Oh … I dunno. I’m one of those guys who would buy a hundred dollar ticket to hear himself sing in the shower. I can see you don’t have a proper appreciation of the level of narcissism I have achieved.

I think I’ll continue to blog and have fun.

I think you also want a positive outcome. Doubt it would be fun for you if all you did was make a lot of noise on your blog and then nothing happened because you’ve written (above) that you would like your HOA in Springdale to cease to be and you also think there is a larger issue that they should not exist at all.

Some people who did what I did purchased a franchise. I wanted something different than franchises offered. Sounds like RP knows about something kind of akin to a franchise – a group you could be part of that wants, kind of, the same thing you do. But you have said the “franchise” (AOPC) isn’t exactly doing what you want (“periodic bleeding of HOA cows”).

So, you want to start something that will fulfill your goal. And your goal, as you’ve stated, is to get rid of HOAs. You can blog and have fun – but it might take some grunt work to build something that will do that.

It’s kind of like that seventies song:

I got a brand new pair of roller skates
You got a brand new key
I think that we should get together and try them out you see

How do you guys organize and communicate?

The AOPC, however, is one principal outfit that exists on the periodic bleeding of HOA cows. They may be doing something to empower HOA’s but they’re doing nothing to get rid of them. That’s what I want.

I’ll bet your answer to the question above was, “Well … the AOPC has this great web site … ”

Does the word “co-opt” have meaning for you?

—————

Verb co-opt

neutralize or win over through assimilation into an established group; “We co-opted the independent minority tribes by pulling them into the Northern Alliance”

neutralize – make politically neutral and thus inoffensive; “The treaty neutralized the small republic”

appoint summarily or commandeer; “The army tried to co-opt peasants into civil defence groups”

take or assume for one’s own use; “He co-opted the criticism and embraced it”

B – My priorities are not the same. My first priority is having fun. I am.

I may be old-fashioned, but the way I got my business started (15 years ago) was I spent several years putting flyers on door handles. I believe I’ve walked on every street (where incomes are above poverty levels) in Davis and Weber Counties, some of them twice! But I think that’s what worked best for me. And I had a catchy way to get people to look at my flyers. The area you would have to canvass is small compared to what I had. I had ads in the phone books, on bulletin boards, I took part in fund-raising auctions of social service agencies, word of mouth helped also. But I think what worked best for me was flyers on door handles – and bulletin boards at grocery stores, etc. – Flyers could reference the problem and your blog. – So I guess I agree with Phillip’s method.

I just finished reading a New York Times article about how “posters” in Switzerland were a key part of the recent referendum banning Muslim minarets. Posters don’t work like that in America, but they sure do in Europe.

Maybe you saw the news articles recently about how Air America … the left wing answer to Faux News radio broadcasts … just went out of business. This while Limbaugh has the world money record for a radio broadcast contract and is raking in more dough doing things like judging the Miss America contest. (Yes, this is the same guy who went on a sex junket to the Dominican Republic with a bottle of Viagra.)

My point is that finding the right way to communicate with people is not easy or obvious. The Planning Commission tried to get people to respond to an online questionaire about ordinance revisions. We got four responses. I don’t think walking up to people’s doors and knocking is the answer … but then maybe it is. (Our former mayor, Phillip Bimstein, got elected that way.) Posting a notice at the Post Office? Put an ad in the paper? I don’t know.

Right now, I’m trying to convince people that we really could communicate using the facilities of the Internet and a public forum. I put some effort into trying to interest Springdale in sponsoring and managing an online forum. I even located a sugar-daddy foundation that would fund it if we applied for a grant. That flew like a concrete albatross. So now I’m seeing if I can jump start the process using my own web page.

Sometimes, its just a process of pressing all the panels in the library until you find the one that opens the secret door.

The HOA consulting firms I’ve talked to don’t want to help HOA’s “go away”. They’re the cows that these guys bleed for a living. And, unfortunately, these consulting firms are also just about the only lobbying voice ever heard in the state legislature (other than developers – who are on the other side of the lobbying fence). So the laws are tweaked to make things easier and more standardized, but also more entrenched. If anybody wonders how bureaucracies are created … this is how. There is this whole, huge layer of activity that didn’t exist until fairly recently. We got along fine without it years ago, but now we have to have it for some reason.

Now that municipalities, developers, and consulting firms are realizing how they can profit (at the expense of ordinary people like you and me), HOA’s are becoming the “standard model”.

I’m convinced that there is a movement here just waiting to be tapped. Before there were so many of us, we could be safely ignored because we would never muster enough political pressure to actually make a difference in an election. But as I learn more about it, I’m realizing that it might be possible to put the shafting of unwilling HOA members to work and actually throw people out of office.