Vanessa opened the meeting by addressing what she called the incident at the south dock and she described it as a technical misunderstanding regarding jurisdictional mapping that the board’s counsel was reviewing. She used the phrase in due course. She did not look at me once while she said any of it and she moved to approve the minutes before anybody could raise a hand.
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.