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I agree with you = I've been our board for 10 years. I can't tell you the times I've wanted to quit .. actually did once, but was persuaded to come back on.

I know for the most part our POA (we are a property owners association - not homeowners..) have always been reasonably sensible. Last year we had a few folks get on that had specific agendas. It's been an interesting fight. In our case we have VERY limited funds to maintain a pool and unpaved (non county) roads. It's all we can do to keep the pool running, and grade a road a year.

Our POA was created over 30 years ago, and the way the by-laws are written it is close to impossible to change them. Therefore we cannot raise dues (either $24.00 or $48.00 a YEAR depending on what unit you own property in).

The "new folks" have differing agendas - but that's why our little core group hangs tough. It is obvious they are on the board for personal gain, not to protect the community. We're constantly fighting about impossible ways to enforce restrictions, and always having to bring back the bottom line - you CANNOT change a thing without 50% approval of the total of the property owners. SO - we stumble along, trying to maintain the pool/park and roads on literally under 5000.00 a year. I will say it's made for interesting board meetings. AND a couple of the "newbies" have admitted that it is NOT as cut and dried as they thought.

By the way - we've NEVER forclosed on a property. We HAVE placed liens against some that have NEVER paid their dues.

Under discussion for next year is turning over our billing to a 3rd party. They pay us up front for a fairly large percentage of the entire dues to be collected. It's up to them to collect the rest. But only for current dues - nothing past due.. It's just been brought forward, and we are investigating it for next year.

Texas recently put some laws into effect that protect the homeowner (slightly) and I think that is fair.

In the case of this article - it would be interesting to see the whole story - is it actually a(n) HOA run amok - or is there more to the story than we know?

I did so for the express purpose of reigning in these weenies.

I did so for a similar purpose and spent the next fifteen years going to meetings in which the majority made decisions about what "we" should do about things. Unfortunately, nothing ever actually got done because nobody was willing to either volunteer or pay to do it. When we finally got a majority of like-minded folks on the board, we adopted a "no unfunded mandate" code that put an end to that.

I have a particularly fond memory of one guy who wanted to pull out a diseased tree in the common area. He was opposed by several folks who "liked the way the tree looked". We went through them one by one, assigning the responsibility for future maintenance of the tree to them. When all declined, we told the guy to go ahead and pull it out.

HOA's are just little exercises in democracy, full of all the same flaws that resulted in the founding fathers chosing a republic as our form of government.