Dear Marina customers,
The BHVA continues to send out slanderous and erroneous emails about me personally and what has transpired over the course of the last two years. Please ask yourself this question: what motivation would I have to keep the elevator and stairs from being repaired? They are the lifeline to operating my business. Without them, there is no marina. This dispute is, and has been, about access to the marina. This dispute and the BOD’s lack of reasonableness is damaging my business.
I have tried to solve the elevator issue since October 2019 and have not asked for anything from the BOD except standard protections in the event of an accident when work is being performed on my property. There are e-mails to support this.
There are two access issues here that the BOD is not being transparent about. First, the BOD has requested the ability to cross my property to the south of the beach for the purpose of bringing equipment to the elevator for use in the repairs. Contrary to the false statement in the BOD’s most recent communication, the BHVA’s Restated Declaration does not give BHVA the right to cross this property. BHVA has admitted as much in court filings when it sued me and asked the court to grant it an “easement by necessity” over this property. Of course, if the BHVA already had such an easement there would be no reason to use the community’s money seeking a court order granting one. Second, the BOD has admitted in multiple community communications that the elevator control room sits on my property. Again, contrary to the BOD’s false statement in their most recent communication, nothing in the Restated Declaration gives BHVA the right to cross a Lot owner’s property for any reason the BOD sees fit. The fact that the BOD has never pointed to the language in the Restated Declaration they claim to rely upon is telling. However, they appear to be relying on Section 10.01, which does provide BHVA with express easement rights for certain enumerated purposes, none of which address repairs to the elevator control room that encroaches on a Lot Owner’s property. I ask you to please read it and the sections before and after it.
Despite these issues, I have offered to provide the BHVA with access to my property so the elevator can be repaired. Contrary to BHVA’s false statements, I have never conditioned a grant of access on being granted a contract to perform the repair work, or on the BHVA making any concessions in the pending litigation. The License Agreement I presented to the BHVA would not give me the right to control who can use the elevator or stairs—I have no interest in that. Instead, this is a bold-faced misrepresentation designed to lay the blame for the BHVA’s inability to repair a community asset at my feet.
Please take a step back and realize that the BOD is not being transparent. It is my belief that the BOD’s ultimate end game is to get rid of me at all costs, even if it means weaponizing the elevator and closing the waterfront to the whole community. I have no plans of going anywhere—the marina is not for sale and many have stated that the community at large doesn’t even want to own the Marina as that would only mean more special assessments for the purchase, repairs and maintenance.
I have been steadfast in my willingness to resolve all of the issues between me and the BHVA in a comprehensive fashion, or to resolve the elevator access issues separate and apart from those in the litigation for the good of the community. Those efforts have fallen on deaf ears as the BOD has refused to even sit down and discuss anything and, instead, has decided the best strategy is to spend hundreds of thousands of the community’s dollars on a scorched-earth campaign against me. Despite the BOD’s insistence on defaming me personally and professionally, I remain ready and willing to discuss and resolve these issues in good faith.
The time to resolve this is now. This situation is worsening and I’m calling on the BOD to work with me to resolve these issues well before the summer season. We need to work together to get mutually beneficially access protocols in place as soon as possible. I urge the BOD to have their attorneys call mine. Or even better yet, someone on the BOD should call me so we can at least talk as neighbors and set aside our differences. Then we can leave it to the lawyers to hammer out the details.
Sincerely,
Jeremy Fields
No comments:
Post a Comment