A power struggle in Carson

Southern California churns with homeowner association disputes, but the one that has consumed a sprawling complex of town homes in Carson is in a whole different stratosphere -- disputed elections, a city official threatened with arrest and armed guards stationed at the association headquarters. Even the Boys and Girls Club got caught in the middle.

For more than a year, many of the 3,000 residents who live in Scottsdale Estates have been locked in a ferocious dispute over who controls the governing board and the $1.7 million in annual homeowners dues it collects, the fight deepening until a band of dissidents held their own balloting, claimed victory and staged a coup. As sheriff’s deputies looked on, they changed the locks on the office, dismissed the security force and installed themselves as the new board.

“I felt proud that there is such a thing as justice and right triumphing over evil,” said Woody Rowell, a charismatic recovering addict who led the revolt and was named chairman of the new board.

If Rowell was the face of dissent at Scottsdale Estates, Cyd Balque was the target of the growing unrest in the community. A 44-year-old Department of Defense contract auditor, Balque had grown up in Scottsdale and had headed the homeowners association for a decade or so.

Balque, some residents said, ruled the complex like a Third World despot. Rowell and others described a reign of threats and intimidation: Fliers distributed in the complex called dissidents “rogue homeowners”; armed guards were posted by the association’s office; and if someone went to the office to complain that termites had eaten holes in the roof or the plumbing was backed up, he or she might get tossed out. Residents such as Debra Park complained that when they fell behind on their assessments, they didn’t receive a notice until it had been sent to a collection agency, which tacked on hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in penalties and fees.

Rowell and others said it had been years since they remembered the annual homeowners association meeting or elections being held, and few knew if or where the bi-monthly board meetings took place.

The Carson city treasurer said she was once ordered out of Scottsdale because Balque thought she was allied with her opponents.

And the city clerk, according to an affidavit filed in connection with a lawsuit, said she was once threatened with arrest for trying to monitor an election in the community.

On the defensive

Ten days after her overthrow, Balque and the board took out a five-page ad in the Daily Breeze of Torrance defending their administration. The ad slammed the Carson mayor, former mayors and other city officials, the Boys and Girls Club of Carson and even the giant mortgage lender Fannie Mae.

The board charged the $15,593 ad to the homeowners association.

Balque said in an interview that her overthrow was part of a conspiracy involving the city, which she said wanted to get its hands on government grants meant for the complex.

She said it also was an attempt by former board members she had ousted years ago over alleged corruption to regain control and by homeowners behind on their dues who were hoping new leadership would give them a pass.

Asked why she continued in an unpaid position in the face of such anger, Balque said, “I feel God appointed me to help these people and handpicked each of these board members.”

Built in 1964, Scottsdale Estates was one of Southern California’s first gated communities, 600 town homes set on 44 acres with a pool, parks, ball fields and a playground. But by the ‘80s, Scottsdale was known for its gangs and drugs. Today, the pool has been filled in, some of the parks are off limits and it has the highest crime rate in Carson.

There seem to be two constants at Scottsdale: anger at the board of governors and the failure of homeowners to pay their association dues. Balque said the association is owed about $500,000 in overdue assessments and estimated that about 30% of the homeowners have fallen behind.

Balque joined the board in the late 1990s and soon filed a lawsuit charging other board members with using association funds to pay for personal expenses, not attempting to collect back dues and failing to keep up the grounds at Scottsdale. The lawsuit was settled two years later when nearly half of the board agreed to resign.

Carson Mayor Jim Dear said he has tried to reach out to Scottsdale.

“At first we thought we were getting cooperation from the board of directors. Then it turned into they just wanted us to give them money,” he said. Balque “has pretty much run the community with an iron fist and not too much of a velvet glove.”

In one memorable action, Balque evicted the Girls and Boys Club of Carson, which had been operating out of the clubhouse since March 2006. Kim Richards, executive director of the club, said the nonprofit provided $175,000 of free services annually to Scottsdale residents.

Balque said she closed the club after a staff member there told her that dissident residents were going to take over the building during the hours it operated.

The dissidents found a leader in Rowell, whose autistic 14-year-old son was a club regular. Rowell, an out-of-work accountant with an MBA, had fallen five months behind in his homeowners assessment. He said he thought his wife was making the payments. Like others, he said he learned he was delinquent when he received a note from a collection agency. His $800 bill had turned into $1,547.

He said he began asking questions, simple ones, like when the annual homeowners meeting and the semimonthly board meetings took place. He asked for financial statements and the articles of incorporation but said he couldn’t get answers. He sent registered letters to board members, but they were returned unopened.

The breaking point was a $40 jump in monthly dues to $240 announced in July 2008. Residents circulated petitions to have it overturned.

In October of that year, Rowell and a group of other residents met in an effort to vote in a new board, but they found the clubhouse locked and armed guards stationed inside.

The next day, residents received a notice from Balque and her colleagues about “a rogue group of homeowners.” The board, it said, was “working with the Sheriff’s Department to identify and prosecute those who are illegally conspiring to break into the association office & Town Hall.”

A February letter from sheriff’s Capt. Todd Rogers said there was no such investigation.

Holding an election

Rowell read the bylaws, which said an annual election was supposed to be held the second Tuesday in March. So he and others prepared to hold their own balloting and asked Carson City Clerk Helen Kawagoe to serve as an observer. When Balque learned about it, she threatened to have Kawagoe arrested if she showed up, Rowell said.

When the clerk arrived for the March 10 election, sheriff’s deputies escorted her from the premises, Rowell and others said. Kawagoe declined to comment.

When the votes were counted, the dissidents proclaimed they had won an overwhelming victory. But elation turned to despair when Rowell spoke with the old board’s attorney, who explained that one of the quirks of Scottsdale is that for the election to be valid, more than half of the homes, 301, must vote.

Without a quorum, the old board remained in place.

Rowell and his fellow dissidents began holding monthly meetings and invited Carson City Treasurer Karen Avilla to a meeting in April, when she listened to homeowners’ complaints. As she was leaving, she said, she noticed five armed security guards at the clubhouse.

“My first thoughts were, somebody should do something about this,” she said. “This is America, isn’t it?”

According to an affidavit, a security guard approached her and said “he was instructed to tell me to leave the premises or be escorted off per order of President Cyd Balque . . . that I was a city official and they were not welcome on private property.”

A few days later, Avilla said, she received a seven-page letter from another board attorney criticizing her for showing up at an “illegal meeting,” telling her “you are not in a position to know what is in the best interests of the homeowners.”

Rowell and his group found help in a Beverly Hills attorney who grew up in Scottsdale. Fred Dorton’s older sisters had gone to high school with Balque, and she had umpired his baseball games. The relationship had soured long ago, though, as Dorton had had his own run-ins with Balque over his father’s house in Scottsdale.

Working without a fee, Dorton discovered there was another way to win the election, through proxies from people who hadn’t voted. By signing the proxies, homeowners were agreeing with the results of the election.

The dissidents gathered at City Hall on Oct. 15 and Avilla verified they had enough votes to win.

That night, they went back to the Scottsdale community room, locksmith in tow, and took over.

A couple of days later, Rowell and fellow board member Marco Caal were standing outside the clubhouse as night began to fall. Someone shot off a firecracker, and they ducked, thinking it might be a gunshot. A skinny man walked up to Rowell, speaking Spanish and reached out to shake his hand. Then he hugged him. “Damn, I thought, these people are really happy,” Rowell said.

Any happiness was not long-lived, however. A Superior Court judge on Thursday invalidated the election and put the old board back in power. She did order that the annual meeting, at which the election is supposed to take place, be scheduled for no later than March 31, 2010.

jeff.gottlieb@latimes.com