Article Courtesy of Northwest Florida Daily News

By DUSTY RICKETTS

Published January 23, 2007

NAVARRE - A resolution could be coming soon in a dispute that has stretched for months between residents and the board of directors of Florida's largest homeowners association.

Several members of the Holley by the Sea homeowners association are upset with the spending and decision-making of four of the five members of the group's board of directors over the past six months. 

Tim Harrington, president of the board, said he wants to make Holley by the Sea a nice association and improve every part of it. Jim Kizer, one of the leaders in an effort to remove Harrington and three other board members from office, said the board has doubled the association's assessment dues and has padded its budget to fund extravagant capital improvement projects, such as a $700,000 to $800,000 beach house to replace the one destroyed by hurricanes. 

Kizer and other Holley by the Sea residents started a petition drive in November to remove Harrington and fellow board members Laurie Gallup, Teresa Baisinger and Lee Gardner. The petition seeks to keep Neal Rogers on the board because he has consistently voted against the other four members on several issues. 

The development's homeowners association is the largest in the state, Harrington and Kizer say.

State law requires a majority of the association's homeowners to sign the recall ballot before board members can be removed. Because Holley by the Sea has roughly 4,724 parcels, those leading the recall effort had to acquire more than 2,362 signatures. 

About 2 months after starting the petition, Kizer said there are enough signatures to remove the four board members. Kizer said organizers had received 2,490 signed ballots as of Thursday and were expecting more. 

He said he has set up a meeting on Monday morning to present copies of the petitions to Harrington, who has five days to go through them and make sure they are valid 

"The burden is on Harrington to prove the ballots are not legitimate," Kizer said. "We've done a good job." 

A board meeting is expected Friday evening for the directors to either certify the ballots, which would remove themselves from office, or not. If the directors do not to certify the ballots, an arbitrator from the state Department of Business and Professional Regulation will go through them to determine if the directors should be removed. 

Harrington said he believes leaders of the recall might have bullied property owners into signing the petition by telling them the board would bankrupt the association if some members were not removed 

"It doesn't surprise me that there are so many disinterested people who would sign it without checking the facts," Harrington said

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