Not having been present at the recent Board Meeting, I have Pamela Pepe to thank for an update of the meeting’s highlights after having read her posting on The Colonies Connection. Based on her posting, I was curious to learn more. I reached out to ask if she would be willing to do an interview (OK attribute it to being rather bored after hours while here in The Sooner State) and surprisingly she was willing and very amenable with my limitations to point most was done via email.
Do you feel the negative Coalition stigma had an impact on the recent election?
“Yes, but while it may be too subtle a distinction, I think allegations by the staff and Board about what the Coalition stood for, is what allowed the incumbents to be re-elected. One of the painful lessons I’ve learned in my adult life is that people often accuse others of what they themselves are doing. The incumbents said the non-incumbents were going to spend money unwisely, raise the condo dues, and put through a special assessment. None of which was true, because they all knew when they announced that co-owners have been wondering for a long time now, “where does our money go?” So the incumbents were barely re-elected, no doubt with the hope of voters that they see sound financial management – or at least a significant dues increase. Yet here we are, about five months past the election, and the Association has $100,000 less in the Reserve Fund than it did in May. Will we have another $100,000 less in another five months? Treasurer Kelleher said we have about $392,000 in our Reserve Fund now, but that will likely go down when unpaid dues are “written off” when this year’s books are closed. How long can the incumbents sustain this without putting through the much dreaded special assessment?
Never mind, the incumbents assured us that credible efforts to assess needs throughout the property are part of an on-going Board and management process, and that money is already budgeted for those needs, as well as unforeseen or emergency repairs. But if we’ve spent $100,000 in five months out of Reserves, we can’t possibly be assessing our needs properly, much less budgeting for “emergencies” that can be funded other than through the Reserve Fund. And this isn’t a one-time thing – we’ve been seeing a woefully inadequate Reserve Fund for years.
We hadn't owned at The Colonies very long when the board elections took place earlier this year. I heard the criticisms of the "Coalition," particularly that some people were reluctant to sign their names to a Coalition letter, or to admit being involved in the Coalition, due to potential retribution by staff and the Board. Sadly, the retribution we've experienced since my husband ran for the board, gives me a whole new understanding of people's desire for anonymity. However, I hope to see a Coalition re-established, to shed light on the highly retributive nature of the board and staff who punish owners who disagree with them. When my husband met, e-mailed or spoke with owners during the election, he heard many, many examples of people frequently being treated poorly at The Colonies. So did all of his fellow candidates. There is often an air of hostility and incivility from the staff that is inappropriate. It offends people -- backlash is inevitable, and we’d all be better off to deal with these problems than to let them perpetuate.
We’ve given this Board a very long time to come up with a solution to our finances, and even after that highly contentious election, there’s still no plan. I believe FHA mandates that we have at least 10% of our operating budget, plus our projected expenditures for maintenance and repairs, on hand in an unencumbered Reserve Fund. If we don’t have those Reserves, FHA stops lending money for purchasers to buy property at the Colonies. With an annual operating budget of $2.6 million or thereabouts, not included emergency repairs, we’re getting perilously close to the line. We need to take action.
Particularly since we’ve moved over the years to more and more contracted services rather than Colonies-employed staff, it may be time to relocate the remaining staff to, for instance, the ground floor of the club house. We could then sell some or all of the original four units that made up the original “Sales Office,” which were bought by the Council of Co-Owners of The Colonies back in 1992. It may have been space we needed at one time, but with less staff now, it’s not apparent that we do. Also, these are not good economic times. Everyone I know personally has gone without pay raises for a while now (or just plain old been terminated), or been moved from offices to cubicles as their companies down-sized to smaller offices to save money. I for one will be very reluctant to absorb another dues increase when we could sell a couple of the units in the current “office” and address many of our financial problems. Particularly when we have fewer staff than we once did.
What has life been for your husband Kevin (recent petition Candidate for the Board) since the May election and do you feel you have been targeted by The Colonies Board and/or Management?
The month after the election, our condo payment "arrived late," even though we use a bill pay service and the payment is set for the same each time each month, just like our mortgage. The letter we got made us sound like we should be hauled off to debtor's prison! And I've since learned that letter is "our" standard form letter! The level of arrogance, the accusatory tone, floored us. You'd think we were a year in arrears on our payments, versus three days allegedly late due to the mail service!
More disturbing, however, we were brought up on $4,500 worth of charges by Board President Sal Lauricella for alleged Rules violations. That's the maximum fine allowed under the Virginia Condominium Act, and we feel it was purely retributive for my husband having run for the Board. We retained counsel for two painful, expensive-to-all-involved nights of hearings, and she told the Colonies Board quite candidly that any judge in Fairfax County would see the charges leveled against us by Sal as purely "revenue raising." Sal’s charges stemmed from our letting a friend use our condo sporadically, when he was in Washington, as we were waiting for our new tenants to get their temporary duty orders approved.
Our condo had been vacant since February, when our first-ever tenants were drummed out by false allegations from board and staff about “Numerous complaints” having been filed against them, alleging their 1 ½ pound dog was being allowed to run the halls daily and openly defecate. That turned out to be a wildly-overblown case of our tenant’s dog having followed their daughter out of the condo one morning, when she left for school. The dog indeed went to the bathroom in the hall, and their housekeeper cleaned it up as soon as she realized the dog was out of the house. But that one-time event took on a life of its own, with General Manager Carole Carlton’s “numerous complaints,” letter. We were new owners so we reached out to the Board President, startled that Carole would attack our tenants like that, and truly startled that she did so without so much as a word to us. If our tenants hadn’t told us about it, we still wouldn’t know. As if we would want tenants who were letting their dog openly and routinely defecate in the hallways? Really, how gross is that, and who would want a tenant like that? But then we were introduced to Sal. Using the poker metaphor, he saw Carole’s letter and raised it. He added that numerous neighbors had complained, blah, blah, blah. Fortunately the Colonies by-laws require owners to be provided with evidence of owner complaints, and we learned during our “Rules Violation” hearing – merely as a side note – that there was no evidence whatsoever of a neighbor ever having complained.
I guess between that and my husband running for the board, we crossed the powers that be. So the very morning of the Board elections, with Sal obviously worried about losing his seat, he showed up at our condo, even though our friend had been in and out of the place since late March/early April. Sal happened to find our friend there that day, and began to threaten him with all manner of things. Our friend is a well-respected attorney and successful small business owner, who travels back and forth to California on a regular basis. He knew my husband was running for election to the board. The minute Sal told him who he was, he saw right through him. He knew Sal was afraid he might lose his seat on the Board, and he was hoping to “catch” my husband at something that Sal could use to impugn his reputation. It was so obvious. Sadly, Sal has no demonstrable people skills, and he launched at our friend as if he’d caught him embezzling funds from the Association! He demanded to see our friend’s lease (there wasn’t one, he was just a friend, not a tenant), threatened to have his car towed, made him come down to the office to sign for a temporary parking decal and so forth. It was abusive and offensive to say the least.
Not surprisingly, a few days later, the onslaught began. Sal directed Colonies Counsel Bob Segan to contact our friend, and try to get him to say something against us. How pathetic is that? Here we are letting our friend use our place while we’re waiting for our new tenants to arrive – and they have arrived, just as we advised everyone they would – and Segan tries to get him to say something bad about us? How truly stupid is that? Our friend copied us on his e-mail response to Segan, declining to participate in their “inquiry,” about us. I sent Segan an e-mail immediately, blasting him for pulling such a stunt. He of course disavowed all responsibility for his actions, saying he was just following his clients’ instructions. Then a few days later we got a letter, outlining five charges of rules violations, each of which allegedly occurred for 90 days, totaling, magically, the maximum $4,500 penalty under Virginia statute.
Needless to say, there was no more evidence of rules violations than there’d been evidence of our tenant’s dog running the halls daily and openly defecating. Or more precisely, the “evidence” they presented was so confusing and contradictory it was almost laughable. One woman we’d never seen, said there’d been much discussion on the Colonies Connection website about newspapers from our tenant stacking up in front of our door. Anyone can check the site, it’s open to all Colonies owners, and there was never any such discussion. Never. So we asked the Board if, before filing these charges and incurring all the attendant costs, did any of them even check the site to see if the woman was telling the truth? No one even replied. Seriously, how do a group of “Board Members” get that far down the path of trying to charge an owner with $4,500 worth of rules violations, and no one fact checked something that easily verified? But this is precisely the type of thing the people who started the Coalition in the first place, told us was done to intimidate and harass owners. If the powers that be say it, it is de facto true. If you can’t afford to hire an attorney to defend you, you’re out of luck.
In our case, the Board had to back down. Sal didn’t even attend the night of the second hearing. Unfortunately, we ended up spending about as much in legal fees to defend ourselves as the original charges amounted to, but we felt we had no choice. We had to shut Sal down, send a message that we wouldn't stand for that kind of abuse. Hopefully now that we’ve taken on this crowd, others will feel more comfortable challenging the bullies. Hopefully our experience will prevent others from experiencing the bullying.
Even though there was no evidence to support the allegations, my husband tells me Colonies counsel Segan, wrote a letter saying we should pay $250 because we used our property like a hotel. Not that any Colonies by-law precludes us as owners from allowing a friend to use our condo. Yet Segan and the Board persevere. But as we told the Board during the second night of the hearing, if they fined us anything, we would appeal it. Let them explain to other owners that this is how the Board chooses to spend their dues dollars. So we are appealing. Fortunately, Virginia now has the Common Interest Community Board, which is there to assist property owners who feel their rights under the Virginia Condominium Act have been violated. It all seems so ridiculous to us -- our friend could have stayed in our guest room at our house, but the condo was fully furnished and just sitting there. Why not let him use it? It all came down to Carole, Sal and to some degree it seems, Peter Pollack. Basically -- if we are an "investor owner" as we've been rather rudely dubbed, then our condo is either "vacant" or must have a "tenant with a one-year lease." There's no mental space in the minds of the Colonies Board and staff for a guest or a friend.
Of course we understand The Colonies can't have tenants renting on a weekly basis. It's a community, not a YMCA.
But it's daunting to realize how far Carole and Sal got in drawing up charges, involving hours and hours of an attorney, pulling the Board together for two nights of hearings, demanding sworn affidavits from our friend, about his being a friend, and then they had no credible evidence to support the charges. That had to be a $10,000 - $15,000 undertaking between us.
Oh yes, how could I forget the worst part of all? Jeez, I guess I’m trying to block the entire memory!! During the first night of our hearing, Sal testified that he'd run the license plates on our friend's Mercedes. We were dumbfounded! Why had he done that? How had he done that? So our attorney asked him if he did so legally? Suddenly Sal clammed up, saying he didn't want to divulge his source. Then, when our attorney asked if he’d conducted the search illegally, Sal ALSO refused to answer! My husband I couldn’t believe our ears. Here’s a guy who has charged us with $4,500 work of “rules violations,” and he "declines" to answer a fundamental question about how he learned the name of our friend? Really, what kind of show are we running around here?
Of course, we’ve since learned the likely source of his reluctance. It turns out it's both a Federal and State crime to run license plates if you are not, e.g. a member of law enforcement, a security firm, or a private investigator. So who did Sal get to do that for him? And now that he's in possession of our friend's driver's license number, what's Sal going to do with it? Does the Colonies have policy on how it plans to protect Federally- and State-protected electronic information? No, we don't. As owners, what's our liability for Sal's behavior? More frightening, who else is he gathering Federally- and State- protected information on? Do Colonies residents support this behavior? I wouldn’t think so.
But clearly the lengths to which Sal volunteered he’d gone in order to build a rules violation case against us, tells me he is completely out of control. No wonder people have been reluctant to “join” a coalition effort designed to unseat him and his fellow incumbents. We’re property owners, not prisoners in a communist regime for heavens sake!
Board President Sal Lauricella stated that he illegally ran the license plates on the vehicle of the person staying at your condo? Why not file a police report as my brief research turned up that it is a Class 1 Misdemeanor in Virginia and in violation of the Drivers Privacy Protection Act (DPPA)?
To be clear, Sal volunteered that he’d had the plates run, and because he is not what the DPPA refers to as an Authorized Requestor, that is a crime. So yes, we have notified the Fairfax County Police, and they are investigating. In the meantime, I was intrigued by the section of the law that allows “security firms” and “private investigators,” to also run license plate searches. It definitely made me wonder who Sal got to conduct the search for him. So I started looking around on the internet, and lo and behold, that’s when I found at least one business, perhaps more than that, operating on the Colonies property. Dun & Bradstreet, Hoovers, Experian Credit and numerous other highly credible sources, report a business in the name of Colonies Condominium Guard House, Inc., being run as a “Doing Business As” company under the Colonies Condominium at McLean. That business is run by Kara Carlton, Manager, Scott Nelson, Director, Carole Carlton, Project Manager, and Sal Lauricella, President. Is that a “security firm,” as defined by the DPPA? Is that how Sal found our friend’s legally-protected information, including his Drivers License number?
At the October 12th board meeting, I provided evidence of several businesses apparently being run on Colonies property, to the Board of Directors. I told them I wanted it run in the next Colonies Crier newsletter (the Virginia Condominium Act mandates that the Association provide a free means of uncensored communication between owners), and that I want to see the financial books and statements for all the businesses I’d found. I haven’t heard from them and by law they only have five days to respond, so I guess now I’ll send them a letter reiterating my request at the Board meeting, and if they don’t respond to that either, I’ll have to file a complaint with the Common Interest Community Board about that too. What a nuisance this all is – having to hire an attorney and file complaints with state regulators about violations of the Virginia Condominium Act, that the Board and staff absolutely comply with. But they’ve brought this on themselves, and they have no one to blame but themselves.
Are there any other ways you have been wrongly harassed by The Colonies Board and/or Management staff?
Oh please, do they know any other way to operate? Probably to cover his tracks for his false statements about our first tenant’s dog – which insulted and infuriated them so they asked to let them out of their lease early, and what choice did we have but to allow them to go -- Sal had Kathleen Kelleher call him down to the office when our new tenants moved in and wanted to register. Sal proceeded to tell the wife that our first tenant had moved out because I was routinely entering the condo without his knowledge or permission, and because he kept classified or sensitive documents on the premises, he’d complained to the management office that he had to relocate. Our first tenant, a Federal Agent, was absolutely furious that Sal, in his attempt to shift blame from himself to me, said he always knew when my husband or I were going to be in the unit, that he’d never complained about such behavior to anyone, that he’d not moved out for such a reason, and most importantly, he’d never kept classified government documents on the premises. This is, of course, a Federal crime, punishable on charges of espionage and treason. And as he said, “As if I would ever keep classified documents in my home, much less tell anyone I had them in my possession, much less complain to a management office about you seeing them!” So he wrote a letter to me, which we shared with the Colonies’ Board and counsel with his permission during the second night of our hearing, noting, among other things, that making up stories about a Federal Agent is a violation of Federal law, and Sal needed to cease and desist immediately.
However, Sal, focused on tarnishing our reputation (which our attorney tells us is referred to as “tortuous interference,” meaning intentional interference with contractual relations – related to our ability to rent our property), insisted to the wife that she needed to have her husband come in, so Sal could share with him the “complaints” allegedly made about me by our first tenant. The wife clearly had Sal figured out and declined to pass on his message to her husband, at which point Sal proceeded to offer the contact information of our first tenant that he “just happened to still have!” Clearly with that Sal crossed a line, as she advised Sal she thought our previous tenant had an expectation of privacy that precluded his information being shared with her or her husband – or anyone else, and it was an expectation of privacy that they too had. So that’s why the Colonies, despite all those admonitions in the monthly newsletter, were not provided with our current tenant’s place of employment or contact information. The wife provided her mobile phone number and told Sal, in effect, “That’s all you’re getting.” She told us that she told him quite candidly, “When our Washington assignment is over, we don’t want you offering to pass on our contact information to the Pepe’s next tenants, so we’re not going to give it to you!”
The one other preventative step we’ve taken, is we’ve modified our lease to say that the Board and Staff are precluded from seeking an answer about anything from our tenants, until our tenants have spoken with us. We love our new tenants, but that they are with us and are such good people is merely our good fortune. We never would have lost our first tenants if such terrible things hadn’t been written to and about them by Carole and Sal.
We told the board on the second night of our hearing that we demand a full investigation into Sal’s behavior with running our friend’s license plates, and that we believe he and anyone who assisted him should resign or be terminated immediately. They appear to have blown that off. But who knows? Hope springs eternal. And when there’s no hope left, I guess you file a complaint with the State regulators, and follow the process where it leads you from there.
