Fifteen months later, after the criminal case had gone through its own hearings and negotiated resolution, Diane was sentenced to fifteen months for offenses arising from the deliberate interference with the permitted system and her related false reporting. The financial judgment included restitution of $132,500 tied to response and restoration costs and the outstanding service obligations, along with a separate $25,000 civil penalty. The precise accounting was more complicated than a newspaper headline, but the principle was simple: the families who had already paid their assessments should not be made to pay again for an intentional act carried out against the water supply.
Diane's lawyers argued that she had acted as association president and that the HOA's liability coverage should respond. The insurer rejected coverage for the intentional conduct established in the case. Recovery involved her personal resources and applicable bond arrangements rather than treating her actions as a routine neighborhood maintenance expense. There were legal proceedings about payment schedules and enforcement, none of them as satisfying as the immediate relief of seeing the contaminated line properly secured.
Robert Keene and Janice Bellamy, who had supported the unauthorized work, resigned from the board. Diane was removed from the presidency almost as soon as the county inspection ended. The same people who had clapped at the emergency meeting now demanded open minutes and independent accounting. Some were ashamed. Some said they had been misled. Others insisted they hadn't known enough about the water system to recognize the danger. I believed a mixture of all three was probably true.
The audit of the $310,000 infrastructure assessment was the last major surprise. The money hadn't simply vanished into a bag in somebody's garage. It had been moved through special project accounts and spent on consulting, preliminary Phase Two plans, expanded clubhouse landscaping, design fees, and administrative charges justified under a very broad interpretation of "community infrastructure." Some invoices benefited companies connected to the development effort. The new board and its auditors spent months untangling which expenditures had been authorized, which had been misrepresented, and what could be recovered.
What mattered to the residents was that the assessment had been sold to them as a way of protecting the water system. Meanwhile the service provider was left unpaid and the actual treatment and maintenance budget had been forced to carry costs that should have been covered by customer receipts. The new treasurer put the figures on a screen at an open meeting and answered questions until everyone who wanted to speak had been heard.
Thomas Avery was elected to the board at the next regular vote. He hadn't campaigned with promises of power. He had distributed a one-page statement asking for three things: accessible financial records, public-health decisions left to qualified professionals, and a rule that no board member could threaten residents for asking a factual question. People who once considered him a troublesome old teacher voted for him because he'd been willing to ask where their money had gone before the answer was comfortable.
He called me after the election. "Kenneth, would you attend our first utilities committee meeting?"