"Thirty-four thousand six hundred dollars," I said. "Charged to the association. The contractor was Dale Whitfield's company. The association president who authorized the work was Brenda Whitfield. The money came from dues paid by the people in this room."
A man in the second row raised his hand. "Did anyone get competitive bids?"
"I haven't found any in the documents made available," I answered. "If there are bids, the board should provide them. So far no one has."
That was important to me. I was not there to substitute my certainty for Brenda's. If a question had an answer in records I had not seen, I wanted to leave space for it. The strength of the case lay in being willing to say what was established and what still required proof.
I moved to the property transactions. The records showed the dates and prices for lots fourteen, fifteen, and twenty-two, the ownership entity Blue Ridge Development Partners, and the registered agent, Keith Sutherland. I described how the lots bordered the creek and why the existing drainage and environmental limitations affected their value. Then I displayed the building permit applications for Whitfield Estates at Willow Creek, submitted two weeks after the channel disappeared, with projected sales value of approximately $2.4 million.
For the first time that evening Brenda interrupted. "That's speculative," she said. "Those are unrelated private investments."
"The ownership documents and applications are public records," I replied. "Whether they reveal improper motive is for investigators and the courts to decide. But this association has a right to know that a company connected to your husband's business stood to benefit from construction made easier by the removal of the creek."
Several voices rose at once. A man asked whether the HOA had been told about the relationship. Another wanted to know why lots one and seven had not appeared on the special-assessment schedule. I held up the schedule with the blank entries visible and asked the board to explain the exemptions. Brenda glanced toward Dale, who kept his eyes on the papers in front of him.
"The allocation methodology is under review," she said. "There are technical considerations people outside management don't necessarily understand."
"Then we should see them," Gloria said from the front row. She stood carefully, one hand on the chair beside her. "You want four thousand eight hundred dollars from me, and I still don't know how I'm going to pay for my furnace. If there's a technical reason you don't pay the same amount, I want to know it before you take another dollar."