Grant Halloway raised his hand anyway, which surprised me, and asked whether the board had obtained a title opinion on the lake. Vanessa said that matter was under review. Elaine Foster, sitting two chairs down with the treasurer’s binder open in front of her, said nothing, but she had a pen in her hand, and she was not writing with it.
When the floor opened, I stood up and asked the chair for four minutes. Vanessa said the board would allow three, and I said three would be plenty, and it was the first promise either of us kept that summer. I did not make a speech. I walked to the head table and laid three things down in order, side by side, where the whole front of the room could see them.
The certified copy of Brier Plat number two with parcel C hatched and stamped. The recorded easement open to page four. And a stack of annual assessment statements going back as far as I could obtain them each with the lake access fee line highlighted in yellow.
I asked Elaine one question and I asked it as gently as I have ever asked anything because she was the only person at that table who had ever looked uncomfortable on my behalf. I asked how long the association had been collecting the lake access fee. She looked at her binder, though I do not think she needed to, and said twelve years.
I asked what the annual amount was per household. She said it had been sixty dollars for the first several years and was now ninety. I asked how many households were in Cedar Glenn Estates. Somebody in the third row said two hundred eighteen before Elaine could. I did the arithmetic out loud slowly and I did not editorialize because the numbers did that on their own.
Somewhere above two hundred thousand dollars had been collected over twelve years under a line item for access to a lake the association had never demonstrated it owned, part of which it was contractually forbidden to charge for at all. I read the fee prohibition from page four of the easement aloud and then I set it back down.
A woman near the window said out loud that she had paid that fee every year since she moved in and had never once been on the water. Somebody else asked whether the fee had funded the insurance rider and if the rider was written against ground the association did not own what exactly had been insured.
Vanessa said the fee had always supported the entire lake as an amenity belonging to the whole community. It was the right sentence for a different meeting. Grant Halloway turned in his chair to face her fully and asked the question I had come there hoping somebody other than me would ask. “Vanessa,” he said, “when did you learn that parcel C is not association property?”