I will be attending and I am interested in hearing as to how these "hands are tied". Again, if there is nothing that can be done then let's just not have an HOA. I don't know many people who are willing to pay $435 a year for nothing more than a pool. I'm sure you can get a season pass to splash town for less. You may even be able to get a pool pass to walden for less but I'm not sure about that one.

@DaycareMom:

Wow...never flagged a post...but I sure did this one...way out of line there boy!!!

Wow! All I can say is wow!

Wow!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Holy smokes! I run to HEB and look what happens.That was just totally uncalled for..

I hope this doesn't turn out to be another one of an ACDr's kids messing around on their phone.

Not with what he is posting. He's just nasty.

Well people, that just got down right ridiculous! Despite the crazy one, I do appreciate all of your comments, help, and you taking the time to listen to me rant. Maybe I will meet a few of you tomorrow at the HOA meeting.

Received my Atasca Woods Newsletter in the mail today.

@JaMc: I feel your pain and know your situation all too well. I've lived in AW in the past, currently lease a property there and have attempted to deal with CAM/HOA on several occasions. First and foremost, CAM is a joke. I can't tell you how many times I've raised concerns with CAM and have been given the canned response of 'we've identified the issue and will address it with the resident' without a damn thing done.I went to several HOA meetings, along with other neighbors near my residence, and we raised our concerns to the 3 board members and the AW CAM rep directly, without any results. As I look back, I crack up because the 3 active board members, when I lived there, all lived in the same corner of the neighborhood, and there was a noticeable difference compared to their end and the end where I lived. Maybe a coincidence, maybe not.As a final note, last year I paid the annual HOA dues in Oct. In Jan, I received a letter from CAM indicating they would send me to collections if I didn't pay my dues immediately. Upon calling CAM and asking them where the hell they went wrong, I discovered somebody else's overdue account was placed in my name and their collection notice was sent to me. Upon inquiring how the hell that happens, the CAM folks could provide no explanations.If the AW community is truly sick and tired of the overgrown yards, 4 cars in the driveway and residents who can give a damn about their properties, they will light a fire under the 3 board members to change management companies and find one that takes action, or else they'll move like our family did!

@trojantexan:
I understand, we had cam for over 20 yrs & what they like to write up was trash cans that people left out or left where they could be seen .

In Texas the homeowners associations can foreclose on your home for unpaid yearly dues, but can only place a lien for unpaid fines for such things as garbage cans being left out all week. Living in Atascosita South I can tell you a major problem is CAM is run by individuals that are lazy and incompetent. I had my home foreclosed on because CAM claimed I had unpaid balance of a 163 dollars. I received notice of this unpaid balance a year after they claim it was unpaid. My wife and made over phone calls and ent to the office on eight different occasions trying to figure out why we owed this and if we did could they provide some kind of documentation showing us why we owed it. Every single time we tried to get this information they the person in charge of the account was out looking at neighborhoods or was on the phone and we were sent to voicemail.After contacting several attorneys when they filed to foreclose, everyone of them told me the same thing. That was I would be better off just paying them what they claimed I owed plus all the legal fees. One attorney that spends a great deal of time working to reign in the power of homeownersassociations on the national level. Said it would cost me about 5,000 dollars for him to fight CAM and I would owe that if we lost case. He said that he would be happy to yake our money if we wanted to fight, but he recommended to take that money and and stop the sale of our house. He said he had only been able to win one case out of the hundreds he had taken on. He said the way the laws in Texas are written the homeowner has few legal rights when it comes to dealing with your homeowners association. When everything was over it cost us 4,600 dollars after all the legal fees, court cost, and fees charged by the constables office.To make thing worse while all this was going on we recieved seven violation letters and we were told that CAM was not allowed to speak with us because off legal case and we could only talk to their lawyers. The strange thing was in the years we had lived here prior to this had only recieved one violation letter. We received two for xms lights they claimed we still had on our home in March, but even postal worker that delivered the certified letters laughed because he couldn't see any lights. It ended up that a house that is about 10 down from us still had them up and as of right now they are still hanging up. Then we had our neighbors sell their house to a rental company and the renters that moved in mow their lawn once a month and leave their garbage cans on curb 6 out of 7 days. However we are the ones that keep getting the violation letters. Luckily once we paid the 4,600 dollars we haven't recieved anything else. So, I personally think the only way to improve our associations is to drop CAM and find a professionally run management company to manage our associations.

TarHeelGuy - That is amazing! That did NOT happen in Atasca Woods... right? Where was your Board?? I find it hard to believe that you would have to go through all of that if you would have just communicated with your Community Board? I can assure you that any HOA Board that I have ever had dealings with was very reasonable and the last thing they wanted was a law-suit! (I know some in ACIA are going to argue this!) But seriously... 4500 bucks over under $200.00 in fees???? Sounds a little far-fetched! CAM is not perfect, but in many cases there hands ARE TIED. I have seen it first hand... despite what you say, state law does favor the HOMEOWNER... not the HOA. Any decisions made about law suits are made by the HOA Board, not CAM! They only manage the community for the HOA Board and take their orders from the Board.