Special Meeting

We really aren’t an HOA; we’re a Road Maintenance group in Virginia. All we handle is the maintenance and repair of our road. We have an agreement filed at the court house (20+ years ago) and it’s very basic.

Parties agree to maintain and repair the road in good condition. (Gravel road not maintained by the state hence the agreement)
We will have bi-annual meetings on the first Wednesday of March and October to decide what corrective measures should be taken and officers (President, Secretary and Treasurer) are voted on in October.
Each property gets 1 vote and decisions are based on majority vote.
Share the cost of snow removal.
Pay x amount each year in dues.

The agreement runs with the land. We’ve all worked together for 20+ years with no issues to maintain and repair the road.

We have a new property owner who circumvented the agreement. Didn’t bring an item to the group to the discussed and voted on. He personally contracted for work to be done, paid for it and didn’t tell anyone. We found out when the contractor showed up to tar and chip a portion of the road. He then tried to bill the rest of us for the entire amount. We got an attorney, attorney sends him letters that he didn’t have permission/authorization and he was solely responsible for the damage he caused. He is now demanding that we repair the road because it’s falling apart (he got scammed by the contractor).

He refuses to come to the bi-annual meetings. He is requesting we have a special meeting that he said he will attend and discuss the group fixing the road. He’s been told 6 ways to Sunday that we aren’t responsible for what he did and we won’t fix it. It’s really hard to find a time we can all get together and no one wants to when it’s not our responsibility to begin with.

The attorney that sent him the letters has retired. I think we should get another one but I don’t know what they can really do then send him another letter that he will ignore. Since our agreement is silent on special meetings what can we do/not do? We’ve told him that we won’t have one because he refused to come to the meeting we just had in March. He keeps threatening to sue us and some of the property owners think we should just ignore him and let him try. If we have a special meeting and he actually shows, it’s going to be nothing but him yelling and telling us we’re idiots and we need to do what he tells us (he emails us this). Some of the property owners are afraid of him (he’s known to be invoked in domestic violence) and he appears to be unstable.

“By the way, you may not be a conventional HOA, but there's more to road maintenance than snow removal - what if that travel road develops a gigantic pothole and YOUR car runs into it? ”

We haven’t been just driving on the road for 20 years doing nothing but snow removal. LOL I listed maintenance and repair; I tried to cover the highlights and didn’t list what we do. The road is graded and gravel is put down yearly. The drainage ditches are cleaned out yearly and the culverts are also inspected yearly and repaired/replaced when needed. We perform general cleanup on the road twice a year; cutting down trees, clearing brush, etc. The road is maintained very well; we’ve never had a pothole! We get very little traffic; only the 7 houses on the road and their guests. We know exactly how much we need to take care of the road each year. We very much have thought of and planned for long term maintenance. We just don’t have the amount of money it would take to pave the entire road and then the upkeep. It would cost $80,000-$100,000 just to get it to state standards for them to take over to pave.

We are rural and all of our lots are wooded. This guy knew this when he bought the property. He has repeatedly said we need to make things like “the city” where he has his other house.

I don’t see what we could sue him for except installing the tar and chip without authorization but I’m sure it’s been too long (2 years 8 months).