Here's the takeaway for anyone listening. If your HOA president builds something on a recorded easement, that easement doesn't disappear because concrete was poured over it. The platted easement survives. And if community money funded the construction, the community has standing to reclaim it. Phase two was the petition.
I needed homeowner support, and I needed it documented. So, I did something Brenda hadn't done in 9 years of running the HOA. I knocked on doors. Every evening after work, I walked the neighborhood with a clipboard and a one-page summary. I explained the survey findings, the financial discrepancy, and what I was proposing.
Convert the illegally built pool into a community splash park funded entirely by the recovered $52,000. I wasn't asking for donations. I wasn't asking for favors. I was asking for signatures. The response floored me.
74 households signed in 11 days, and the stories that came with those signatures were something else. A retired teacher told me Brenda fined her $200 for a garden gnome. A single mother said Brenda had her car towed for parking on her own grass during a garage sale. An elderly couple on Pecan Lane said Brenda had blocked their request to install a wheelchair ramp because it disrupted the visual continuity of the streetscape. Nine years of petty tyranny poured out of those doorsteps like water from a cracked pipe.
Phase three was the design. And this was the part I'd been waiting for. I stayed up past 2:00 a.m. at my drafting table, pencil moving across vellum while Colton slept on the sofa beside me, one arm draped over a pillow. I designed a ground-level splash park, no standing water, no drowning risk, no lifeguard requirement. 12 spray jets in a circular pattern, a mushroom-shaped fountain in the center, a tipping bucket on a timber frame, rubberized safety surfacing rated for falls up to 6 ft, a shade pavilion with two picnic tables and a water-bottle filling station.
Total footprint: the exact dimensions of Brenda Caldwell's pool and deck. Total cost: $52,000. The exact amount she'd stolen. I wrote the project title across the top of the blueprint in block letters. Willow Creek Community Splash Park, funded by recovered HOA assessments, designed by Garrett Holloway.
Phase four was the media. I called Nina Castillo at KXAN Austin, an investigative reporter who'd covered three HOA corruption stories in the past 2 years. I sent her the survey, the financials, the permit chain, and a copy of the splash park design. She called back within an hour. "Mr. Holloway, this is going to be a segment.
Can we bring a camera to the meeting?" The last phase was the presentation. I built a slide deck, clean, factual, devastating. Survey overlay showing the 18-ft encroachment, financial record showing the $52,000 withdrawal, permit record showing Doug's signature without a public hearing, security camera footage of every violation Brenda had committed against my property. And the final slide, the splash park blueprint rendered in full color showing what the community's stolen money could build.