The kind of feeling you get when a thing you knew was true for a very long time finally gets written down somewhere official. The HOA bylaw provision she had ignored section 9.4, the one requiring a full membership vote on any loan exceeding $250,000 was cited separately in the civil enforcement action. The $4.2 million construction loan she had approved on a four-person board vote was ruled procedurally invalid. The lender and the HOA membership were left to renegotiate the terms of a loan that should never have existed on a building that could no longer legally operate on land the HOA had never owned. Karen was removed from the HOA board 10 days after June 14th under a provision in the association's own bylaws that allowed removal for conduct resulting in legal action against the association.
The board she had built around herself dissolved in stages. Her inner circle of two members issued a joint statement distancing themselves from her decisions on the resort development. A statement so carefully worded that it managed to be both a public betrayal and a legal positioning document at the same time. The county formally revoked Lakeside Grand's operating permits. The resort was closed pending civil litigation.
The 22 couples who had booked weddings received cancellation notices within a week of the shutdown. Most deposits were refunded from the resort's event account. Three couples required insurance claims to recover their money. The investors who had funded the $7.6 million equity stake retained separate counsel and opened a civil suit against Karen personally within 30 days of the closure. Karen's $2.1 million lawsuit against me was dismissed with prejudice the same week the criminal charges were filed.
Her attorney withdrew from representation shortly after. The 80 households who had been paying the resort development assessments $2,000 to $3,000 per quarter for 14 months billed as a mandatory capital contribution toward a community asset received a civil court order directing the HOA to return those funds. $340,000 distributed back to the people who had paid it under threat of fines they couldn't afford not to pay. I thought about Eleanor Henderson when I heard that the neighbors who had stopped calling me started calling again. Not all of them and not right away, but enough. Curtis texted me 10 days after the shutdown.
A longer message than the one he'd sent before, more carefully written the kind of message a man composes when he knows an apology is owed, but isn't entirely sure how to shape it. I told him it was fine, because it was. Karen had been very good at making her version of events the only version available. And Curtis had done what most people do when they're presented with one version of events by someone in authority. He'd believed it.
Eleanor Henderson came by on a Saturday morning with her husband, Don, walking the long way around through the field path that ran along my western fence line. She was carrying a pie. Blueberry, she said, because she hadn't been sure what I liked. Don had a handwritten note in his shirt pocket that he held out to me at the gate with both hands. The way you offer something you've spent time on.
I read it standing there. I didn't read it out loud. I told them to come in for coffee. New HOA board elections were held under court supervision 6 weeks after June 14th. Margaret Ellison was elected president by 71 of 96 homeowners, the largest turnout in the association's history, Beverly told me, by a significant margin.