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Article Courtesy of Action
News Jax
By
Finn Carlin
Published February 25, 2026
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WATCH VIDEO |
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ST. JOHNS COUNTY — Only Action News Jax spoke with a group of neighbors who are
members of the St. Augustine Shores HOA, claiming their board is ignoring both
issues in their community and some of their own duties.
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Gina Schultz told us she has tried
multiple times to contact the board over damage to North
Holiday Lake for weeks and hasn’t received any answers.
“Emails continually go unanswered. No information is
provided,” Schultz said.
Donna Coates, who lives by the lake, showed Action News Jax
pictures she took of dead birds and fish now visible on the
lake’s surface. Coates claims they started appearing because
of weeks of rapid draining from the lake caused by the
initial damage to the dam.
“It smells rotten,” said Coates, “maybe we shouldn’t have
invested here if [the board] is not going to be able to take
care of it.”
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A
source from St. Augustine Shores told Action News Jax that the dam along the
lake is now undergoing repairs, but only after they claim neighbors called the
county last week because the HOA board supposedly did not take any action to
address the damage.
This isn’t the first issue some neighbors have had in the community. They also
brought to our attention a complaint filed with St. Johns County last year,
which we located through court documents. Those documents also show that the HOA
board, at the time, had work done to the neighborhood’s clubhouse in 2023 that
was both unpermitted and completed by an unlicensed contractor.
During a recent HOA board meeting, one of the community neighbors shared
concerns regarding whether the current board members had completed their legally
required annual hours of training.
Florida law says that, for an HOA board representing a community as large as St.
Augustine Shores, all of its directors are required to complete 8 hours of
annual training, or “continuing education.” A neighbor in St. Augustine Shores
shared with Action News Jax a list of certifications, provided to them by the
HOA, which show that only two of the six directors of the board fully completed
their required hours in 2025.
Some neighbors, like Schultz and Coates, told us they love living in the
community, but believe a lot of work needs to be done to improve it if they are
going to feel more confident about living there long-term.
“It seems like our HOA, that our investment is in, isn’t holding up their end of
the job that we’ve elected them for,” Coates said.
Action News Jax reached out to the board of directors for the St. Augustine
Shores HOA to ask for a response for the claims and complaints made by neighbors
in the community, including whether board directors had completed their
legally-required training hours. A spokesperson for the board told us that they
had no comment at this time.
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