One is never sure if he is doing the right thing, until looking in hindsight.
I guess I will start with my questions about how a land developer can get away with:
1. Using deceptive business practices to sell properties to persons that clearly can't afford the properties he is selling, causing defaults and lowering property values for the entire subdivision.
2. Hiring subcontractors to do substandard work on septic systems and not having to warranty the work or do repairs because his company didn't do the work.
3. Filing false documents with Williamson County Appraisal District to avoid paying taxes.
4. Using the Homeowners Association President and Treasurer (both employee's of Oak Ridge Ranch Development) to perpetrate the deception to avoid taxes and get the homeowners association to pay the taxes.
5. Not issuing the proper road bonds required by court order before establishment of the subdivision. (County Treasurer has no records of any bonds ever issued by Oak Ridge Ranch Development)
6. Filing a false document with Burnet County, i.E. Deed Restrictions filed as A Subdivision and not as A Private Subdivision.
7. Lying to Burnet County Commissioners Court officials by stating that the development was not being developed ahead of being properly platted.
8. Not filing Engineering Reports as per an Interlocal agreement with Williamson County.
9. Lying to Williamson County Commissioners Court by stating that he file the proper engineering test results with the Williamson County Engineer prior to the beginning of construction on the subdivision.
10. Misusing public funds by using county sheriff's deputies on a Private Road to set up a speed trap.
11. Use the Architectural Control Committee to authorize known violations of the deed restrictions.
12. Not following the Burnet County Subdivision Regulations, requiring the deed restrictions to have clear statements notifying residents that the subdivision, being private, must maintain the road system.
13. Defrauding the residents of the subdivision by stating in the deed restrictions that the annual maintenance fees would go to improve the subdivision (nothing about road maintenance).
14. Defrauding residents of the subdivision by stating in the deed restrictions that the subdivision would supply an RV park and camp grounds and then not providing the area.
15. Defrauding residents of the subdivision by stating in the deed restrictions that the subdivision would supply an area for parking of Commercial Vehicles and then not providing the area.
16. Claiming the subdivision was being Master Planned, with no such plans ever being filed or presented to anyone.
I live in a subdivision (Thousand Oaks) that is divided by the border between Burnet and Williamson counties, just south of Hwy 29. My wife and I bought in, in 2000 and were presented with the master planned community concept of an upper scale manufactured home subdivision, consisting of only the larger, more expensive limited edition homes, from the best manufacturers. At the time it was taking more than 18 months to get a home sight built and 24 months for a custom, so we thought it was a viable alternative. The package included many extra's, including parks, RV park, campgrounds, commercial vehicle parking, community center, hike and bike trails, deed restrictions and a county maintained public road system.
The developer, Daniel Shine, owner of Oak Ridge Ranch Development, L.L.C., made these and many other promises and was even nice enough to hire residents from the development to work for him in selling his properties, contracting improvements and installations and maintenance of existing model homes. Over the next couple of years, these people were elected into the Homeowners Association, the developer became the largest offender of the deed restrictions and he easily defaulted on many of the promised improvements due to the fact that he pays the president of the homeowners association to be his head sales lady and the members of the Architectural Control Committee are friends of his. Through his use of Alternative Financing, more then half the homes have gone into default, been sold at Sheriff's auction and some have reverted to rental properties.By a small quirk in the deed restrictions, one section gives a vote to all property owners, including the development company, but in another section the development company is excluded from having to pay the annual maintenance dues, leaving him the majority of the voting block, while not paying the maintenance dues all the other homeowners have to in order to have the right to vote. And if this wasn't enough to ensure His people got into office, the HOA members moved the elections for representatives from March to April.By the deed restrictions, if a homeowner hasn't paid their annual dues by March 30, their voting rights are suspended for 60 days. So instead of having all year to pay the dues, either monthly or all at once, this act actually negated more then 90% of the voting public, some of which are on fixed incomes and have never been able to pay their dues in one installment.
Some residents started having problems with the septic systems installed by the development as one of the inclusions promoted in the subdivision brochure, shortly after moving into their homes. Some problems ended up costing them hundreds of dollars to fix. When a maintenance company, Snowden, was called to check out one problem on a resold home on Thousand Oaks Blvd., their own records showed that the pump motor installed in the septic system was installed in another home in the subdivision prior to showing up in this septic system. When the new residents asked Mr. Shine how this could have happened, he claimed ignorance of the situation and referred them to the company that installed the system (Snowden), but that he held no liability because he did not install the system. And this is but one of many problems homeowners have encountered after moving into their new homes.
Drainage problems have moved homes off their foundations, eroded driveways and washed away hike and bike trails, making them virtually impassable, again costing hundreds of dollars to homeowners and again the developer blamed the engineering company for the problem.
Last year the President of the Homeowners Association (HOA), his head sales lady, Delene Davis, for land and homes at his home lot (Country Custom Homes, Hwy 29), announced that he had gotten a tax bill for the road system, from Williamson County, but that the homeowners were actually libel for the taxes, due to the fact that these were Private roads and the developer had gift deeded the land to the HOA. They were informed at a homeowners meeting more then 6 months prior, that this was false and the HOA never owned the properties in question and yet the taxes were paid by the Treasurer, another homeowner (Pat Mellott) that worked as a sales lady for him from 2001 to 2002. They had apparently used the deed for the community owned properties from the first section of the subdivision, which did included the road system in Burnet County and some of the road system in Williamson County, but not the roads in question in the second section of the development. I informed the Williamson County Appraisal District of the discrepancy and the fact that they had used false documents to do this transaction and although the Appraisal District reversed the decision and charged the developer with the taxes, no one, including the County Attorneys Office, wanted to pursue the use of false documents.
I also informed the Williamson County Attorneys Office and the Williamson County Sheriffs Office, of the fact that, in the fall of Mr. Shine requested, and got the use of, three Sheriffs Deputies to run a radar trap on Thousand Oaks Blvd. Being the only road in and out of the subdivision, the deputies had given out more then 40 speeding tickets, and Mr. Shine knew these were private roads when he did this. Unfortunatly, again there was no interest. Apparently the tickets had offset the cost of illegally using county resources.
While talking to the Dale A. Rye, Counsel to the Williamson County Attorney, about these problems we were having, I was informed of an Interlocal Agreement between Burnet and Williamson counties giving Burnet county control of things in the subdivision.
So I got a copy and found that as per the agreement, part IV states, The Williamson County engineer will receive advance copies of all required engineering tests and soil compaction reports for road construction. Williamson County will receive notification prior to the commencement of road construction. I contacted the Williamson County engineer, Mr. Joe England, and was informed that no such paperwork had ever been presented to his office and that none was on record as ever having been filed. He was kind enough to give me a signed letter to that effect. I tried in vain to contact the Williamson County commissioner, Commissioner Greg Boatright, to find out how he and Judge John C. Doefler, could have approved the subdivision plats, without getting the proper paperwork. After dealing with a no response situation, I concentrated my efforts on Burnet County.
Here, I found out that there had been a protest from the neighbors surrounding the proposed subdivision, and they had gone so far as to hire an attorney, Aimee Johnson, to represent them. She had stated the neighbors concerns that the road system had been started prior to the subdivision being approved, that there was not a road bond in place, that the neighbors had not had an opportunity to look at the proposed subdivision and that notification had not been given to Williamson County, as per the Interlocal Agreement.
Mr. Shine stated that Williamson County had been notified of the clearing of the property, but that they were not building roads, but rather, trying to control erosion. After consulting with a couple of my neighbors, that were living in travel trailers on their properties in the subdivision, at the time in question, they stated that Dale Bergman, of Bergman Engineering, had in fact been constructing the roads at the time and Mr. Shine had promised them the roads would be completed soon after the subdivision was approved.
Judge Martin McLean made the motion to approve the plat, seconded by Commissioner George DeSpain to approve the final plat of Thousand Oaks subdivision, approval of a bond/letter of credit in the amount of $70,000, recording deed restrictions, time frame for the development of roads and tax certificate. The vote passed and Judge McLean stated these issues in the motion will be approved be the County Attorney (Robert Klaeger).
I checked with the Burnet County Treasurers office (Donna Klaeger, Burnet County Treasurer) and found that there had never been a road bond filed with Burnet County. The Assistant Treasurer, Connie Wofford, stated in a letter to me that, As of this date, (Sept. 27) this office does not have on file a Letter of Credit or Bond for the roads for Thousand Oaks Subdivision.
At the time of the first platting, May 24,1999, Williamson County had no subdivision regulations for a Private Subdivision, where the road system would be maintained by the developer or the homeowners, by means of a mechanism, such as a Homeowners Association, and never be maintained by the county, in perpetuity, but Burnet County did, and although the road system is supposed to be built to county standards, there are pot holes growing after only five years of existence. The developer and the HOA, continue to fill these holes, with the homeowner dues paying for materials.
I only state this because; I contacted the Burnet County Attorney, Robert Klaeger, about the Burnet County Subdivision Regulations (1997) of the time, pertaining to Private Subdivisions. I asked him how he could authorize the final plat of the Thousand Oaks subdivision when the deed restrictions don't mention anything about the subdivision being private, anything about how the homeowners are to be liable for road maintenance and the statement that Burnet County will never be liable for maintenance is just not there. He said he would check into it. That was more then a month ago and now he seems to busy to return my calls. Commissioner Ron Hibler, has been in contact with me, and very helpful in trying to get Robert to call, however, as of this writing, there has been no response.
The Burnet County Subdivision Regulations (1997) states in Article III, Section 1, D,
A bona fide and viable Property Owner's Association is created that provides a practical, enforceable and perpetual plan for the maintenance of streets, roads and alleys of the subdivision, which shall be incorporated in the deed restrictions and filed for the record with the County Clerk The deed restrictions shall provide or the collection of assessments to cover the cost of repairs and improvements, by the Property Owners Association.
And in Article III, Section 1, E, All deed restrictions shall contain the following notice: the County of Burnet will not accept the streets and roads in a Private Subdivision for Maintenance.
Section 3. Compliance with Other Provisions basically states that private subdivisions aren't held to building the roads and drainage to public county standards.
The developer then got very creative about how to finance his home sites, and hired a mortgage company, Victory Mortgage, Conroe, TX, to help in this new venture. Together they (allegedly) would set up mortgages for almost anyone, with virtually no credit check. Some of these mortgages (again, allegedly) would have interest rates of over 13% with balloon clauses that kicked in after only 9 months and took the interest rate to over 16%, thus increasing the monthly payments well over what the new homeowner was able to absorb. As soon as the deal goes through, the Mortgage Company sells the mortgage to a large investment firm or banking firm and Victory Mortgage and Oak Ridge Ranch Development have their money with no recourse for what they had set up. The properties set up this way would be abandoned and eventually end up at sheriffs auction for back taxes.in less then two years of this operation, more then 50% of the homes in the first section went into default.
After all these defaults in the subdivision, my wife talked to the Burnet County Tax Assessor, the County of Burnet decided to lower all the property values by 25% to help the homeowners that still held loans for the original prices. An example of why they would even consider any action on this issue would be the one of a home (3 BR, 2 Bath on 1 acre of land) on Thousand Oaks Blvd. That just recently sold for $37,500.00, while the owner of the comparable home of a neighbor, still holds a loan for over $120,00.00. Although this showed a devaluation of more then 2/3rd s the original value of the home, the true value of the home was still more then the second selling price.
All this mischief and none of the county officials or attorneys ever knew anything about it?
After observing how Mr. Shine has operated this subdivision for the last few years, it is very apparent to most of us that live here, that he would rather pay someone to look the other way, as he does with the HOA, rather then to comply with the anything that will cost him money. (Spend a little Save a lot)
Of course these are only assumptions, and should only be dealt with in a court of law. Just because I have the County Commissioners Meeting Minutes from both Williamson and Burnet Counties that shows the deceit and lies, the 1997 Subdivision Regulations from Burnet County governing the subdivision that were never adhered to, an original copy of the plats filed with both counties, certified letters from the Homeowners Association President in which she lies about what the paperwork shows as the truth, pictures, letters and about a hundred pissed off neighbors that want to sell and leave this place, (but of course would have to loose money to do so), this hasn't meant a thing to any attorney or County Official I have contacted.
The Texas Attorney Generals Office sent me an e-mail saying that they were sorry, but their office didn't handle these Homeowners Association type of things.
The Texas Rangers say they don't have the resources to investigate any coercion the county attorney may have had with the developer, they were to busy trying to catch thieves and murderers. (The only one that made sense)
The DA's offices says they don't check on corrupt county officials, check with the local sheriff's office.
The local sheriff's office says they don't have the resources to deal with publicly elected officials. (and insinuated that they worked for these guys and couldn't make waves if they wanted to get paid) (sorry I didn't get his name he hung up after I asked for it)
And the wheel keeps turning and we keep getting RIPPED OFF. But, there is of course my plea that after all the work my friends and neighbors having done researching and fighting the developer and his paid HOA board members, our words don't fall on deaf ears.
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