Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive ...Updated July 8, 2015

Here is an excerpt from our HOA President's report on the financial status of the POR Home Owners Association as of the end of the first quarter of 2015:

"From: Poul David Rasmussen [mailto:gto1973@me.com]
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2015 12:22 PM
To: Laura Windpassinger; David DuVergey; Point on The River
Subject: POR 2015 Q1 Financial and Project Updates

Fellow POR Owners:

FINANCIALS:

The attached Financials summarize performance for the first quarter of 2015. ...

On the negative side, significant variances included legal expenses which were $6,522.96 greater than budget due to a dispute regarding a fine with an owner.  The fine has been paid and the Board believes the dispute is over.  ... "

The point of this post is to alert you to the fact that Poul David Rasmussen finds lying to all of you, as demonstrated in the quoted language above, to be acceptable behavior.  What other lies is he feeding you?  Who is watching the books and accounts?  You can't count on Prospect Management to do that. They are as afraid of contradicting Mr. Rasmussen as you are.  What I see going on, I don't like. What I don't see, which is most of the stuff, is what I think is most frightening. We need to be able to trust our leaders to be telling us the truth, openly and transparently.  If we can't do that we need to elect different leaders.

Here are the lies stated directly or indirectly by our President:

• Lie:  The legal expenses were due to a dispute regarding a fine with an owner. 
• Truth:  The legal expenses were due to the failure of the Board to adhere to the Rules and the Bylaws when the Board attempted to fine an owner based on a non-existent complaint.  No fine was ever issued against the owner in compliance with the Rules.  The owner donated $50 to the Association to stop being dunned for the improper fine since the dunning notice was very upsetting to the owners when it arrived in the mail every month.
• Lie:  The implication is that the cost of protecting the Board from the consequences of its own bad acts was $6,522.96 because that is how much expenditures exceeded the budgeted amount for legal expenses for the quarter. 
• Truth:  In fact, the Board also spent $2,000 of the budgeted amount to cover up its wrongdoing so the actual total was $8,533.96.
• Lie:  The strong implication is that Harvey Kurtz and Yvonne Larme are somehow responsible for the wasting of this $8,533.96 spent in connection with their insistence that the Board follow its own Rules.
• Truth: No one but Poul David Rasmussen, Robert Popp, and Lynn Tarrence are responsible for the Board's actions in January 2015.  If the Board had followed the clearly stated procedures in the Rules none of this money would need to have been spent. No proper fine assessment was ever made.
• Lie:  Also implicit in Mr. Rasmussen's email is that the expenditure of the $8,533.96 was a proper expenditure by this Board.
• Truth:  When all members of the Board are subject to an owner's formal complaint that they broke a whole host of Rules when issuing an invalid fine assessment containing profound lies and misrepresentations that Board needs to be very, very careful.  In this case, the main consequence of the legal expenditures was a new Rule that chills the rights of all Residents to seek redress from decisions of the Board that are detrimental to them.  This new Rule was adopted solely to chill the rights of the owners challenging the bad acts of the Board.  They didn't pay thousands of dollars for a necessary rule.  They paid thousands of dollars to prevent us from taking the risk of suing them.  Is that a proper expense for the Association?  I don't know for sure.  I think they needed a "special prosecutor" type of person or persons to oversee their response to our complaint including spending money to cover up their Rule violations. 
• Lie:  The Board believes the dispute is over....
• Truth: At the moment Mr. Rasmussen was composing this email he already knew that he had issued another defective fine assessment against our household and was asking us to agree to an appeal hearing date before giving us the evidence on which the alleged violation was based. This story is nearly unbelievable and will be discussed in a subsequent posting.  Truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction at the POR.  

Anyway, I know that it is common practice for attorneys to report their time in six-minute or ten-minute increments and to describe what they did in the time spent to justify the large amounts charged.  I decided I needed to see the legal invoices to see what services were really provided.

I checked Wisconsin Condominium Law because I expected resistance to my request for copies of the invoices.  But, as is often the case for my side of things here at the Point, the law is completely on my side.  Section 703.20 of Wisconsin Statutes Annotated (discussed farther down  in this post) states that condominium owners are entitled to review every single invoice for any expense of the Association.  I made my request in the first week of June but got no response.  I repeated the request last week.  I didn't get the invoices but I got the information below from Ms. Windpassinger.  If she is "terminated" in the next few days you will know why.  She is caught between the state law and Mr. Rasmussen's ideas of right and wrong.  I understand that this is a tough place to be stuck!

(Note:  I did receive the invoices on July 8, 2015, from Laura Windpassinger.  They tell an interesting story of fighting to the death to avoid the consequences of bad acts instead of merely correcting them. One thing for sure is that this lawyer is representing the Board, not the Association and its members. That only makes a difference when the Board acts like ours does; normally, a Board would act in the best interest of its members and this gap would not be quite so visible.  I won't publish the invoices on this blog because it is read by many people outside POR ownership group.  I assume you can get them for yourself with an email to Ms. Windpassinger.)   

Here is what the ledger of the Association said on July 1 about legal counsel expenses for the first half of this year. 

07/01/2015 4:49 PM General Ledger Page: CH 1

PO01 First Place Condo Assoc

For Dates 01/01/2015 to 07/31/2015

For Accounts 6520-0560 to 6520-0560 Prospect Management Company

Account Type Reference Date Description Debit Amount Credit Amount Balance

6520-0560 Legal Counsel Fees Beginning Balance 0.00

AVC 00095157 02/12/2015 Whyte Hirshboeck Dud 152.00

AVC 00097914 03/19/2015 Whyte Hirshboeck Dud 3,078.00

AVC 00098733 03/31/2015 Whyte Hirshboeck Dud 53.48

AVC 00098734 03/31/2015 Whyte Hirshboeck Dud 4,490.48

AVC 00100825 05/11/2015 Whyte Hirshboeck Dud 760.00

AVC 00100734 05/18/2015 Dave Rasmussen           3,000.00

Account Total 11,533.96 0.00 11,533.96

Ending Balance 11,533.96

Entity Totals 11,533.96 0.00 11,533.96

These numbers virtually scream for explanation, don't they? Since the name of the law firm is misspelled I  wonder if PMC even received the original invoices.  Wouldn't that be something? And why, in the first place, didn't this matter get turned over to the insurance company, where the deductible is only $2,500, if it really did pertain to a conflict with an owner?  Maybe we won't get answers from the current leadership while they are in office, but maybe we should consider assessing them fines adding up to $8,533.96 once they are out of office, you know, for breaking the Rules.

Here is the law I mentioned that gives us the right to see the invoices for legal services.  As I read it, every expenditure the Board makes affects the common elements.  If there were no common elements there wouldn't be a condo association..

703.20  Books of receipts and expenditures.

(1)  Record keeping; availability for examination. An association shall keep detailed, accurate records using standard bookkeeping procedures of the receipts and expenditures affecting the common elements, specifying and itemizing the maintenance and repair expenses of the common elements and any other expenses incurred. The records and the vouchers authorizing the payments shall be available for examination by the unit owners at convenient hours.

The tragedy in all this is that we have to beg for information from someone entrusted with protecting and preserving the value of our investment in the Point on the River.  I hope this post causes you to raise more questions than ever.

Please join the group that is committed to "finding a better way to live at the Point on the River."  We are encouraging persons who share this commitment to run for membership on the Residential Committee and we are committed to supporting each other against attacks we can expect from the current leadership.  (hkurtz@ameritech.net)