Perhaps a better question would be, “Should the property owners expect and accept lies from their POA Board Directors?”

One of our POA Board director candidates was quizzed after the 2008 Annual Meeting with the following question: “Why did the Board Directors lie to us today?” Their response was: “I don’t know.

The POA Board Directors are our neighbors and we elected them to the Board. They are good people and in many instances, our friends. So what would motivate them to lie to us?

I think the answer to that question is found in the POA Board’s golden rule: “First do no harm to property values.” As our Directors said at the 2008 POA Annual Meeting, our goal is to protect property values.

When new Directors join the Board, do they soon learn that they are required to spin-the-truth or to tell half-truths to keep (what is perceived to be) damaging information from the property owners and from becoming outside public knowledge? Do they learn that they must hide documents that may reflect poorly upon our community? In other words, are they indoctrinated to a mindset of doing and saying nothing that might remotely harm the community’s property values?

If true, the community’s property owners must decide whether they value truthful information from their Board Directors, or are willing to be lied to.

Permitting the POA Board Directors to disseminate lies to the community is a slippery downhill slope. If permitted, a POA Board can successfully hide financial and other problems from the community. The property owners will suffer by having to pay unexpected higher monthly assessments and/or special assessments.

How long can any POA Board successfully hide the truth? Even if the lies remain undiscovered, lies build upon themselves and not only lead to an unhappy community, but they lead to consequences that are even more damaging to the community’s property values by casting a shadow of doubt on the Board’s integrity as well as that of the people of the community.

After living in this gated community for ten years, I now fully understand why I never got the whole truth or any transparency from the many POA Boards in that time span – Simply put, the POA Board’s goal is to protect property values at the expense of truthfulness and transparency, and at the expense of the homeowners and future homebuyers.

Therefore, you must ask yourself, is POA Board lying, and their lack of transparency, acceptable? Should the community require by written decree that the Board be totally honest, and provide transparency, to each and every property owner and the community as a whole?