Author: Joe

The so-called Ratepayer Representatives, Josie Fuller and Patti Flunker, have been busy again at the Public Utility Commission impugning and demeaning current and past Members of the Board of Directors for the Windermere Oaks Water Supply Corporation.

In so doing, they extend the Big Con of the Con Man himself, which should not be a surprise since Ms. Flunker is the Con Man’s spouse, joining him in the never-ending trafficking in the ruination of reputations and falsifications about our community’s water company.

Their Con continues with a November 12 filing where Ms. Flunker asked the PUC to impose even more oversight on WOWSC and also to refer the company for State Auditor Review and to the Texas Attorney General.

“Their” entire letter is here but we know from the Con Man himself that it was hastily cobbled together by his spouse, Patti, and signed by all their neighborhood marks, the bamboozled. Ms. Fuller signed the Letter as an author, but the Con Man gives cred only to his ConSpouse.

Thus the Con continues at the Public Utility Commission.

To warn the Public Utility Commission about the Con, I submitted two letters which respond to two specific paragraphs in the ConSpouse’s letter.

Letter 1 — The LCRA Showcase Project

My first letter addresses the ConSpouse asking the PUC to ask the State Auditor to investigate the corporation’s use of a grant from the Lower Colorado River Authority in 2020 and 2021. She contended the money was not used for a clarifier, as was stated by the company. She’s right, and wrong. The money was not used for the clarifier project, but it was never, ever stated by the company that it would be. No one ever stated that the money would be used for a clarifier. Never ever. And there is clear public record of that fact, as my letter pointed out.

The LCRA grant application was, from the beginning in 2019, for conservation measures. The former water company manager used the LCRA grant, with matching money from WOWSC, to put equipment in place so as to use untreated water in backwashing processes. The projects have saved hundreds of thousand of gallons of water to-date, and will continue to do so, ad infinitum. It also has saved tens of thousands of dollars.

Too much information, I’m sure, but all that conservation effort was spelled out in the application and subsequently vetted by the LCRA itself through reports sent them by the WOWSC manager.

I pointed out to the PUC that the WOWSC project was so successful that the LCRA’s own manager complimented the Windermere Oaks Water Supply Corporation manager on achieving “showcase” results in conservation. He independently verified the WOWSC results. Watch the pertinent part of the video here https://youtu.be/R1RvGEYnlp8?si=ffqdOXhGuC6zuL6W&t=2282

Back to the point: The LCRA grant was fully litigated in the Ratepayer Representatives appeal of the 2020 rate increase (PUC Docket 50788). All the documents were shared in response to requests by PUC Staff and the Ratepayer Representatives. My letter to the PUC describes all those instances.

And my letter to the PUC showed all the instances when the WOWSC Board in 2020, 2021 and 2021, in public meetings, discussed those results. The minutes aptly show those instances. (This was back when the Board produced timely minutes instead of as now simply posting videos that it claims suffices as minutes. Ah, the good ole days…)

So it’s important to ask four questions about the ConSpouse’s representation to the Public Utility Commission:

1. Were the Ratepayer Representatives ever actually paying attention to those filings during their own 50788 rate appeal?

2. Were the Ratepayer Representatives, who attended public meetings of the WOWSC during those years, paying attention?

3. Are the Ratepayer Representatives ginning up false accusations now because the answer to questions 1 and 2 is “No”?

4. Assuming the answer to 1 and 2 is “Yes,” are the Ratepayer Representatives now bearing false witness against current and former WOWSC Board members so as to instigate official investigation ?

Evaluating the ConSpouse’s misrepresentation to the PUC

My contention is that 4 is the correct answer.

The ConSpouse is more interested in continuing the Big Con, misrepresenting and mischaracterizing events so as to create smoke where there is no fire, impugning and demeaning people, and insulting the intelligence of their bamboozled marks, which now includes the PUC.

That is the essence of a Confidence Game: look at the hand that is moving, not the one that is picking your pocket. The ConMan and ConSpouse are good at their never-ending con.

Letter 2 — The WOWSC’s Sale of Land in 2024

My second recent letter to the PUC also took issue with the ConSpouse’s representation of events regarding the WOWSC’s sale of 6 acres of land.

The abbreviated version of my letter is this: the ConSpouse says no one knows about certain details of the sale and that the Board is being hostile toward members.

My letter points out how the ConSpouse could have stayed on the Board past her one meeting in March 2024 and constructively collaborated with the company as part of the Real Estate Committee.

Instead she had quit at the end of the one and only meeting where she had been officialy appointed to the Board in March 2024.

Then in June 2024 she unilaterally resurrected the Committee without Board authorization and scuttled a deal that was in the works for one million dollars.

That’s $1,000,000 lost due to the ConSpouse.

That’s not my take on the matter. A current Board member, most likely Jeff Walker, sent a letter to the ConMan and one of his ConBuddies with a string of emails about the situation. The ConMan included the letter on his own website, which is where I got it.

And I included that in my Letter to the Public Utility Commission.

Of course I could go on and on here, and I will have more to say about the ConSpouse letter to the Commission.

The point is simply that the Big Con knows no boundaries and there will never be an end to it.

The Con Man, the ConSpouse and his ConBuddies have too much fun demeaning people and keeping the bamboozled fuzzed up with their confusions and false witness.

Does it bother anyone else that the Con Man is such a Bully?

As noted previously, the Con Man traffics in ignominy, the act of disgracing and discrediting others.

As more evidence of his unneighborly bullying, trafficking as he does in ignominy, look at his words in his NextDoor post:

“The new law firm is now aiding in the concealment of public records at the sole direction of Walker, just as Gosselink/Gimenez did.”

Next Door Post below, third paragraph

So, if you are to believe the con, somehow this neighborhood continues to fall victim to well intentioned volunteers who then find attorneys willing to risk their law licenses for “the concealment of public records.”

Wow! How unlucky are we in Windermere Oaks, that this same misfortune keeps befalling us!

There is another possible explanation — the Con Man believes he is entitled with absolute divine right to anything and everything he wants, precisely such that he can use those materials to belittle and badger our community volunteers.

(By the way, you should disregard, of course, that the Con Man’s spouse brought and recommended both the current Carlton Law firm and the previous Lloyd Gosselink Law Firm to the Windermere Oaks Water Supply Corporation. Nothing to see there folks, move along.)

Look at another quote in the ConMan’s NextDoor post:

“While I have been lenient with the two new directors [Brian Garceau and Scott Miller], their hands-off approach while Walker dominates outside of meetings is deeply concerning.

NextDoor Post below, fourth paragraph

So the gracious Con Man is now claiming to “have been lenient” in his treatment of new volunteer Board members. Wow, what a guy!

You may or may not know that Mr. Garceau and Mr. Miller have only been Board members for two, maybe three meetings, and yet somehow, according to the con narrative, they are already willing accomplices to Mr. Walker’s illicit activities outside of meetings. At least that is what the Con Man would have you newcomers believe.

Yet, another explanation is possible: the Board has the duty of protecting the legal interests of the corporation and if those interests are threatened by release of information through Public Information Act request, then the Board has the responsibility of defending the corporation’s rights.

This is exactly what happened in 2019, when the Board carried (approved) the

“resolution approving and authorizing the continuing defense of the WSC’s position of protecting attorney-client priviledged information in response to PIA requests, including maintaining all pending appeals in court, at the direction of the Board President/Public Information Officer.”

2019-10-9_WOWSC_Board_Meeting_Minutes_Approved.pdf

If Mr. Garceau and Mr. Miller want to block Mr. Walker from withholding the contractual information, they should take up the matter at the next Board meeting in an agenda item, to retract the WOWSC’s request to the Attorney General.

Or, as a better option, Mr. Walker could do as the October 2019 Board did, and add belts to suspenders of the duty bound upon directors to protect the interests of the corporation, by having by Mr. Miller and Mr. Garceau vote on a similar resolution.

Regardless of what happens, the Con Man sends the not-so-subtle threat that he has been “lenient” with the new Board members, Mr. Miller and Mr. Garceau.

When he inevitably flings his shovels-full of ignominy against them, beware the loads of half-truths.

A recent NextDoor post demonstrates so clearly how the neighborhood Con Man is now preying on newcomers in Windermere Oaks. He says so:

“For those new to the community, the Attorney General ruled against WOWSC and Gimenez in 2019 and 2020.”

NextDoor Post — Available in Full at bottom of this page

Well, the Con Man is (again) half-truthing on this well documented episode in our community’s history.

The half that is true is this: the Texas Attorney General in August 2019 did write a “letter ruling” that the water company indeed should disclose, without redaction, the entirety of invoices from Lloyd Gosselink. (The Con Man had requested them.)

But this why the Con Man’s statement is a false, fictional mischaracterization: the Letter Ruling was later recanted/retracted in its entirety by the Attorney General’s office itself. Thus the real effect of the original ruling against was completely overturned.

The nitty gritty details of that case apply now as the current WOWSC Board again seeks to protect its ability to do business from the Con’s ongoing games in the neighborhood.

A public entity has the right to redact information that could cause it to be damaged in some of its fiscal dealings on behalf of the public interest. This is true of our neighborhood non-profit water company, the City of Austin, or the State of Texas. Contracts and litigation strategies in particular rise to that status.

At the time in 2019, the water company and its directors were being sued by Rene Ffrench, Dick Dial, and Bruce Sorgen in their district court case 48292.

The WOWSC had contended to the Attorney General that its attorneys’ invoices contained hints of legal strategies that could be used against the non-profit corporation by Ffrench, Dial and Sorgen.

Those were the early days of the case, which had only been filed in May 2019. The WOWSC Board and its attorneys did not know which directions the case would take. Thus preserving the attorney-client privilege at that time was viewed as prudent, on behalf of the corporation.

These documents show the

WOWSC Attorneys' Request for Redaction of Invoices (2993 downloads )

and

Attorney General's Original Letter Ruling Against WOWSC Request for Privileged Information (3312 downloads )

As such, the Board filed suit against the Attorney General’s letter ruling. Because of that filing more senior lawyers in the Attorney General’s office looked at their office’s original letter ruling and found it to be wrong, legally. They then completely reversed their position to agree with the WOWSC that it had the right to redact those invoices.

The Con Man’s NextDoor proclamation that “the Attorney General ruled against WOWSC and Gimenez in 2019 and 2020” is demonstration of the sort of half truth narratives that he deals in. It is his method of operation and he is an expert at it.

The AG did rule against WOWSC. Then, later it reversed itself. The Con Man does not tell you that. Instead he attempts to gain the credibility from the first ruling to impugn the company and myself. He knows that most people won’t research the rest of the truth. He basks in the ignominy of others which he relentlessly fosters.

His marks — “those new to the neighborhood “– should be aware of his half-truthing MO: You will never know what part of his energetic pronouncements are true at the time he pronounces them. He is grandiose in his self-certainty, but that grandiosity should itself be suspect.

As a general guide, every set of Con Man proclamations have the overall goal of attempting to make other people look bad so that he can carry his false light narratives forward. He wants to look good at everyone else’s expense.

Now as to the fact that the WOWSC wishes now to withhold information pertaining to the offers for its disposable land, the company stands on good ground legally. The Public Information Act protects public entities from complete disclosures of information regarding personnel, private contracts, proprietary information, etc. For the sake of getting the best deal possible, and not dissuading future offers, the corporation should endeavor to withhold such information.

Why does the Con Man need this information?

Sure, he has a right under the Public Information Act to a great deal of information produced by the corporation. But there is some that is off-limits by law, to protect the public interest.

Now here he goes again adding to the legal bills which the corporation will pay to protect this information. And when you see that it is the corporation paying those bills, please know that it is you who will be required to pay for his pursuit of cockamamie conspiracy theories.

Again, to make this clear, the Con Man himself was the one requesting the legal invoices in 2019, thus forcing the WOWSC to first request redaction of legal strategy. That came at a cost in attorney fees. Then, when the AG’s office blundered on their first letter ruling, the corporation had to file suit, causing yet more attorney fees. When the AG’s office reversed their position — a complete 180 degree reversal — the Con Man then intervened in the Travis County suit, dragging it out and adding even more costs. It should be telling that he intervened using the same attorney that Dial, Ffrench and Sorgen employed for the 48292 case. Litigation is a strategy game and they wanted the WOWSC’s legal strategy.

Eventually, when the legal strategies contained in those invoices were no longer appropriate, the corporation released the invoices in their entirety. They are still on the WOWSC website.

The Con Man preys upon the likelihood that people won’t educate themselves about his continuing confidence game. Don’t be a sucker.

Here are documents that substantiate the representations above.

Here is proof that the Attorney General’s office reversed course. The Con Man decided to intervene in the lawsuit initiated by the WOWSC against the Attorney General’s office. The image below is taken from his own lawsuit(!) where even his attorney had to admit that the Attorney General determined that information could be withheld. Just so you know, the Con Man was using his buddies’ attorney for the 48292 case. The underlining is added, but you can see clearly that even their they had to admit that the information could be withheld.

Invoices were Eventually Released

As stated above, the invoices were released when the legal strategy was no longer an option. This short video points to where the invoices can be found, on the WOWSC website:

In case anyone in the future removes the invoices from the WOWSC website, they are available for download here:

http://spicewoodnews.com/download/429/?tmstv=1719499761

The Con Man’s NextDoor Post Asserting His Half-Truths

A neighbor posted on NextDoor that the Spectrum contractor used 1.1 million gallons of water and only paid $600, instead of the $90,000 that members would have paid. See his NextDoor posted below.

I’m not sure how this neighbor calculated the $90,000 figure but I find their claim hard to believe.

Let’s apply some common-sense math to what we actually witnessed in Windermere.

If Spectrum’s contractor had really used 1.1 million gallons of water from the fire hydrant at the entrance to the community, they would have needed 220 trucks with 5,000 gallons capacity each. This is what a 5,000 gallon truck looks like:

That means, over a 60-day period, we would have seen four of these 5,000-gallon trucks loading up each day.  

Did you see that? I did not. Not once.

Apparently a lot of pictures were taken of the trucks that were used. Please post them in the comments if you think you saw this. I did not see that.

Instead, I saw the Spectrum contractors use much smaller tanks, something like this one, with a capacity of 500 gallons, on their flatbed trailer.

So, to reach 1.1 million gallons using a 500-gallon tank, they would have had to fill up 2,200 tanks in 60 days.

That would have been more than four tanks per hour, day and night, every day, for 90 days. Let it sink in 4 tanks per hour, 24 hours a day.

Clearly, that’s not what happened. If you think you saw that level of activity at the front hydrant, please correct me.

A more plausible explanation is that the meter that measures the water from that hydrant is faulty. Or something else, but 1.1 million strains credulity.

The neighbor who made this accusation should check their facts before spreading yet more false information about the water company.

Please do not suspend your disbelief when reading the con-artists’ posts on NextDoor.

As drought continues, will we have enough water this summer and at what cost?

The less than one-year track record of two Board members now in complete control of the Windermere Oaks Water Supply Corporation (WOWSC) is creating serious concerns for the future of Windermere Oaks among its residents, property owners, and Spicewood Airport hangar owners.

While you (and I!) undoubtedly will be pleased to see reduced rates in your 2024 water bills* due to the Public Utility Commission’s (PUC) reversal on precedent, this and other actions actually jeopardize the long-term financial sustainability of the WOWSC.

It is impossible to be brief about the complex matters of a locally-run water company. I’m highlighting below the main concerns . Details follow the summary, with references to videos that you could watch too. I’m saving you that trouble, but truly in the segments I picked you can see why I am so troubled at what has been happening. Please consider the following issues:

Will we have enough water?

• Previous Boards’ plans for an equipment overhaul to make a new clarifier tank have been scrapped entirely, even at a $7,000 loss to WOWSC. No plans have replaced them. The previous overhaul plan could have been completed by April 2024. That will not happen now. Without a new clarifier, the water plant may be incapable of clarifying/producing enough water.

What will delay of the clarifier cost us?

• Continuation of the drought and low lake levels could require WOWSC to truck in water with 5,000-gallon trucks. The company sells about 50,000 gallons a day. Previous truck-in costs from 12 years ago would add $50-100 to your bill for usage over 3,000 gallons. The Board can adjust those costs to today’s market rates.

Is the Corporation functional after the election of two particular Board members in 2023?

At this time, the WOWSC Board consists of only 2 WOWSC members: Rene Ffrench and Jeff Walker. Since Mr. Ffrench’s and Mr. Walker’s election on April 15, 2023:

• Seven (!) community members have resigned or changed their mind about serving on the Board with Mr. Walker and Mr. Ffrench. This is unprecedented in the history of the WOWSC or just about any organization that does not have serious underlying problems possibly related to policies and personalities.

• In addition, in January the WOWSC Manager of 20+ years resigned. His key contractors for accounting and tax preparation also resigned. Mr. Ffrench and Mr. Walker changed prior corporate behavior, including: appearing unannounced at professional offices, shouting demands; cancelling payment checks to vendors, payments that had been authorized by other Board members; scrapping previously engineered, approved and partially paid-for plans for a clarifier tank as mentioned.

Is the Board considering more litigation for personal reasons that will cost you more money?

• Both Mr. Ffrench and Mr. Walker initiated litigation against WOWSC in 2022 and prior. Now in office, they will consider, at their current two-member March 19 meeting, whether to initiate litigation against WOWSC’s former attorneys. They could use the sale of WOWSC assets to fund their litigation, if those assets don’t get tied up once their litigation starts. Both issues — the land sale and litigation — are to be discussed behind closed doors at their March 19 meeting. (To his credit, thankfully, Mr. Walker seems opposed to Mr. Ffrench’s ideas on litigation, as will be described below.)

I encourage you to read the rest of this post and to watch the video segments that substantiate the points. Then, please send Mr. Ffrench and Mr. Walker your thoughts about their leadership, or attend the March 19 meeting. You could send notes to them through WindermereWater@gmail.com before or after the March 19 meeting.

Sincerely,

Joe Gimenez

Former WOWSC Board President, 2019-2023

The following observations come from meeting videos posted at Windermere Oaks in the Raw – YouTube. The Secretary-Treasurer, Mr. Ffrench, has not seen to the writing, Board approval and posting of meeting minutes since April 2023, so these videos are all that is available to cite.

Board Turmoil: The Board is unable to attract and retain talented individuals to serve on our community water board:

• Julie Neumann – Won uncontested election at Annual Members meeting Feb. 24, 2024.  Board elected her President Feb. 24; she presided at March 12 Board meeting, resigned at end of March 12 meeting.
• Judy Miller – Won uncontested election at Annual Members meeting Feb. 24.  Elected by Board as Secretary-Treasurer on Feb. 24; attended March 12 meeting; resigned March 13.
• Patti Flunker – Appointed to Board on Feb. 24 at Directors meeting. The Board had not properly put vacancy appointment on the Agenda so the appointment was then ratified at the March 12 meeting agenda, to comply with the Texas Open Meetings Act. Ms. Flunker resigned at the end of the March 12 meeting.
• Richard Schaefer – Won uncontested election at April 15, 2023, Annual Members meeting. The Board elected him President same day. Mr. Schaefer resigned Feb. 21, 2024, three days before the 2024 Annual Members meeting.
• Jeff Anderson – Appointed to Board in March 2023. Resigned in October 2023.
• 14-year veteran Board member – Won election in 2022. Declined to run in 2024.
• Jay LeFevers – Submitted application for 2024 Board. Withdrew his candidacy after citing “unwelcoming” posts on NextDoor and witnessing a yelling match between Mr. Walker and Danny Flunker at Feb. 20, 2024, Town Hall meeting held by Mr. Ffrench and Mr. Walker.   

What underlying reasons might account for this turnover and turmoil?

When resigning at the end of the March 12 meeting, consider that Ms. Flunker described an email which Mr. Walker had sent her and other Board members beforehand:

“You guys [presumably Walker] throw accusations at us [Flunker and Neumann] that we’re not doing anything…I tell you what, everybody want to see what this guy [Mr. Walker] is behind closed doors?

This email is horrible. It was based on BS…You accused her of forgery and fraud…

You’re classless, you’re rude, and you’re foul and I refuse to be on any Board with you.”

The entirety of Ms. Flunker’s comments may be viewed in this video segment.

You can get a feel for Mr. Walker’s “style” by watching this segment also. The video starts with Mr. Walker partially off-screen to the left, but he is reading emails with former WOWSC attorneys (breaking the corporation’s attorney-client privileges, by the way.)

Is it any wonder that members of the community don’t want to spend their volunteer time in this sort of atmosphere?

Mr. Ffrench is signaling intent to sue the WOWSC’s former law firm.

At the February 24, 2024, Board meeting, the newly-elected/appointed Board members Neumann, Miller and Flunker followed the recommendations of Mr. Walker and Mr. Ffrench by:

• Firing the Lloyd Gosselink law firm which had represented WOWSC since 2018 and won, or helped win, 5+ cases through their direct work or legal references and strategy (list below**)
• Hiring The Carlton Law Firm, PLLC, for General Counsel.
• Hiring Griffith Davison PC for litigation on an as-of-yet unspecified matter.

By the firing and hiring, Mr. Ffrench apparently wants to sue Lloyd Gosselink, “to embarrass them.” He said so at his February 20, 2024, town hall meeting:

“Because we know that [Lloyd Gosselink], all four of the folks, are ethically bankrupt, and you can say that is a Rene Ffrench-ism, ethically bankrupt.

But the idea is, at this point, I do believe that we need to engage, and even though it may not be cheap it’s going to be a bargain.

We have to engage legal authority that really has some teeth in it. And the organization interestingly enough is the one that Patti Flunker introduced me to. It’s this Davison Griffith (sic) guys who are just absolutely salivating to get a chance to attack Lloyd Gosselink.

My opinion is that we need to engage [Griffith Davison] immediately to go in to address the fact that Lloyd Gosselink is ethically wrong. They did not have authorization [to submit filings and subsequent bills], you’ve got written proof of this. We get a chance to embarrass them. We get a chance to close that docket that’s only going to extend things…” (emphasis added)

See Video segment of Mr. Ffrench at Town Hall meeting here.

Ask yourself, “What could possibly go wrong with Mr. Ffrench’s intent?”

Consider the outcomes of Mr. Ffrench’s five-year legal battle against the WOWSC and eight former directors, in the case Ffrench, Dial, Sorgen vs. WOWSC and former Board directors:

• A jury in 2023 awarded the WOWSC $70,000 in additional compensation from a former director for acreage purchased in 2016. $35,000 was awarded to Mr. Ffrench/Sorgen/Dial; $35,000 was awarded to the WOWSC.
• In court testimony in November 2022, the attorney for Mr. Ffrench/Sorgen/Dial said she’d invoiced more than $400,000 to her clients.
• The WOWSC paid Lloyd Gosselink to defend it at cost of about of $500,000.
• The WOWSC paid another firm about $410,000 to defend former directors. Prior WOWSC Boards recouped those directors’ legals fees for the WOWSC through successful lawsuit against its insurance company ($410,000). Plus those Boards won attorney fees ($110,000) and interest (approx.: $148,000) paid to the WOWSC.
• Mr. Ffrench/Sorgen/Dial placed lis pendins on other WOWSC property, preventing its sale by the WOWSC. Their move prevented the WOWSC Board from using a land sale to offset court costs.

It wasn’t cheap, but was it a bargain? 

The parties spent approximately $1.5 million for Mr. Ffrench and his co-plaintiffs to recover $35,000 for themselves, and $35,000 for the WOWSC. ROI bargain? At least Mr. Walker has raised questions about Mr. Ffrench’s plans, as can be seen in the videos. He should be commended for that.

Key water equipment improvements have been unfunded and discontinued.

Mr. Ffrench and Mr. Walker have now scuttled a plan that had previously been vetted and approved by previous Boards from 2020-2023 for retrofitting an old storage tank into a clarifier tank. Clarifier tanks hold water until silt and debris drop to the bottom and the top water becomes clean enough to treat further.

A previous Board in 2021 secured $200,000 in loan money (for 20-yrs at a 3.5%) to build a new 125,000-gallon storage tank alongside an older 125,000-gallon storage tank in the water plant.

At its March 12 meeting, the Board – before it disintegrated – authorized Walker to seek return of $7,000 already spent on the plan to retrofit. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to get it all returned.

Did scuttling cause the WOWSC’s prior accomplished manager to leave?

The prior water manager George Burriss had established a work schedule with contractors to retrofit the old tank into a much-needed clarifier for use by April 2024, when water demand increases. This is the same manager who, since the early 2000s, gained the confidence of numerous water company Board members to achieve following:

• Designed and built the current water plant and pumping barge in the 2000s.
• Relocated the wastewater treatment plant from the airport to the east of Exeter in 2014.
• Advanced WOWSC’s operational capability by contracting with Corix Utilities in 2015.
• Reconstructed the pumping barge after the flood of October 2018.
• Remedied zebra mussels clogging our pipes by adding filtration systems at the barge.
• Hired contractors to sandblast the old tank to prepare for retrofitting.
• Had for seven straight years earned perfect water ratings from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency

Mr. Burriss had engineered a clarifier plan that was ready to go.

All of that has been dismantled and discontinued by Mr. Walker and Mr. Ffrench. They cited other engineers who had doubts about the retrofit plan, yet no alternative plan for a clarifier is evident.

Might the water manager have left the company because of the possibility of imminent water problems caused by Mr. Walker and Mr. Ffrench scuttling his plans for the clarifier?

Mr. Walker and Mr. Ffrench are under criminal investigation

The Burnet County Sheriff’s Office in March opened investigation into the Criminal Act of withholding information for Public Information Act requests from August-September 2023.

A request was filed August 22, 2023, for certain email and business records of Mr. Walker and Mr. Ffrench related to the business of the WOWSC. The WOWSC Chief Information Officer and its attorneys at Lloyd Gosselink sought compliance from Mr. Ffrench and Mr. Walker within the 10-day window required by law.

Mr. Walker failed to comply in timely manner, instead replying two months late after the state law deadline). Mr. Ffrench has not replied as of this posting. Outcomes from the investigation will be forthcoming.

Watch the videos, especially the last 25 minutes of the March 12 meeting and the February 20 town hall meeting.

Would you buy your home or hangar again if you happened to stumble upon the YouTube meeting videos of the recent Windermere Oaks Water Supply Corporation? 

* I am very pleased that the rates can be reduced. They should be because the Board of 2022 (pre-Walker and pre-Ffrench) won the insurance case and paid off attorney bills ($678,000). Any Board — however it might have been composed — could have reduced rates immediately after the insurance payment was received but because WOWSC had been tied up in the rate case process at the Public Utilities Commission, it did not have that legal ability to do so. It had to let the PUC set the rates — or if the Ratepayer Representatives could have seen fit to work with the company on reducing rates, that could have more immediately reduced rates as well.

**Here are victories achieved by the Lloyd Gosselink law firm since 2018, either through their direct work on WOWSC’s behalf, or their recommendations and counsel on strategy and references to legal partners:

• Complete exemption from liability of damages against the WOWSC in the land sale case of Ffrench, Sorgen, Dial vs. WOWSC and Directors.
• A $678,000 judgment paid to the WOWSC from insurance company. Lloyd Gosselink advised the Board that it had a good legal case for winning the award and recommended the insurance firm which secured the victory. (Shidlofsky)
• Lloyd Gosselink referred the WOWSC to Enoch Kever. Through the work of the firm Enoch Kever LLC, the WOWSC achieved complete exoneration of seven of eight former Board directors who had been lumped into the wide-ranging land sale lawsuit of Ffrench /Sorgen/Dial vs WOWSC and former directors. It would have been a conflict of interest for LG to have represented the directors who were named individually in the Ffrench, Sorgen, Dial land sale case. The style of the Ffrench/Sorgen/Dial case added significant expense ($410,000) to the ratepayers of Windermere.
• Victory of the WOWSC at the Public Utility Commission by Proposal of Administrative Law Judges (until one Commissioner overturned prior precedents).
• PUC dismissal of Mr. Walker’s claims of election fraud and attempt to overturn election of his opponent to the Board in 2022.
• Victory against Danny Flunker’s attempt to see client-attorney invoices under the Public Information Act. The corporation was protecting its legal strategies that could be gleaned from an opponent through analysis of invoices. This was right at the beginning of the Ffrench/Sorgen/Dial lawsuit, when they were amending their pleadings and trying to get a leg up on how they would pursue WOWSC. Eventually, the WOWSC released the invoices in their entirety. The early legal maneuverings had passed and privilege was no longer required. Nonetheless, the WOWSC had to protect its work and the Attorney General’s office agreed with WOWSC claims to protection.

The next to last agenda item in the first meeting of the 2024-25 Board of Directors for the Windermere Oaks Water Supply Corporation should become a topic of interest for Windermere water users.

This first post will describe a very mundane matter about the agenda item, but just wait for future posts to get to the meat of the matter.

The agenda item reads as follows:

This item was part of the agenda submitted by: “L. Rene Ffrench”, the WOWSC Secretary-Treasurer. TOMA stands for “Texas Open Meetings Act,” the law which prescribes posting rules for political subdivisions, like WOWSC as a public water utility.

Lawrence Rene Ffrench is a member of the TOMA Integrity LLC which he formed in 2017 with other water customers to sue the Windermere Oaks Water Supply Corporation. I’m not sure whether TOMA Integrity LLC still exists legally, but it did at the time.

Ffrench and his fellow TOMAers wanted the Burnet County District Court to break the contract which WOWSC had with Friendship Homes and Hangars LLC for the purchase of 4.3 acres of land. They contended that WOWSC agendas — December 2015 and February 2016 — were not complete and thus did not properly inform the public about the Board’s intent to vote on a land sale which had subsequently been finalized in March 2016.

To get the result they wanted — of voiding the land sale through court action — Ffrench and his fellow TOMA Inc. members, filed suit in December 2017 seeking the return of 4.3 acres of land sold in 2016 to a sitting director. That was case no. 47531 in the 33rd District Court of Burnet County and titled: “TOMA Integrity, Inc., and John Dial v. Windermere Oaks Supply Corporation.”

TOMA Integrity, Inc., and John Dial lost that case even after their appeals all the way to the Texas Supreme Court. You can view the entirety of the Appeals Court Decision by clicking here.

One of the key sentences from the Appeals Court ruling should be discussed:

[TOMA] is designed to provide an ‘immediate remedy’ for violations. TOMA and Dial’s petition did not seek immediate mandamus or injunctive relief. Rather, after the property was sold, they sought declaratory relief that the board’s past actions were void. Such relief is unavailable.

Josh R. Morriss, III Chief Justice, Court of Appeals, Sixth Appellate District of Texas at Texarkana, June 21, 2019

So, had “TOMA Inc. and Dial” filed their case about the agenda violation before the land was officially sold in March 2016, the courts had the authorization by law to have stopped the transaction. But because TOMA and Dial filed their case in December 2017, more than 20 months after the sale, the Trial, Appeal, and Supreme Courts judged that they could not overturn the March 2016 land sale retroactively.

Now let’s return to Mr. Ffrench’s agenda item of February 24, 2024, where he labels “TOMA winnings” as what will be discussed for disbursement.

There were no TOMA winnings.

Mr. Ffrench and his cohorts lost the TOMA suit.

So here he his, now on the Board of Directors, manipulating words and public understanding of history.

The actual case which produced the “winnings” was an Appeals Court case titled “Rene Ffrench, John Richard Dial, and Stuart Bruce Sorgen v. Friendship Homes & Hangars, LLC and Dana Martin, and Windermere Oaks Water Supply Corporation, Darby Mair, Independent Administrator of the Estate of Johann Mair, deceased; Michael Mair; William Earnest; Thomas Michael Madden; Robert Mebane; Joe Gimenez; Mike Nelson; Dorothy Taylor and Patrick Mulligan.” The final order which released the winnings may be viewed here. That Appeals Court case No. 03-23-00401-CV was the appeal of the original cause no. 48292.

Thus, a truthful agenda for the February 24, 2024 Board meeting would have listed that as the title of the lawsuit which produced the “winnings.”

TOMA — neither the original TOMA Integrity LLC case or the TOMA itself — had anything to do with the “winnings.”

So why is this important?

Well, that will be a discussion item in the future, after more posts on the topic of the agenda item.

On July 24, the lawyers for a local developer updated their complaint against the 2021 Architectural Control Committee of the Windermere Oaks Property Owners Association. The developer is Hunter Family Real Estate II, Ltd., which does business here in Windermere as Chris Elder Homes. You can view the updated lawsuit here.

The lawsuit says this: The 2021 ACC Committee of Mark Carpenter, Paul Hischar, Danny Flunker and Micki Bertino didn’t follow the rules — contractual rules — in administering the restrictive covenants. They failed to approve or deny house plans within the 45-day period required of the ACC. That is a breach of their duty to property owners, the lawsuit says

In this case, their flim-flam responses to Elder resulted in building delays which cost the developer. If a court finds against the POA, all homeowners in Windermere may be on the hook for damages. As the lawsuit says:

“The wrongful actions by the ACC, approved by the HOA’s Board of Directors, resulted in [Hunter Family Real Estate] sustaining losses resulting from lower sales prices per square foot, higher material and labor costs, and damages to Plaintiff’s liquidity.”

The 33rd District Court of Burnet County is being asked to make decision about Texas Property Code which says:

“An exercise of discretionary authority by a property owners’ association or other representative designated by an owner of real property concerning a restrictive covenant is presumed reasonable unless the court determines by a preponderance of the evidence that the exercise of discretionary authority was arbitrary, capricious or discriminatory.”

The Hunter plaintiffs contend that some of their building plans were held up by the ACC due to the ACC’s dissatisfaction with progress on their other home sites. That linkage was not within their authority. Linking one thing to another — capriciously — is not part of the ACC’s duty. And the Board at the time either affirmed those actions or neglected to conduct oversight of those actions.

The discovery and deposition process for this lawsuit has been underway for some time. It will be interesting to see the POA’s response, which should be submitted sometime soon.

But since the 2020 Board let the website collapse and washed away years of history, let’s do a recap of the players that have been involved.

The POA Board in 2021 was Julie Nuemann, Charlene Friedsam, Marsha Westerman, Greg Szumski, Janet Crow and Michele Christenson. They brought an anti-property rights covenant change regarding home rentals to the voters in the 2022 election.

That anti-property rights initiative was rejected handily by WOPOA members in February 2022. A mostly new Board was elected in February 2022 and, at that annual meeting, members were first notified about the Hunter Family Real Estate lawsuit that had just been filed.

The 2022 Board was comprised of George Pareja, Joe Cohen, Justin Love, Olga Bashkatova, Janet Crow, and Marcus Vidrine. They removed several former ACC members including Danny Flunker and Mark Carpenter. Bertino and Hischar resigned from the ACC. Again, I’m recounting from memory and a few documents here and there because there is no website record of their time in office. There were two very short POA Board meetings where the Directors removed Carpenter and then Flunker, if I recall correctly.

Then, in February 2023, none of the 2022 Board members ran for office again. Who can blame them (Pareja, Cohen, Love, etc)? They were being asked to do damage control on a lawsuit that they did not create. In other words, they were cleaning up the mess of the Neumann Board.

So in February 2023, POA members then had no choice but to elect the only people that ran, including two members of the 2021 ACC group that are being sued. They are our current Board: Paul Hischar, president; Allen Hicks, Vice President; Marda Waters, Treasurer; Oleh Kulas, Secretary; Mark Carpenter and Tom Nelson. And now Danny Flunker is the head of the ACC.

At least they have rebuilt a website for the POA. That’ s been good for Windermere Oaks.

Newcomers reading this post should understand that Chris Elder has been building homes in Windermere Oaks since 2015. The Architectural Control Committees have been compromised of many different people over the years, and Elder was able to work constructively with them to build the nice homes here today. Sure, there were bumps here and there, but they were ironed out. I first joined the POA Board in 2016, and I served as a Board liaison to the ACC committee. From 2016-2020 in my time on the POA Board, Chris Elder was responsive to our phone calls about his contractors’ noise, trash, working hours, etc. He had no immediate control of their everyday actions, but once the nuisances were brought to Elders’ attention, he fixed them.

If the Hunter Family group is correct, the 2021 ACC — Carpenter, Hischar, Flunker, Bertino — somehow thought it right to create powers they did not possess.

Stay tuned for more updates on the lawsuit when they come available on the District Court’s website.

The Windermere Oaks Water Supply Corporation is a non-profit corporation. The articles of incorporation say so. A judge has said so.

Yet, in a recent NextDoor post, one of the neighborhood confidence men continued his errant-wrong-mistaken-false claims that the corporation is a co-op (or cooperative) under law. Here’s his post.

Why is this important? Well, it is not, really, but to demonstrate the ongoing confidence game being waged against the water corporation, I thought I’d dig into it for anyone left in this neighborhood who wants honest accounting of current events.

You can see in the NextDoor post that the con man Bruce Sorgen repeats his ongoing con. He does it every time he can. I remember him saying it at the annual meeting on April 15.

Repeating falsities over and again, time after time, is the way that con men work to convince people about something that is not true. It’s part of his confidence game with people who make the mistake of believing his baloney.

The Co-op con was important to his original case, the 48292 case of Dial, Ffrench, Sorgen versus the water company and seven former directors (myself included) and current director Dorothy Taylor. You can read their 3rd amended pleading (a good piece of fiction as it turned out) here. The word “cooperative” is mentioned 87 times, because they contended the non-profit corporation is a coop.

The reason for their con was simple: By attempting to convince the judge that the water company is a Cooperative, Sorgen and Dial and Ffrench could “(i) seek to recover damages for wrongs done to them individually where the wrongdoers have violated duties arising from contract or otherwise and owing directly by them to the Plaintiffs…”

In sum, Sorgen, Dial and Ffrench wanted money directly from myself and others. And the only way they could get there — through the law — was to con the judge into believing the non-profit corporation is a cooperative.

After our attorneys disproved the con, the judge smote down Bruce’s false claim. Her order against them can be found here. (Look to the bottom of page 2 and top of page 3 and see the image below.)

The attorney for the directors demonstrated to the judge that the Plaintiffs did “not have standing as members of ‘cooperative’ because the Windermere Oaks Water Supply Cooperation is just what its name says — a water supply corporation, not a cooperative. Under Texas law, not only is this WSC not a cooperative, it is prohibited from being a cooperative. All claims based on non-existent standing as a member of a ‘cooperative must be dismissed for want of jurisdiction. This would include any claim seeking damages for Plaintiffs or WOWSC members.” (emphasis added, and see page 3 of this document.)

So the con men and their con lawyer tried their best to con the judge. Didn’t work.

You paid for that in the higher fees that were levied to defend directors against bogus claims from Sorgen et al.

Now at least the water company will be recovering those fees from the insurance company. Nonetheless, Sorgen’s con attempt cost the insurance company money.

The water company’s Directors and Officers insurance cost $7,000+ last year, and it will likely go up, because the customers of WOWSC continue to sue the corporation for bogus claims. That is not lost on insurance companies. Nice going, Bruce.

IMAGES OF PERTINENT LEGAL DOCUMENTS

To save you the time of downloading the full documents, here are the pertinent parts of the Defendant directors rebuttal to the false claims that the non-profit is a cooperative. And below that is the judge’s order.

JUDGE’S ORDER AGAINST THE CON

Just remember this every time you hear the con-men and con-women in the neighborhood tell you that the non-profit corporation is a cooperative. They are conning you.

As an aside, did Jeff Walker’s imaginary friends Henry and Harry Haas make it to the May 25 meeting?