HOA backed down...
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It looks like he HOA backed down way back in June...
Lake Highlands HOA retreats on disabled vet's decals
9:04 PM Wed, Jun 24, 2009 | Permalink | Yahoo! Buzz
James Ragland/Columnist Bio | E-mail | News tips
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A Lake Highlands homeowners association is backing down from a fight it picked with a retired Marine.
"This has all been blown way out of proportion," Darenda Hardy, president of the Woodlands on the Creek II HOA in northeast Dallas, said Wednesday. "I'm not anti-Marine and I"m not anti-military."
Hardy (pictured at right, courtesy of my handy cam-phone) sent ex-Marine and U.S. Coast Guard veteran Frank Larison a letter in late May threatening to tow his car if he didn't cover up or remove the military stickers and decals displayed on the rear window of his black 2008 Chevy HHR.
The national media attention caused a major backlash for Hardy, who left town shortly after sending Larison the letter and hadn't been available for comment since.
"I was in Tyler fishing," Hardy said, chuckling, "and someone called and told me. I thought it'd all blow over by now, but it didn't."
An attorney for Larison showed up at her condo Wednesday with a TV reporter. The attorney handed her a letter, she said, that alluded to a May 29 letter he'd sent telling the HOA basically to cease and desist from threatening to tow Larison's car.
"I haven't even seen the first letter," Hardy said, saying she was given five days to respond. She said she'd confer with the HOA's other four directors and figure out how to proceed.
But she said she's already made up her mind that the HOA board that she's led since 2000 needs to review and clarify a covenant that disallows "any kind of writing" or "business advertising" on cars.
"Afther all the hooplas, we just decided to review it," she said.
Asked why the rule banning "advertising" stickers and decals was put on the books in the first place, Hardy said that it was aimed at curbing unsightly stickers.
"We've got some people who used to have inappropriate things on their car, like 'Hot Mama" and 'I Love Tattoos' and things like that."
And if Larison didn't have "seven or eight" stickers on his car, she said, his decals probably wouldn't have drawn her attention.
Larison didn't sound too relieved to hear what Hardy had to say.
"She's changing the thing around now," he said. "The [threatening] letter didn't say how many stickers, it just said I had advertising."
The flap has caused quite a stir at the 104-unit condo complex.
"We haven't had a ruckus like this since I've lived here that I know of," said Hardy, who moved into the property right after it was built 27 years ago. "It's B.S., that's what it is."