The seventh notice was for "repeated failure to cooperate with administrative enforcement." It didn't describe an actual violation at all. It imposed a penalty because I kept appealing the previous six.
By then I had stopped treating the correspondence as a series of isolated annoyances. The notices were a system, and the system had a cash register attached to it.
I began collecting the amounts and dates in a spreadsheet. Each line included the citation number, person listed as inspector, provision supposedly violated, evidence provided, hearing opportunity, and outcome. I did the same for neighbors who voluntarily shared their records with me. I never asked anybody to surrender original documents. We made copies, and I recorded who had provided them.
At the next association meeting, I asked why a resident could be fined for appealing a fine. Victoria was at the front table beside a folding American flag and a plastic pitcher of water. She gave me the slow smile she used when she thought an audience would find her humiliation of someone entertaining.
"Mr. Castellanos, this association cannot operate if every homeowner feels entitled to debate every administrative action."
"I'm not asking to debate every action. I'm asking which rule makes an appeal itself a violation."
"Persistent challenges increase management costs."
"Does that mean you charge people for using the process the bylaws give them?"
She tapped her pen. "You are out of order."
I looked at the six other board members. Two were studying their phones. One was speaking quietly to another. Mrs. Patterson, seated at the end with a thick folder in front of her, raised her eyes and looked straight at me.
After the meeting she caught up with me near the parking lot. She walked with a cane when her knee bothered her, but she still moved briskly enough to make people step aside.
"Don't stop asking for the documents," she said.
"I'm not planning to."
"Good. But ask for the original records, not just their summaries. And keep every envelope."
"Mrs. Patterson, do you think Victoria is taking money?"
She looked back toward the clubhouse. "I think we've spent too many years trusting people who told us not to look too closely."
That was the last advice I needed.
Under the association's recorded documents and the state inspection rights available to members, I submitted a formal request to examine budgets, contracts, approved meeting minutes, assessment schedules, financial statements, and the minutes authorizing Victoria's compensation. I did not call it a public-records request, because the HOA wasn't a government agency. I was asking a private association that collected our money to show its members how that money had been spent.
The management company's first response was to offer a one-page budget summary. I replied that the summary did not answer my request. Their second response demanded a copying fee for thousands of pages, even though most of the documents had been stored digitally. I asked to inspect the records on-site instead.
By the following week, the company's compliance officer had scheduled an appointment.