force harmful rules on owners, they have to be removed. When those rules enable a management company to undertake a hostile takeover of the HOA, a property in which they hold no ownership, zero, zippo, owners have to act to stop them.

When boards align with a management company, against the owners, they have lost the plot. It is time for legal action or for all owners to start engaging. The corrupt board and management company have worked to shut down any communication between owners. Because they know ALL the power resides in the owners. The business belongs to all owners. The board was just supposed to represent the owners in matters that did not require everyone's attention. Owners were supposed to take turns on the boards.

When a system is based on the honor system, and does not include penalties for an HOA board that violates the system they are supposed to enforce, owners have to stop them. A board that would do that has proven there is nothing they won't do. No line they won't cross. No crime they would not commit against owners.

In our HOA, the current Board illegally drove an Owner out of his home. For the record, because these people do not understand this simple concept, THERE IS NO SITUATION IN WHICH A FIRE REBUILD, PAID FOR WITH OUR JOINT PROPERTY INSURANCE, FAILS, AND THEN THE OWNER IS FINANCIALLLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE NEEDED REPAIRS. THERE IS A WARRANTY THAT MANAGEMENT IS REQUIRED TO CLAIM BY CONTACTING THE RESTORATION COMPANY, WHICH WAS HIRED BY OUR HOA MANAGEMENT.

Since that is such a simple and obvious concept, I have to assume this Board intentionally decimated an Owner here to hide something they wanted to remain secret. That is a crime.

Unlike all the members on The Board when Ian was wrongfully, illegally, intentionally deprived of his property by their actions, I can never just let it go. Never. From what I can see, this Board has become a criminal organization.

And instead of voting amongst yourselves to remove Chris Taylor from The Board for masterminding intentionally driving an innocent man out of his home, to cover up a crime someone else commited, you made him President. Chris waited a year after Ian's ceiling fell in to go over and see the damage. He went on a day the work crew Ian hired was there working, and there was no longer anything to show him. He knew he was responsible to claim the warranty or he would not have made that visit. He squandered our money on attorneys, who obviously only do what they are told, to fight the valid lawsuit Ian filed to get Chris to do his job. If Chris had asked the attorneys if Ian's case was valid, they would have told him yes. Chris is the one who instigated violating our Governing Documents and ending self management WITH NO AUTHORITY to do so. He cheated at the election where numerous harmful rules were forced on Owners that enable our HOA to be taken over by a corrupt management company. Those rules serve no good purpose that benefit Owners. I think Chris has been working for Utah Management the whole time. There is no daylight between them. What is wrong with you people? Clearly no one is thinking straight.

It is also a crime for any Board Member to work for Utah Management, in any capacity. To vote the way they want, to take any favor or payment to manipulate things in ways that UM wants. Doing anything except working for the best interest of Cedar Springs Owners, for any payment or promise of a favor or because of any personal connection, is a crime. And I am determined to catch anyone betraying our community for personal gain.

That is what happened here.

To Board Members saying that is not true, compare the system we had for 45 years, to the one The Board uses now.

This new one was illegally forced on us. It stripped Owners of all say about what happens here. The Board did not come up with these changes on their own. They were coached by someone. Someone who benefits from the changes.

There is no benefit to hundreds of Owners. None.

Not one change, of the many The Board forced on us, was in the best interest of the people who own this property, this business, OUR HOA.

Every single change they cheated and schemed to force on us follows the playbook of how predatory management companies take over HOAs.

Letting random strangers take over as Managers with ZERO questions asked about their qualifications or backgrounds, including criminal backgrounds, is a clue that the changes were not for 202 Owners' benefit. Using the vulnerabilities in an HOA to set up a system where no one will question the predatory management company and allow them to do everything they want, right under the noses of unqualified boards, is proof the changes benefit the management company. And only the management company.

Our previous Manager was arrested for possession of child porn, and he worked here for many years after that. An annual background check for all Managers should be mandatory. If The Board had done that decades ago, they would have discovered he was a danger here. I don't understand why that did not make them realize you have to vet people. What if we do that and find criminals have been the ones instigating all the changes here? They have violated our rights and our Governing Documents to change everything about how this HOA operates. We need to know everything about who they are.

Background checks are necessary for Managers of any business, including an HOA. You don't get to bypass that because you were only elected to be Board Members. That kind of illogical thinking endangers our properties.

Running it like any other business would be run should not be up for discussion.

Leaving the door wide open so anyone can walk in and do whatever they want should never have been allowed.

Just because The Board, a minuscule number of the people who own this business, got conned by an investment equity preditor and changed the entire setup here, doesn't mean they can do whatever they feel like.

They were elected to be Board Members, not Property Managers.

And now because they have cheated and schemed to take on the job of Property Manager, they need to be vetted the same way a responsible business vets managers who have access to literally everything at the business.

This is a property where hardworking people each pay for their own properties, collectively worth around $40 million. Letting the same people who violated our rights to start this downward slide take over with absolutely no information about them is a joke.

There was no vetting when they were just Board Members. That made sense. They were just representatives of the rest of us. A liaison between the Manager, who was professionally trained, and hundreds of Owners. Now, instead of facilitating communication, being available to all Owners as a way to get their voices heard, The Board is completely unavailable to Owners. Everything goes through the predatory management company. And The Board sits shielded away from Owners and does whatever they feel like. They no longer care what hundreds of Owners say. After giving themselves all the power here, this Board thinks they can still withhold everything about themselves from us. That is nonsense.

You want to be a manager, you need to give us your resume. Because it matters if you work at McDonalds, or Google. It matters if you have a criminal background. Everything about your past matters now that you have cheated your way into stripping me and everyone else here of making any decisions about the properties we pay for.

In fact, the decision to just let anyone who got a few more votes on an anemic election where most people miss that it is even happening, because The Board set it up that way, suddenly have access to all our assets with no vetting and no oversight is the worst decision they could make.

You don't get to slide into the power position, while working to keep Owners from communicating, and do whatever you feel like here.

Your judgment and your integrity have already screamed that you are unqualified for the job that you stole. Cheated at an election to steal.

Any reasonable person would be able to see that.

“I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back.”

Tolstoy

It make no sense. To completly expose an HOA, the business owned by 202 unit Owners, to every crime imaginable, indicates someone on The Board or the Management company intends to steal from the business.

It makes zero sense that because The Board made themselves Managers, they don't have to abide by procedures that ALL businesses abide by. No background checks, no oversight, no bonding, no resumes, no audits, are all crimes waiting to happen.

If a management company suggested, developed, or approved any such system, they are announcing they intend to embezzle from that HOA. There is no excuse for a professional company to suggest or approve of an HOA operating any differently than that company operates. I guarantee Utah Management requires resumes, background checks, oversight and bonding of any of their employees handling their finances.

I asked AI:

What year did HOAs start having to worry about management companies taking over their boards?

AI answered instantly:

Concerns regarding Homeowners Association (HOA) management companies taking control or exerting undue influence over boards began to emerge as the industry matured, with significant escalations taking hold around 2010–2015 and increasing dramatically with recent private equity acquisitions in the mid-2020s. 

While HOAs became popular in the 1960s, the "corporatization" of management, where massive companies started consolidating local firms and dominating board operations, is a more recent phenomenon. 

Key Timeline of Escalating Concerns

2000–2010: Initial Consolidation: Major players like Associa began aggressively acquiring smaller regional firms, starting a decade of consolidation.

2010–2015: Rise of "One-Stop" Management: Larger firms began offering bundled services (landscaping, legal, maintenance), which led to situations where the management company, rather than the homeowner board, held the power, especially when the company's founder had political ties to the state property code, such as in Texas.

2015–2020: Digital Transformation & Power Shift: Following the adoption of sophisticated property software, management companies began acting as the sole source of data and financial management, leading to less transparency and control for volunteer board members.

2020–Present: Private Equity Acquisitions: Massive influxes of capital from private equity firms have accelerated the trend, with management companies shifting to "standardize" communities for profit, often forcing board members to deal with changing service models. 

Why Boards Worry About Takeovers

Board members often worry that management companies will take over because the management firm: 

Controls Information: The management company holds the records, controls the bank accounts, and dictates the financial data the board sees.

Overrules Volunteers: Professional managers may try to push their own agenda, preferred vendors, or legal counsel over the wishes of the volunteer board.

Creates Dependence: Smaller boards may become entirely dependent on the firm, allowing the manager to run the community (often poorly) without proper oversight. 

By the mid-2020s, with over 370,000 HOAs in the U.S. and massive consolidation in the sector, boards are increasingly advised to be cautious and to use strict contracts to ensure the management company works for them, not the other way around. 

Frontline is our regular look at HOA news stories making headlines—curated for homeowners who want to understand what’s actually happening beyond the drama.

Every week, we review dozens of articles about HOA disputes, board overreach, policy changes, and homeowner conflicts. We pull out the ones that matter most—not because they’re the most sensational, but because they illustrate patterns that show up in real cases.

For each story, we break down:

- What happened (in plain language)

- How we’d approach it as a homeowner before calling a lawyer

- What warning signs would suggest it’s time for legal help

This isn’t legal advice. These are practical observations from a law firm that’s seen hundreds of these disputes play out. We’re showing you how to think through common HOA problems—so you can recognize when self-help makes sense and when it doesn’t.

Frontline exists because most HOA conflicts follow predictable scripts. The details change, but the structure stays the same. Understanding those patterns helps you make better decisions when your own board starts acting out of line.

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1. Former Hammocks HOA President Reaches Plea Deal in $11M Fraud Case

The Marglli Gallego saga continued this week with new sentencing developments out of Miami-Dade. The former Hammocks Community Association president — described by residents as someone they were "terrified" of — and her husband, Jose Antonio Gonzalez, accepted plea arrangements connected to roughly $11 million in misappropriated HOA funds. Gonzalez forfeited a property prosecutors say was purchased with association money and turned over a $50,000 restitution check. The Hammocks case became a national reference point for how badly HOA governance can decay when residents' early complaints are ignored — it took years of pushback, state-level intervention, and an appointed HOA monitor before the full picture came into view.

Read the article

Our Take: Cases like Hammocks rarely start with eight-figure theft. They start with a board that won't release financials, a management company that won't return calls, and homeowners who give up after the first runaround. Before things ever reach criminal territory, the tools available to a homeowner are mostly procedural: written records requests, attendance at open-session meetings, and a contemporaneous log of every interaction (date, method of contact, response — or silence). If neighbors are getting different answers than you are, write that down too. The clinical paper trail is what eventually changes the dynamic.

Signs this may need a lawyer's eye: legitimate financial document requests get refused without explanation, the same vendors keep getting paid above market with no visible bid history, or you start hearing about properties or assets connected to board members that the association quietly funds. A single odd transaction may have a clean explanation. A pattern the board refuses to discuss in writing is a different situation entirely.

2. Honolulu Property Manager Indicted Over Alleged $647K HOA Theft

A Honolulu property manager named Doane has been indicted on charges of first-degree computer fraud and first-degree theft, accused of embezzling roughly $647,000 from homeowner associations she managed. Arraignment is set for later this week. Details about the alleged method are still emerging, but the charges suggest direct access to association financial systems was the vector.

Read the article

Our Take: Worth re-stating the structural point this case illustrates: the relationship between an HOA and its management company is contractual, and the management company answers to the board — not to individual homeowners. That structure works fine when boards are paying attention. It tends to fail when they aren't. As an owner, what you generally do have access to are association records, though whether you can actually compel disclosure depends on your governing documents and the relevant state statute.

Practical moves before anything reaches a crisis: request the most recent reserve study, the year's bank statements, and any audit reports. Ask in writing and keep the request narrow and specific. If those requests get slow-walked or refused, that's a data point you can act on later. When a single management company has stonewalled multiple homeowners on basic financial questions, that's usually when self-help has run its course.

3. Florida Condos Turn to Bank Loans to Cover Mandatory Repairs

Florida condominium associations facing newly required structural repairs — a downstream consequence of post-Surfside reforms — are increasingly using bank loans to fund work their reserves can't cover. The article walks through how years of underfunded reserves, deferred maintenance, and now mandatory milestone inspections have collided. Special assessments remain the primary funding tool, but financing is now firmly in the mix, and not every building qualifies on the lender side.

Read the article

Our Take: If you own a unit in an older Florida condo, especially one approaching its 30-year inspection milestone, this affects you directly. The bill for decades of underfunded reserves is being paid right now — through special assessments, through loans that raise monthly dues, or through a lender quietly deciding the building isn't financeable anymore. None of that is hypothetical.

Your governing documents are the starting point. Pull the most recent reserve study, the structural integrity reserve study (SIRS) if your building has completed one, and the minutes from any board meeting where loan options were discussed. Ask whether the loan terms have been put to a unit-owner vote where required, what the interest rate is, and how it changes the assessment timeline. When boards skip procedural requirements on something this consequential, the disputes that follow often turn on whether the vote was properly noticed and conducted — not whether the repair was actually needed.

4. Fannie Mae Tightens Project Standards for Condo and HOA Mortgages

Fannie Mae announced meaningful changes to its project standards and property eligibility rules — changes that will affect how lenders approve mortgages on units inside condominium projects and HOAs. The practical effect: more buildings could end up on lender blacklists if their reserves, deferred maintenance, financials, or insurance fall short of the new criteria.

Read the article

Our Take: This is the quieter story this week, but arguably the one with the longest tail. When Fannie Mae decides a project doesn't meet standards, conventional financing dries up, sale prices fall, and current owners can find themselves stuck — unable to refinance, unable to sell at the price they were counting on. Boards that have been deferring on reserves are about to discover the federal mortgage market is paying attention.

If you're an owner, this is a fair moment to ask the board specific questions: What's our current reserve funding ratio? When was our last reserve study completed? Have we heard anything from lenders about project eligibility? Do we carry the insurance limits Fannie now wants to see? Get the answers on paper. If the board can't or won't respond, that itself tells you something — about governance, and about your unit's future marketability.

5. River's Edge HOA Asks City to Take Over Drainage Lot

A useful inversion of the usual HOA-as-villain story: the River's Edge HOA is asking the city to take over the deed to a drainage lot the association has been responsible for. The board's reasoning is straightforward — maintenance costs have outpaced what 24 homeowners can absorb through dues, and the consensus is that raising dues won't close the gap.

Read the article

Our Take: This is what healthy governance looks like — a small association being honest about a maintenance burden it can't sustain and looking for a real solution. The opposite, which is what we usually see, is the board that doesn't acknowledge the math doesn't work. Maintenance gets deferred, common areas degrade, and eventually someone's basement floods or a retention pond fails. By then, the dispute has become much harder.

If you live in a small HOA that owns real infrastructure — drainage, private roads, retaining walls, shared wells — the questions are worth asking now: Do we have a current reserve study for this asset? What's the projected cost of replacement? What's our funding ratio against that? Most common-area infrastructure disputes don't begin as disputes. They begin as slow-motion failures that nobody acknowledged until the water was already inside someone's house.

It occurred to me that O'leary wants to "mine for bitcoin" which is a harmful ponzi scheme. It hurts people as much as the data centers do. It has no benefit to mankind. So, diminishing the quality of life for millions of people for that is wrong. Ironically, I asked AI about that.

AI said:

The massive 40,000-acre "Stratos" data center project proposed for Box Elder County, Utah, is primarily designed as a high-capacity AI and hyperscale campus, but its immense power generation capacity of up to 9 gigawatts, powered by natural gas, provides the energy flexibility often associated with large-scale bitcoin mining.

While marketed for AI, such enormous energy-focused projects are frequently capable of supporting various computing intensive activities, including cryptocurrency mining.

Project Scope: The project, associated with investor Kevin O'Leary, is massive, spanning 62 square miles near the Great Salt Lake.

Power Source: The facility plans to connect to the Ruby Pipeline to receive natural gas, generating its own power on-site, rather than relying solely on the state’s electrical grid.

Controversy & Usage: Local officials approved the project, with stakeholders arguing it will support technological advancement and energy resilience, while critics raise concerns about the high energy consumption and environmental impact.

Timeline: The project is in early stages, with officials estimating it could be roughly ten years before it is fully operational.