Article Update January 31, 2022: Scott Auer responded to my delivery email of the Litigation Notice. Attached is a copy. Contains my original email delivering it to the Board, Scott’s respnse above that, and my rebuttal response at top. Speaks for itself. POA response is nonsense. I have subsequently drafted an Addendum to my Earlier Notice and sent it 1st Class Mail / Email to POA Attorneys.
A property owner has brought attention to a disturbing situation … files on the POA Website are being deleted without advance notice or explanation, and some messages indicate that after deletion, members “will soon permanently lose access”. Many of the files are Financial Reports, and many are “Board Meeting Minutes”. Both of these types of documents are of the type that are LEGALLY PROTECTED documents that any member of the Association is entitled legal access to. Permanent Deletion of these documents is not only illegal, and not only is it the opposite of “Transparency”, but some patterns in the deletions have been found that are indicative of a targeted campaign aimed at specific subsets of documents.
Almost 100 Screen Shot have been taken that show either the File Deletion and Already Existing Loss of Access Deletion, or they show Files that are Marked for Permanent Access Loss Deletion. Those two links go to just two (2) sample screen shots. As I have said, there are almost 100 others already identified and documented. In many cases they are random, but a few patterns have emerged.
(1) In general, the deletions seem to range across many different subsets of documents, in various time and subject matter groupings, but most have been from December 2020 to present. I would estimate that maybe 10% of documents are already deleted, or already moved to trash awaiting permanent deletion.
(2) They are not deleted in a linear time progression, such as if one were deleting files in order as they merged them into a new website or database. They are not deleted in a linear Category by Category manner. They are random, with select files taken from many many categories. To those of us with prior database and web management experience…. there is no rationally acceptable explanation for this that would include migration from one database to another, or migration from one website to another etc.
(3) One very clear pattern stood out in the financials. I’m going to show you the “Monthly Financials” next to the “Monthly Measures and Tracking” reports. I have marked all of the files links that go to a “Deleted File” page with a Colored Dot. Here they are in a single side by side PDF. See any similarities? These appear to be specifically targeted sets of related information.
(4) You see this in Minutes of Board Meetings, Committee Meeting Minutes, also Budget Documents. In each of those linked screenshots, the ones that are deleted are marked with a colored dot. Red Dots mean they are already gone, deleted. Purple Dots indicate they are marked for Permanent Access Loss Deletion.
QUESTIONS:
- WHY is this happening?
- WHO is doing it?
- WHEN was this decided?
- WHY no advance communication to property owners?
The POA needs to go in and identify, through review of the Server Log, who is doing this. Then they need to report to the Community the WHO, the WHEN, and the WHY’s. This is very bad optics considering all that is going on lately. And this is new, as even the most recent Capitol Improvement Financials posted at the beginning of 2022 are now suddenly gone. Interestingly, this Digital Shredding coincides with the new term of Amy Tropfenbaum as the New POA Board President. The links are all there as if the documents are still up – but the documents behind those links are gone, with no forewarning or explanation.
This is NOT the definition of transparent governance, and due to the disturbing nature of what is going on, and the potential for records to be irretrievably lost, I am sending the POA Attorney a formal “NOTICE OF POTENTIAL LITIGATION & DEMAND TO PRESERVE DOCUMENTS“
Concern has been expressed that this is just the stuff property owners can see happening…. what other documents or communication histories may be disappearing? Myself and many other property owners I have spoken to are anxiously awaiting an explanation. Hopefully this is not what it appears, and is limited to being extremely poor communication.
This Article Shareable Online at our FOBC Public News Group:
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Peace,
– david / publisher
Focus on Big Canoe, GA
* a publication of The Mountains Voice
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