Background on the Recall Effort
I have quite a history with the Edgewood property, as my grandmother purchased her townhome in 1975. My earliest community memories go back to the early 80s, maybe even 1980. My family visited and lived here sporadically until I moved in more permanently in 1995, after my grandmother’s passing.
I moved away in 2007 when Apple, my employer of 20 years, moved my department to Austin, TX. I had been in Texas for 13 years, and I was always excited and eager to return to California, back to Citrus Heights, and back to Edgewood. 
I returned in 2021, and upon seeing the deterioration of the property after my 13-year absence, I was disappointed. I saw 13 years of deterioration all at once. However, after all, I had just moved back and had to get situated, and I didn’t give the property much more thought for a while.
Although I’ve heard the unfortunate stories of many Edgewood homeowners’ less-than-satisfactory experiences with this HOA board (to say the least), I have an experience or two to share myself. These experiences were the catalyst for my getting involved in the community’s HOA affairs, as they caused me to discuss the current situation at Edgewood with my neighbors, alerting me to the severe and widespread problems that impact this community.
My original issue with the board/HOA involved the radio frequency interference they are/were causing in and around the clubhouse and RV parking facility. However, the board’s sheer reluctance and apathy in doing anything to help with serious problems caused the alarms to go off.
More information on the interference problem at Edgewood can be found here.
I have had some issues with Russ or others plugging in electrically “dirty” equipment—equipment that isn’t appropriate for a residential community and zoning. In both instances, even as I pleaded with Russ about the harm the interference was (and still is to a degree) causing us, he was reluctant to provide genuine assistance.
Russ and Pat put far more effort into avoiding me and the problem than it would have taken to mitigate or resolve the issues.
The problems the interference was causing me and others in and around the Edgewood community were so severe that we couldn’t reliably make and receive phone calls and text messages. I recall a conversation with my wife:
“My wife and I discussed today many of the times we’ve had problems making and receiving phone calls in our home. We are very disturbed knowing that if we had to call for emergency services, we may not have been able to. At this moment, we may still not be able to. That’s a big problem.”
I have included some examples of email correspondence I exchanged with Russ. Emails to Pat were never returned. If you read through them, you’ll see the painful effort it took to move forward on any action against the problem.
To get any movement from Russ or Pat, threats needed to be made, gradually escalating, in the form of FCC complaints, enforcement action, and the involvement of local law enforcement.
I was somewhat flabbergasted, to say the least. I didn’t know what I was experiencing, and honestly, I was not even sure if I was the actual problem.
I then started to try to get to know my neighbors. In my early conversations with them, I brought up some of my recent experiences with dealing with the board. I was really just trying to understand, “What the heck is going on?!”
Well, just mentioning the “board” or “HOA” caused the floodgates to open. This was when I started hearing the stories of members needing services to address problems, including issues of safety, that were going unresolved. Stories of apparent harassment in the form of issuing violations, sometimes resulting in thousands of dollars of fines, over issues that weren’t violations. Then, you learn that some of the board’s actions involve a vindictive component.
In addition, will learn about the very questionable financial decisions made by the board.
The stories come from community members of all walks of life and from all four corners of the property. I realized that the problem was widespread when I only heard serious complaints about the board from my area of the community and absolutely no support. When I got out and knocked on doors throughout the community, again, I only heard serious complaints about the board and zero support. That is until I knocked on current and former board members’ residences.
I have forgotten some of the terrible stories shared with me by my neighbors, you all, in this community. I hope to remember and document them all for archival here. In the meantime, we need community members to post their stories in the forums and get them documented. I’m hoping the website’s forum section provides an adequate tool to do that.
If you’d like to email your story, we can publish it, and you may remain anonymous if you prefer.
Again, the reasons for our dissatisfaction with the board are many and varied, but they primarily involve:
- Financial mismanagement.
- Harassment of members.
- Deterioration of property.
- Lack of transparency.
We have seen no progress or innovation in this community or its management in decades. Nobody can recall exactly how long Pat and some other board members have been on or in their positions. Nobody is entitled to the volunteer role.
We have excellent candidates with the right motivation and want to generously volunteer their time, effort, and talents to improve our community. We also have a community of residents ready to volunteer, myself included, to help them transition to their new role and make the change as seamless as possible.
Personally, I would like to volunteer to build new systems around new board leadership. We need systems such as real customer relationship management. This is a business application for managing customers efficiently and responsively. We are customers, perhaps internal, but customers nonetheless, and we should be treated as such, respectfully and kindly.
Proper project management. All projects should include a project charter, buy-in from the community, and identified stakeholders. In most cases, everyone in the community will be a project stakeholder and should have access to updates on the progress. The website will be tied into this under member services.
The website will include a member portal, providing access to services. For example, reserving the clubhouse will be scheduled on the website and instantly processed. You could even receive an access code.
Need a guest parking pass? Schedule it and have it approved instantly. You won’t even need to print out a pass.
We want to open the clubhouse to activities. These events can get the community engaged and communicating; we need that. I don’t believe the community’s original designers intended for the clubhouse to go this unused. For example, I might do a tech support night or two a week, maybe even tech classes. Others have suggested doing the same based on their interests and skills.
A dog park was suggested to board leadership and instantly rejected. Many in the community have many interesting ideas that deserve to be explored, but the community is never given the opportunity to discuss them. I’ve heard these and many other good ideas floated while speaking with community members these last few months. Suggestions like these are never given the time of day when mentioned to board leadership.
We will change all this. The time has come for this community to advance in these changing times. Unfortunately, we are discovering what happens when our leadership and our community do not adapt.
The image gallery below is regarding interference caused by a battery charger. This hardly represents the worst experiences I’ve had in dealing with Russ and Pat. The camera system RFI is still ongoing as they will not meet with me or otherwise communicate with me about it.
