Close call on Lawsuits

On Sept 7th 2022 

A homeowner had approval from the ARC board on their home build. They had just poured their foundation and a brand new Arc board member did not like the fact their home was placed at an angle on their lot. They went to Catalyst with this complaint and instead of getting all the facts from the other Arc board members, Catalyst sent what amounted to a cease and desist letter to this poor couple. 

The letter also suggested they may need to DIG UP THEIR FOOTER! As you can imagine the homeowner rightfully so was not happy and responded immediately with a threat of suite. Once I found out about the letter I said it is baseless; as a lot of homes including mine are not sitting square on the lot. With the apology tour that went out after that, we were able to stay out of court.  The bad part for me as a board member, is this couple and others have a personal distain for me, becuse I could never give the facts of what happened.

Last year several homeowners and a board member saw that there was a very tall Pine tree at our entrance sign near Canal street that was about to fall on the road. I immediately offered to have it removed at a discounted rate. While we waited several months for Catalyst to act, it did in fact fall on the road at 4.30 am. If this fell on a car or if a car hit it, any lawyer could have found that we knew of the problem and did not fix it in a timely manner. If you look at the google reviews one of the many complaints is Catalyst just does not get anything done. This was definitely true in this case. Thankfully no one was hurt and a crew of good Samaritans removed the tree from the road.

Like Mr Rinker or not, the handling of his situation could still land us in court.Someone from Catalyst asked my advise on how to handle complaints about his loud race boat.  While I agree, his boat is loud and for some can be considered a nusiance, the way he was asked to leave was not handled in a legal manner. 

For anyone that was  in the board meeting he attended that night , they can attest to the fact he is mad and undertstandably full of revenge.

Rinker was given permission many years ago to use these lakes as a practice course for his boat. He tries to only spend a few hours no more than once a week on our lakes. Like him or not he has been doing this 20+ years. 

There is a little thing called "Law of Latches" look it up.  (Ticktin v Kearin No 3D00-288) You may know of it as being grandfathered in. 

Maybe we could take the approach of noise violation, but to tell him his boat was non compliant was not the best approach. If a person  has been openly violating any HOA rule for x number of years, that rule leagally can no longer be inforced. Especially when prior approval or verbal variance was given by board members at a previous time. 

My recommendation to Catalyst was to get with the complaintant and let then know our hands were tied. Then get with Rinker and try to find a viable solution. Ie Changing the day of the week he practices or even the lake he practices on. 

In the end not everyone would be pleased but at least we would fall on the correct side of the Law. 

We are just residents here, Catalyst should be able to navigate these difficult issues without owners ending up hating other owners.

Most recently As an Arc Board member I found out that a homeowner requested information on the process to get a front screen put on their porch to keep the bugs out. (top right image)Technically Arch Approval for a screen porch is not needed. They actually requested this LAST JULY. A month later Catalyst responded I am sorry this was in my spam folder can you state your request again? The request was pretty clear so I am not sure why they had to state it again but they did. 

When this homeowner  supplied the Documents showing the screen blueprint for the front of the house, Rhonda took it upon herself to say "I can send this to the board but it doesn’t meet our standards so it will likely get denied. Sadly This homeowner believed that for almost 7 months. 

I can only suspect that after seeing additional homes add front screens they finally decided to have her send the request to the board, which was unanimously approved. 

This response that your request was lost in my Spam folder actually happened to another couple that I am aware of, but making a statement to a homeowner that their project falls short of our standards when it does not is not acceptable. 

The Arc board was asked to give guidelines on a request that came in clarifying how many fruit trees could be on a vacant lot. The board forwarded pictures of a current lot in our neighborhood with huge chicken wire fences around their fruit trees and mentioned this is an example of a non-compliant action. To date that lot owner has not received any letter to correct the action.

Generally speaking Catalyst does not take action until something becomes an emergency.  Then everyone has to scramble to help them out of the mess they created.  Several times I was asked to hurry and run around the community and send a list of vacant lots that needed cut.  I am sure the board was getting complaints about overgrown lots, so they naturally went to Catalyst for results.  With them not being here, I reluctantly sent lots only if I saw they were very unsightly and did provide pictures.  I found it odd that the same day I sent the list, I was asked to force cut them.  We are required to give proper notice, and the fact a homeowner came to a meeting testifying to the fact she did not receive proper notice did not suprise me.

This can be seen in how they pay their vendors as well.  Read the google reviews or ask me.  When I saw payroll forgot to cut a check for me, I would ask them to look into it.  The request was just ignored until I had to copy a board member, then all of a sudden it would be overnighted.  An invoice I sent in Ocober was paid AFTER Christmas. Today March 6th I finally got paid for Jan 15th invoice.

  Apparantly we are not the only Community that used to opperate in the black, and now under Catalyst we are operating in the Red.

Instead of budgeting for hurricane repairs Catalyst allowed us to turn our focus on non pressing issues.

Anyone remember the 35K budget we were about to pull the trigger on for New entrance signs?

Anyone know about the thousands of dollars we spent on attorney's fees during this time to get our bylaws rewritten?

While I agree our bylaws need revamping, I am also smart enough to know this is a waste of money. It takes 75% approval from ALL our lot owners to change thebylaws. 

We could have sent letters to lot owners to see if they were willing to vote for changes. If we did that we would have found 15% would have even bothered to respond. Sadly where we sit now our bylaws will not get a 75% vote and even if they did it would be 50% for and 50% against any line item. 

A good management company would not allow us to pursue something that is so costly with almost zero chance of getting passed.  I am not sure of the exact number but I think it is around 13K we spent on attorney fees related to changing our documents.  To date they have not been changed and our park continues to errode with each passing storm.

I  had permission from the board to apply for special permits that allow us to call the trappers directly.  I ended up receiving the "THA" permits.  I asked Rhodna to let the community know that we no longer call FWC as we have the private phone numbers of trappers we can call anytime.  Months went by with no notification.  Finally she tells the board I have it all wrong and we are in fact still required to call FWC.  When she found out SHE was the one that was wrong, she called the private permitting office and had our THA permits removed.  Why does that matter?  We now call a Florida state 800 help line that we seem to be blacklisted from.  Too many calls came from our community in the past and they no longer send an agent.  I know because I called that number to report this gator and no one showed up.  They are willing to put your the life of you and your animal at risk just to be wright and prove me wrong.  Very sad.  Hopefully no one gets injured when they are skiing in the lake as this will be a huge lawsuit

  First be aware I tried to work out these problems with Catalyst Privately.  

I had every intention of staying on as your mow company.  I even bought a new tractor and smaller mower deck to give a cleaner cut.

All I ever asked for was to be paid on time and get keys to locks that work.  Catalyst refused to do this for me.  I went to William Harding asking if he could help.  All he said is Catalyst is doing a good job and if I wanted to quit he would write my resignation letter for me.  I quit on the spot.

I have no idea what William Harding has against me other than he is choosing to believe the lies that Catalyst has been feeding him about me.  He chose to be judge and Jury without ever sitting down with me to discuss the issues.

Even if everything Catalyst claimed about me was true, the multitude of nasty emails he sent me is in no way professional.  You can make the choice this weekend if this is the type of person you want representing your neighborhood.

9:57 AM (2 hours ago)to me, Peter, cassiehoa@gmail.com, Bill, msdjbutler@gmail.com, Angela, jenburlrp@gmail.com

Well, Jim it should be known that a threat to leave is not a resignation letter. But I can help you write one if you need help. 

Another email from him on 4-2-24  I hope he has proof of these serious accusations or LRP could be facing a legal challenge.  This is not where I want to go but I will not be harrassed.

Apr 2, 2024, 7:38 PM (11 hours ago) 

 You forgot to mention that you committed fraud and over billed the community nearly $1,700 just last year and that the quality of your work was substandard. Further, your use of hazardous chemicals has killed off at least one of our lakes and you have damaged the ecosystem of our community. Ultimately your whining child like behavior and unintelligent method of communication resulted in LRP accepting your resignation. 

Just so we all know Catalyst is willing to lie to you to cover their tracts.  Our last HOA meeting was canceled ant 8:30 pm the night before the meeting.  In that cancelation notice they claimed to you it was due to the  fact we would not have a forum.  When homeowners called them to clarify, they  then then changed the story to  Jim Hohler is a security threat and we need a police presence.   The truth is they found out about this web page that same day and were caught with their pants down.  They needed time to fix their problems.  Even with this time they still have not sent non compliance letters to overgrown lots and have not fixed the broken fence at the storage yard.  If cops were needed, how did they have a hoa meeting a few weeks later at the park with no security present?

Hopefully we can find a management company that has our best interest at heart and will do the things they are paid to do.

PS  They will try to tell you I stole money from the community as a way to defame my name.  If this is true why did they let it happen?  Why are they catching this years later?  It is not true.  I have all my invoices and checks I have been paid, showing not only was I paid properly but often times months apart.