Blackstone homeowners deserve open meetings, clear records, and a board that follows the rules.
An independent site run by Blackstone homeowners.
We are residents of the Blackstone Community Association in Brea. This site is not affiliated with the Board, HOAWorks, or any Association vendor. It exists to organize records, questions, and homeowner concerns about how major community decisions are being made.
In 2025, the Board changed or continued major service relationships involving landscaping, patrol, management, and other community operations. These decisions involved large sums of homeowner money.
Based on the open-session minutes currently available to members, several major vendor and contract decisions do not appear as clearly noticed, discussed, and approved items in an open meeting.
Members paid in full. Major expenses still ran far over budget.
In 2025, members paid their assessments. The Association collected more than $2.7 million, over 99% of the budgeted assessment income.
Even with nearly all of that money collected, several major expense categories ran far over the budget the Board approved. The figures below are not the whole budget. They are specific, essential line items that came in many times higher than planned.
Landscape Repairs
Legal Fees
Printing & Mailing
Source: Blackstone Community Association December 2025 financial statement, prepared by HOAWorks.
These are not small variances.
They are major overages in a year when members paid nearly all assessment income. Some of the largest expenses appear to track directly to vendor changes, contract decisions, and management issues that members have been trying to understand.
A major vendor change. A major budget overage. No clear record found.
For years, the Association's landscaper was Park West. In 2025, that changed. The Association then appears to have moved through more than one landscape vendor.
At the same time, the Landscape Repairs line increased dramatically, coming in at approximately $362,000 against a budget of approximately $20,000.
What we have not found in the open-session minutes available to members is a clear record showing when the Board approved these vendor changes, what contracts were approved, what scope of work was authorized, and what costs homeowners were committing to.
Questions for the Board
- Park West was replaced during 2025. Which landscape vendors were hired after that?
- When were those contracts approved in open session?
- What is the current landscape contract?
- What caused the Landscape Repairs line to run approximately 18 times over budget?
Safety matters. So does the process.
The Association spent approximately $324,000 on patrol services in 2025, above the approximately $296,000 budget.
In 2025, the named patrol and security vendor changed from Allied Security to A-Source Security. Both appear in the open-session minutes only under "Community Open Items, no action required," as reports. Neither change appears in New Business as a Board vote approving a patrol contract.
Patrol is one of the Association's largest recurring expenses. A change in a contract this size should be easy for members to trace to an open-session approval. We have not found one.
That is the issue. Not whether the community should have patrol. Not whether safety matters. Of course safety matters. The question is whether major contracts involving homeowner money are being approved, recorded, and disclosed properly.
Questions for the Board
- The patrol vendor changed from Allied Security to A-Source Security during 2025. Why was that change made, and how was A-Source selected?
- Where in the open-session minutes did the Board vote to approve the A-Source contract? (It appears only as a "no action required" report.)
- How many companies were considered?
- What are the contract term and cost?
- Why did patrol spending exceed the 2025 budget?
One month of legal fees was nearly double the annual budget.
Legal fees are one of the clearest spending questions members have not been given an answer to. For 2025, legal fees came in at approximately $77,000 against a budget of approximately $25,000, more than three times what was budgeted.
A significant portion of that overage came in a single month. According to the December 2025 statement, approximately $47,600 in legal fees was billed in December 2025 alone. That one month was nearly double the entire year's legal budget.
A legal charge of that size in a single month is exactly the kind of expense members should be able to understand from the record. So far, we have not seen a clear explanation.
Questions for the Board
- Why did legal fees run more than three times the 2025 budget?
- What was the approximately $47,600 in legal fees billed in December 2025 for?
- Was this expense discussed or approved in an open meeting?
- What ongoing matters are generating the Association's legal costs?
Missing records and unanswered questions are part of the problem.
HOAWorks is paid to manage day-to-day operations, maintain records, communicate with members, and support the Board's compliance with Association requirements.
In 2025, management fees on the Blackstone account ran approximately $32,000 over budget.
During the same period, members experienced serious problems with basic records and communications. Agendas and minutes from the middle of 2025 were not available on the member portal for months. Several records appeared only after a certified records request was sent to management.
This is not just a customer service problem. If members do not receive notices, cannot access agendas, and cannot see minutes in a timely way, they cannot meaningfully participate in the governance of their own community.
Questions for HOAWorks and the Board
- Why were agendas and minutes missing from the member portal?
- When were the missing records uploaded?
- Why did some records appear only after a certified records request?
- How are meeting notices being sent?
- Why are many members not receiving them?
- What changed that caused management fees to run over budget?
Different services. Same concern.
A major vendor changes, a major contract continues, or a major expense increases. Homeowner money is spent. But the available open-session minutes do not clearly show when the Board approved the decision, what was approved, or how members can review the contract.
That is what we are asking the Board to fix.
These decisions should happen in open session, with proper notice, clear minutes, and access to the contracts and records homeowners are entitled to review.
Make decisions about our community and our money in the open.
- Follow the Davis-Stirling Act and Blackstone's governing documents.
- Put major vendor and contract decisions on open-session agendas.
- Record Board approvals clearly in the minutes.
- Produce the contracts, costs, and vendor records members have requested.
- Explain the major 2025 budget overages.
- Restore timely access to agendas, minutes, notices, and member records.
- Make decisions about our community and our money in the open.
This is not about attacking anyone personally.
It is about process, transparency, and accountability.
35 lots can require a special meeting.
Under Bylaws section 4.2.6, members representing five percent of the Association can require the Board to hold a special meeting.
For Blackstone's 687 lots, that means 35 lots.
We are gathering signatures now to require a special meeting focused on records, contracts, vendor approvals, spending overages, and Board compliance with open-meeting requirements.
Come, listen, and ask questions yourself.
The next regular Board meeting is currently scheduled for:
June 29, 2026
The more homeowners who attend, the harder it becomes for legitimate questions to be ignored.