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RESIDENTS have admitted to feeling targeted by their HOA board, to the point that they might have to sell their home.
Homeowners who live in the Laurel Glen subdivision in Georgia believe their HOA is targeting residents who speak out against them.
Marianne Thomas claims members of the Laurel Glen Homeowners Association have been harassing her and her family for over a year, with the issues starting over a trampoline.
Thomas claimed she had received a citation for moving her trampoline to a flat spot in her yard to relieve drainage issues.
She had thought it was strange after minutes from an HOA board meeting appeared to suggest a neighbor was approved to have their own trampoline a month prior.
Thomas said that “everything seemed to erupt from there.”
“Everything seemed to erupt from there,” Thomas told the Gainsville Times.
“[The harassment] came as soon as I pushed back and started questioning them,” she explained.
The Board President, Andrew Rodgers, was accused of also targeting Thomas’s ex-husband, police sergeant Luis Aponte, and their kids.
While visiting from Arizona, Aponte’s children told their dad that there was a man “taking their picture” on Thomas’ property.
While he didn’t see the man himself, he went on the Laurel Glen Facebook, to ask if someone else could identify him, leading to immediate pushback.
“I’m concerned about my boys here, and then I started to get berating messages from Ellen [Spaeth] and Andrew [Rodgers],” Aponte said.
Thomas also corroborates that Rodgers had taken photos of her home while her children were playing, with other residents also divulging to the publication that he had done the same to them.
A day after posting to Facebook, Aponte allegedly spoke with Rodgers claiming that he acted “unprofessional.”
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In the video obtained by The Times, Rodgers allegedly responded, “I had a couple too many gins and tonics last night.”
Despite his seemingly apologetic actions, records obtained by the publication show that Rodgers emailed the city of Peoria, Arizona to file a complaint against Aponte.
According to the police sergeant, this caused an internal investigation to be done on him, due to the email.
Resident Gary Trenton, has even had to call the cops on board member, Dan Spaeth after he barged in a resident meeting about the board.
After being escorted out of the meeting, he allegedly stormed onto Thomas and Trenton’s property screaming and waving at their doorbell cameras.
“Every day I’m worried about what they’re going to do,” Trenton said.
Since then, Thomas has been cited for over $3,000 worth of violations which she claims many of them don’t appear in the HOA covenants.
Some of the fees she believes are direct retaliation from her getting legal counsel.
Thomas got a lawyer in April, hiring attorney Quintin Carr due to what she believed were unfair violations.
However, she would no longer be able to afford her services, after the HOA got a lawyer, and levied a $500 special assessment fee on all of the homes in the subdivision, with an additional $2,880 on Thomas.
On Friday, the board told her she had 15 days to pay the board’s attorney’s fees or else they would place a lien on her home.
Thomas and other residents believe they will have to move out of their homes in order to escape the HOA.
“It’s their board, not ours,” Brandon Puckett, a Laurel Glen resident said.
“We want peace in the community, but at the end of the day, I just want these people to leave us alone.”
The U.S. Sun has reached out to Laurel Glen Homeowners Association for comment.
