Forty-six days. More than half of the current board's tenure. That's how long it had been since the board last held an open meeting (July 20 to September 4). When the May Management email hit my inbox, I was optimistic. Unfortunately, that optimism quickly vanished when I read the agenda. After a month and a half of waiting, here's the agenda:

Six items total, and only one of them isn't procedural. That's it. The one substantive item on the agenda is an insurance renewal. Not to minimize the importance of proper insurance for our community, but the agenda includes nothing ratifying any of the contracts, settlements, or vendor decisions made over the past seven weeks. After the longest meeting gap of this board's tenure, homeowners get one real agenda item: funding the association's annual insurance, and nothing on the wall itself. 

In its August 21 email update, the board told the neighborhood the CellGate XL/RFID gate-access system "will be placed on the agenda for an official Board vote at the next HOA meeting." That sentence had a plain meaning: whenever the board next convened, homeowners would get discussion and a board vote, not just the online poll that preceded it. Remember, this promise came one day after being called out for treating an online poll as a substitute for an actual vote at an open meeting.

Friday is the next HOA meeting. The call box isn't on the agenda.

Forty-six days since the last public meeting, and not one agenda item dealing with the wall and entryway. That's disappointing to say the least.

A great deal of association business happened in that window. Much of that business appears to have been done improperly, without following the meeting-notice requirements under Florida's HOA statute (§720.303), which exist specifically to keep boards from doing association business outside of properly noticed community meetings. None of it is being brought back to a meeting for a vote or even a public review.

Here's what's missing:

The engineering contract, and what this new wall project will actually look like

As of the board's August 28 weekly update, the engineer "is currently finalizing the RFP, and we are told it will be completed next week." Where's the contract? It was never presented to the community. An RFP doesn't get written from nothing. To put one out, the engineer has had to finalize the actual design being bid: structural drawings, specifications, the whole scope of what's being built. The bulk of that work exists right now, today, whether or not the board chooses to share it.

The original design went through engineering, was put out to bid, and was under contract before the recall. The board owes homeowners a direct, side-by-side answer to a simple question: what, specifically, is different between the plan we already paid to develop and the plan the engineer just finished designing? Not a summary in a weekly email, but the structural drawings themselves, and a plain-language list of what changed and why. The board has the drawings now. There's no reason homeowners should have to wait for a contractor to be picked before finding out what they're actually getting.

The BENT Construction settlement

The July 15 board meeting included a brief mention about reaching an agreement with BENT (a partial/full refund, a waived cancellation fee). What were the terms of the settlement? Nobody outside the board knows.

The MEEK termination

The community-representative firm's contract was terminated sometime this summer. After questioning from a homeowner at the last in-person meeting, the board said they were no longer a vendor, but provided no additional information.

The gate access system

Already covered above: the promised "official Board vote" at "the next HOA meeting" still isn't on the agenda.

The meeting with the new engineer and prospective vendors

On August 21, three of five directors (a quorum) met on-site with the new structural engineer and two prospective vendors, walked the wall, and came away, in the board's own words, "feeling very reassured about the proposed approach and path forward." That's a collective judgment reached by a quorum of the board about association business. Under Florida law, that appears to meet the standard for an open meeting, whether or not anyone called it one, and it wasn't noticed.

None of these items need to wait for a "big" meeting. Every one of them could be a line on an agenda, with public votes to replace the private ones that may have been improper, an up-or-down vote on pending items, and a chance for homeowners to ask questions and get clarity before the board moves ahead without them.

Last week, in the Payasada Homeowners Facebook group, a board member wrote this:

"One loses credibility when making false accusations that are clearly not supported by objective facts. For example, accusing this board of a lack of communication simply doesn't fit with reality. We provide weekly email updates, hold regular HOA meetings, respond to residents' texts and emails even on nights and weekends and I could go on."

I take that standard seriously. I've tried to use two guiding principles in my criticisms of how the current board of directors conducts business:

I have concerns that go beyond the information being offered to the community. It's one of the reasons I sent a records request to our management company to see items that the board is choosing not to share. Those records will be made available to me next week, and I'll be sure to write up my findings for the neighborhood to see.

I actually held off on sending this update, because I was initially encouraged by the line in last week's board update that "the preliminary bids and proposals received to date are part of the Association's records maintained by May Management." I was optimistic that like previous HOA boards, those documents would be loaded directly into May's online portal and populated under the "proposals" and "contracts" folders to be made available to all homeowners. To date, that's not the case, which makes the board claim confusing. I guess we all have to send in official records requests to see documents that were previously provided freely to homeowners as part of regular HOA business. So much for transparency.

So let's review my claims, starting with the one mentioned in the Facebook post itself, and review the "objective facts" I used to back them up:

1.  Weekly meetings were the promise, not emails or "regular" meetings.

This isn't a paraphrase of the campaign's general claims. It's not even open to interpretation. On June 9, 2026, six days before the recall vote closed, while the recall committee was still, in its own words, "waiting on a few remaining ballots," one of the new board members made this promise and signed it "Sincerely, The Recall Committee":

"If the recall is successful, the new board is committed to moving forward with the wall project quickly, but also responsibly. We plan to meet weekly to keep the project moving and ensure decisions are made in a transparent manner. These meetings will be open to the neighborhood, and we intend to provide frequent updates throughout the process. We will also establish a clear way for homeowners to submit questions, concerns, and feedback so that all viewpoints can be heard and considered." [emphasis added]

That's not just "regular" meetings, and it's not weekly emails. The new board can choose to compare itself to the former board or whomever they like. I'll hold them to a promise they made six days before the recall closed, while they were still chasing the deciding vote. Remember, politicians will say anything to get elected. Our job is to hold them accountable to their promises.

2. There's no record of any engineering contract appearing at a noticed board meeting, even though the engineer is already doing paid work. 

The board's own August 28 weekly update confirms the engineer "is currently finalizing the RFP," during a stretch with no board meeting since July 20. I assume he's not working for free. Whatever agreement or contract was approved, it was approved somewhere homeowners couldn't see and can't verify.

3. A quorum of the board has repeatedly conducted and disclosed association business outside a noticed meeting.

The CellGate gate-access system is the first and clearest example. On August 14, the board announced it would "move forward" with CellGate XL/RFID before any board vote, based on a community poll. After being called out for treating that poll as a substitute for a vote, the board's August 21 update said the decision would go to "an official Board vote at the next HOA meeting." That meeting is tomorrow. The vote isn't on the agenda.

The very same August 21 update disclosed a second instance: three directors, a quorum, met on-site with the structural engineer and two vendors, walked the wall, and reached a shared conclusion about "the proposed approach and path forward." That gathering was never noticed as a meeting either, and no explanation has been offered.

Several of this board's own members built their case for the recall on the theory that the prior board was skirting Florida law. That standard is worth holding evenly. 

4. The board's own reversal on the wall assessment's legality has never been publicly explained.

At the June 22 meeting, two board members reversed course on the wall assessment's legality and declared the funds collected properly. Both had campaigned for recall on the specific claim that the assessment was collected illegally, and both had filed for mediation on that basis with their own HOA attorney. The reversal came only after meeting with the community's HOA attorney, Ed Ronson, the same attorney whose position they'd spent a year disputing. Nothing about the underlying facts had changed, only who controlled the board. The community is still waiting to hear what changed their minds.

5. The board's repeated ⅔ supermajority claim for wall design changes has never come with a citation, and a review of the governing documents and Florida statute couldn't find one either.

The August 14 email states: "We are not considering a significant redesign, including the previous Board's design, without the required supermajority approval of the community." A full read-through of the Declaration, Bylaws, Articles of Incorporation, and Florida Statute 720 found no provision conditioning a design decision on a ⅔ vote. The only ⅔ provision in the governing documents (§6.2) governs funding a Special Assessment, not design. There is nothing else in any of the documents that requires a ⅔ vote for anything else, and the board has never, on the record, named the section it's relying on. The closest legal concept, a "material alteration" vote requirement, exists only for condominiums under §718.113(2)(a), a different statute that doesn't apply to single family HOAs at all. 

Again, no one is denying that the board members are spending tremendous time and effort on behalf of the neighborhood. None of these assertions assume it's acting in bad faith. The goal is to require the board to keep its campaign promises and hold itself to the same standard it's asking of everyone else: don't assert things as fact that the record doesn't support. "We hold regular HOA meetings" doesn't survive a calendar check, and fails to keep its own campaign promise of weekly meetings. And a single-item of substance agenda ending a forty-six-day gap since this board last met isn't the transparency or process the neighborhood deserves. It's a reminder of how much has happened since July 20 that still hasn't been brought to a vote, open to debate, or backed by a fact, that anyone got to see.