What a terrible neighborhood! Can't they all just get along!

Those board members are so nasty. In addition to all the things accused above, I accuse them of witchcraft and vampiry. Yes, it's true! They turn into vampires at night and fly atop our crossings houses, and drink blood! I saw it with my own eyes!!! They want to get rid of Snowzen so that they can make it a vampire crypt, I'm sure. This must stop.

The whole SnoZen issue is a huge conflict of interest on behalf of the Board Director who lives next to the place. They even appointed a sham Director to sit in for her during a violation hearing against SnoZen. Read about it here:

[Portion removed due to promoting a website]

HOA's are the devil.

They should try moving the location of that music player in SnoZen. It might be passing vibrations through the wall like the crazy lady says. It would still work just as well if not sitting on something fastened to the wall, but then it wouldn't vibrate upstairs.

Someone ought to sue those current HOA board members for misfeasance. They're clearly doing the illegal things.

The ghosts of the Old Mill have come back to haunt the Crossings.

I hope the residents there can work out their differences and live in peace.

Seems like the wife joining Crossings Homeowners' Association, is a conflict of interest.

Looks like it's going to be an ugly battle, and the family won't be happy until they run Snozen out of the Crossings.

Let's get ready to rumble...!

Please come to our neighborhood instead. We won't fight - unless you run out of snow!

This will reflect poorly on The Crossings if it's not resolved fairly.

It seems questionable if the neighbor with the noise complaint is actually now on the board and voted to add new rules to force the business to close and probably this issue should be resolved by arbitration not litigation. Noise issues are subjective so what seems loud or disruptive to one person may not bother anyone else. There are lots of examples of this.

You might live there and not care about SnoZen, but if this fight grows it will have an affect on resale values when less people are interested in buying if the home owners association is seen an unfair, heavy handed or unprofessional.

Why did the fake post by "Nick Anonymous" not get removed? Fake content and fake likes.

Members of The Crossings neighborhood and SnoZen could consider using the free mediation services of the Mountain View Mediation Program. Mediation is a user-friendly, non-adversarial means for those with differing views to come together to understand each other better and try to resolve their differences. Try it, you may like it!

They close up shop at 8pm already. Surely this must be in their lease, that they can operate until 8pm.

With the trend toward mixed-use developments, this will happen more and more often. People will buy above a business, then expect them not to make any noise, which is ridiculous. The rules should be reasonable and having "quiet hours" starting at 6:00 in such a development is unreasonable. The "quiet" restrictions should not begin until 8:00 at the earliest.

If the residents can't work it out, the city should put in a clause that HOAs can't put restrictions on businesses regarding noise prior to a more reasonable hour.

We had a similar situation. One neighbor's laundry machines were disrupting another neighbor's right to peaceful enjoyment. It turned out the way the machine was mounted caused sound to travel into the other owner's space. I recommend to SnoZen to move the speaker(s) to another area where it isn't mounted on studs or on structurally supportive beams. Sounds in the base range travel through construction. Good luck Crossings HOA and SnoZen! It's no fun to be in this type of conflict. It affects everyone's daily attitudes.

As a former HOA president, like many others, I'm concerned by Yelena Okuneva apparently becoming a board member so she could grind her axe with impunity. Her move is an example of the broader thrust of board members acting in ways contrary to the interests of the homeowners, as appears to be happening here.

An HOA board has a great deal of power. That's fine if the board exercises that power humbly. But what often happens is boards feel the homeowners couldn't care less about the challenges to the community, so the board feels they are on their own in fighting battles for the HOA. And when that happens, they often feel entitled to use some of their power to their own advantage (like hammering SnoZen). And if it's true that homeowners don't actively care what the board does with its power, you can't seriously fault the board for cutting themselves a little slack to feather their own nests just a bit.

Sorry to say, the only serious answer is for most homeowners to take an active interest in what the board does and who is on it. If the majority of homeowners don't hold board members accountable -- and vote them out when they need replacing -- then HOAs are going to be vulnerable to these problems.

It's just inescapable human nature -- if someone (the board, in this case) is doing a job for you (the HOA, in this case), and you don't show (on an ongoing basis) that you care about their performance, they will lose sight of the fact that they are there to do a job for you.

It's like leaving cookies on the counter in the lunch room -- if people think no one else is interested in them, they'll eventually take the cookies for themselves.

Oh the joys of communal living...why don't they just turn off the radio? Is that a necessary component to selling Taiwanese shaved snow? I have no connection to any of this but I would not be happy to have to listen to the incessant 'chatter of customers' but on the other hand why did they buy a place over a commercial property? Two sides to every story I guess.

BTW... what is with all of these stupid pen names...if people posted with their REAL NAMES everyone would be much more civilized and far less snarky.

Hmmm. When I first heard the concept of mixed use development, both housing and business, it sounded like a great idea. Obviously, it doesn't work for everyone.

People should respect property rights!
Buy next to a business, what did you expect?
It's not our business to tell others what to do with their property...period. Stop the snarking!

The Crossings homeowners should organize and recall the board members.

SnoZen is a wonderful addition to The Crossings. Just look at their Yelp reviews and you will see it is a quality place we need to save.

Web Link

This community needs to attend the meetings of the Board of Directors of this Master HOA. It's obviously a board that is out of control.

Their should be a Director's and Officers Insurance that would cover the former board members. The association will be paying its insurance company to cover the alleged costs caused by the alleged actions of the former board. What idiots. The odds of collecting on that are infinitesimal. It's a recipe for wasting money on legal fees, big time.

Yeah, these officers need to be replaced. Unfortunately, it's hard to find residents to serve on these things. Very troubling that the current board is violating the CC&R's.

Suspect the main problem is architecture. I remember having a look at those places when they were being built. If they weren't made with such flimsy, cheap materials many of these problems wouldn't be cropping up now. Of course at this point the contractor is probably long gone...

Correction:

The article writer has it "But things changed in recent months when Yelena Okuneva joined the Crossings Homeowners' Association"

That should be "But things changed in recent months when Yelena Okuneva joined the Crossings Homeowners' Association board"

Everyone who owns there is automatically a member of the HOA.

HOAs - the plague on the American dream.

Carvalho has a lot of nerve referring to nastiness when he is the root cause of The Crossings' problems. Some initially fell for his BS but most now realize he's just a conniving bully. He is wrong if he thinks only a few oppose him and his hand picked cronies.[Portion removed; please tone down the personal attacks.]

I wonder if those people living about the business get a "discount" for picking that particular apartment? I also wonder with all the mixed business/housing building going up in Mtn. View if this is going to become a major problem in our city?

People who don't understand the complexities of buying near or around business really don't have any business buying there. It's like the people who buy near the downtown area or near the train station then have the audacity to complain about the noise level...really???

[Post removed due to disrespectful comment or offensive language]

Wow, you removed my post!

I just sayin, my name is Olaf and I will visit SnoZen to cool down. I don't think it is fair to remove my post especially when I stated, that I agree with jes sayin, that the complex was poorly built with ultra thin walls. I don't agree with Yelena as stated previously, and for her to be on the board is a conflict of interest. I don't agree that people get on boards to shut places down for their own interest. There are a lot of people in the Bay Area like Yelena who serve on boards simply out of self-interest. And I stated that I read Jane Jacobs and there's a person that Jane Jacobs also wrote about, just like Yelena. I'm NOT going to keep quiet because it's my community also. It's a community I grew up in.

As a Crossings homeowner, I noticed that a lot of important information was left out of the article:
1. He failed to mention that Charles Brandi lost his case in court against the association; the judgement was rendered in March, but yet the author of the article chose to leave that out.
2. All prior businesses that operated where SnoZen is located were closing at 6pm.
3. SnoZen doesn't play music during the day, but plays it in the evening when it is most annoying for the people living upstairs.
4. The attorney who wrote the 2nd opinion about the lawsuit starts his text with a huge caveat: his opinion is based solely on the document that was filed at the court and which is likely to be amended. The attorney wrote an opinion without seeing any of the evidence. It is obviously a very uninformed opinion.
5. The legal fees will be recovered in addition to the damages sought, should the HOA prevail.
6. Among all the cars towed, almost half did not belong to Crossings residents; many people park on Crossings private streets and go take CalTrain.

One more thing (addition to my previous post), the attorney who wrote the second opinion did not even read the HOA's governing documents, if he had, he would not have accused the board to have broken the rules by initiating the lawsuit without prior notification to the homeowners. The HOA attorney addressed this concern in a Q&A sent to homeowners which points to the HOA CC&R article that pertains to an exception reading avoiding that statute of limitations. But that somehow did not make it to the article.
This article is honestly very biased and poor journalism.

Wow, so I hope all this P.R. boosts business for the shaved ice concession. There's a lot of mess to this HOA but why should a tenant that has a lease be subjected to this squabbling? They're entitled to damages due to violations of their lease agreement by the landlord, if the terms were changed after the fact.

I see that the issue with Small Claims Court was unclear, but Small Claims Court can only handle monetary damages. They don't have jurisdiction to enforce violations of the law by HOA's. That would be in Superior Court. So I'm betting the article dodged describing all that by just saying accurately that the situation drove the one resident to take them to Small Claims Court (even if pointless).

It is interesting that:
1. There is a "Caroline L" who was a member of board when the "zealous enforcement" of rules started.
2. There is a "Caroline L" who is a very good friend and next door neighbor of HOA Board President Paul Simone De Carvello.
3. There is a "Caroline L" who was on the board who helped get a board member with a clear conflict of interest,Yelena, on to the board.
Could it be the same one? Could the divide in the Crossings be making its way to The Mountain View Voice?

@Anon
"who helped get a board member with a clear conflict of interest,Yelena, on to the board."
================
I think being on the board of HOA and owning a condo above some business is not a "clear conflict of interest". Voting on an amendment of the rules affecting that business would be the conflict of interest. The protocol of the board meeting with the votes should be available for HOA members and if Yelena did not vote, there was no problem there.