BRENDA MUELLER TO QUAIL MEADOW OWNERS: SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP

The petty dictatorial machinations of board president Brenda Mueller were on display at the October 6th meeting of the Quail Meadow board of directors where Mueller pushed through a rule relegating a homeowner's opportunity to speak to agenda items to the end of the meeting, until after the board has already voted on them. She also set a limit on participants' time to speak to a maximum of 2 minutes.

Psychologists have shown that gaining a little power makes humans more than a little crazy. In the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, where role-playing "prisoners" and "prison guards" were selected from among male volunteers and randomly assigned to one or the other group, the planned two-week experiment had to be stopped after only six days as the "guards" abuse of the "prisoners" became increasingly sadistic and brutal. Knowing that they were being observed did not restrain the guards; they appeared to have behaved more aggressively when supervisors observing them did not step in to restrain them.

The Stanford Prison Experiment has been criticized for being unethical and, for some, its results are controversial. Nevertheless, few would disagree with the truth of British historian Lord Acton's well-known aphorism, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Brenda Mueller's tenure as the Quail Meadow Association's president can and should be viewed through Lord Acton's lens. At nearly every opportunity, Mueller places consolidation of her own personal power over the interests of the community, deliberately stifling debate, transparency and consensus, while actively practicing exclusion, division and closed door decision-making. She has systematically disenfranchised three of the seven board members, so that she and her "executive board" toadies, Executive Director Bross, Executive Director Chiarello, and Executive Director Connery, can ignore not only the votes of the minority bloc but also the minority's advice and ideas. She has decided to elevate her position on the board of directors to that of "shot-caller" of an organization that is hardly envisioned by the Florida legislature to be structured as a gang.

All tyrants and their totalitarian regimes seek to eliminate political dissent. Some do it brutally, with physical violence and disappearances, and others begin by decreeing criticism of the government a crime. As a good tyrant wannabe, Mueller is simply taking a page from chapter one of the dictator's playbook, "Consolidation of Power: Crushing Dissent."It is understandable then that Mueller has expressly cancelled the voice of the Quail Meadow membership, declaring it unlawful for homeowners to express their views on agenda items at public meetings of the board of directors until after the board has already voted on every agenda item. What better anti-democratic play in a homeowners' association then to affirmatively and expressly disenfranchise the homeowners, whom Mueller is obligated to serve, by silencing them and rendering their voices and ideas superfluous.

For following a key tactic of some truly exceptional tyrants, Mao, Mussolini, Stalin, Pol Pot, and Pinochet come to mind, Mueller receives an "A." Whether by controlling the media or imprisoning government critics or "disappearing" them altogether, or, as in this case, eliminating owners' opportunity to speak on matters directly affecting their own property, the tyrant's instinct and tactic of choice is to silence dissent.

For serving the Quail Meadow membership as community guardian-in-chief, Mueller receives an "F." It is not only that Mueller's executive board is effectively silencing homeowners with its "rule making" but even more crucially, this gang of four is eliminating your absolute right to influence the outcome of decision-making on your home, community and wallet, affecting collective community investment in real estate valued at around $40 million.

Florida is a poor choice for wannabe dictators desiring to practice their craft. Keenly aware of the propensity for corruption, Florida has enacted one of the most stringent set of "sunshine" laws in the country, with its Homeowners' Association Act having its own provisions dedicated to transparency in HOA governance. The operative provision enacted to prevent exactly the silencing of homeowners Mueller seeks to accomplish in Quail Meadow, provides as follows:

(2) BOARD MEETINGS.—

(b) Members have the right to attend all meetings of the board. . . .The right to attend such meetings includes the right to speak at such meetings with reference to all designated items. F.S. 720.303(2)(b).

In practice, this provision mandates that homeowners are entitled not only to exercise their right to speak at such meetings, but to speak for at least 3 minutes on every agenda item prior to the board voting on that item. The purpose of the provision is not to allow homeowners to engage in superfluous speech but rather to require that board members hear and consider owners' input before acting. This is according to Becker & Poliakoff, perhaps the most respected Florida law firm in the area of HOA law and formerly counsel to the Quail Meadow board of directors. From Becker's "Community Association Sunshine Law" publication:

"[i]n both the HOA and condominium context . . . owners are entitled to be heard regarding matters the board intends to consider at the meeting. Therefore, unit owner statements should be taken either at the beginning of the meeting, or at a set time in connection with a specific agenda item. Allowing owners to speak after the board has voted does not fulfill the requirement allowing participation by members."

That the Becker firm almost exclusively represents associations is an indication of how fundamental is an owner's right to participate meaningfully in all association business that comes before the board of directors. Together with other provisions of the Homeowners' Association Act strictly prohibiting a board from conducting board/association business except at a duly noticed public meeting, Florida's regulators seek to ensure that board activity is fully transparent and that homeowners have the opportunity to influence decisions that affect their homes and neighborhoods before they are made.

Mueller's effort to stifle community participation also extends to a scheme to discontinue conducting Quail Meadow board meetings by ZOOM over the Internet on the pretext that with COVID-19 over we should now meet together in-person "to get to know one another again." The fact is that few, if any, homeowners attended board meetings that were held in-person at the old POA building (prior to COVID-19) where, by contrast, community participation on ZOOM calls regularly has exceeded 20 participants. Whether you like web calls or not, there is no denying that the technology facilitates community participation through easy and efficient access and promotes community engagement and oversight, all good things for the community, unless you're a wannabe tyrant looking to operate behind closed doors.

And that's the real problem and point; that Brenda Mueller and her executives don't get that their limited power as members of the board of directors is granted by the community, for one-year terms, to serve the community by placing the best interests of the community above their own personal, petty interests. Attempting to get re-elected by using operating funds to mail disinformation to the community, keeping the HOA dues artificially low for 18 years so that the retired director on a fixed income can continue to afford the quarterly dues assessment, soliciting the board to make charitable contributions from Quail Meadow operating funds, refusing to engage accountants to perform an audit after changing property managers and unassailable evidence of financial management causing losses to the community of over $600,000 was brought directly to the board's attention, are just a few examples of Mueller and her executive board pursuing and/or safeguarding their personal interests at Quail Meadow homeowners' expense.

Board members may not lawfully place personal aggrandizement ahead of community welfare, period. Brenda Mueller and her "executive" gang of four doesn't understand that, and likely never will.

What can you do? First, this very minute, before closing your browser, email Brenda Mueller and her executive board members, as well as Beth White, president of Realtime Property Management. Explain that "the HOA law guarantees that every member who wishes to speak on an item that comes before the board for a vote be permitted to do so for at least three minutes before the vote on such item is taken, without regard to how long the meeting is required to go." (There can be no arbitrarily set in advance meeting set cut-off time as Mueller and Realtime have done here, setting 5:30 p.m. for conclusion of the meeting.) Here are the email addresses:

Brenda Mueller, muellercreek@gmail.com

Sharon Bross, sharonbross@msn.com

Anthony Chiarello, tkchi@att.net

Lucy Connery, lucy.connery@ihg.com

Beth White, bwhite@realtimepm.com

Second, the next meeting of the Quail Meadow board of directors is just two days from today, on Monday, November 21st at 4:00 p.m. Attend the meeting by ZOOM and show this gang of four (and your brother and sister homeowners) your face on the call, and remind them that they work to serve your interests. Even better, don't be shy; speak up and tell them you don't agree to have your input ignored and won't tolerate it.

The real lesson of the Stanford Prison Experiment is not that people will be cruel to others if given the opportunity; it is that abusers are emboldened to even greater brutality when their abuse is perpetrated in plain sight and observers do nothing.