Angry Residents Trash-Talk Clear Lake-area Civic Association President

​Residents of the Bay Oaks subdivision (in the Clear Lake area) are fed up with their community association and they aren't gonna take it anymore. Over 300 showed up last Wednesday at an impromptu meeting at the Bay Oaks Country Club that was called after a petition had been signed demanded to know how their neighborhood was being run.

Mainly, they were mad about garbage. In what was intended as a cost-saving move, the Bay Oaks board decided to switch garbage pick-up from back doors to curbside, and they didn't even survey the residents about the plan beforehand.

Bay Oakers greeted this development with about as much enthusiasm as they would the opening of a 24-hour methadone clinic. A printed handout circulated among the outraged suburbanites. It fumed that curbside service "is not the service our community wants and expects," and lamented that residents felt "deceived and left out of the decision-making process." It closed by demanding the immediate restoration of backdoor pick-up.

And they weren't shy in expressing those same views verbally at the meeting. Poor BOCA president Sarita Singh must have known how Frankenstein felt when faced with one of those torch-wielding mobs of angry villagers, if this account from the Bay Area Citizen is to be believed...

Some were so incensed over the change in trash collection, one might have thought the board had banned children from the subdivision.

They shouted at some of the speakers and waved their fists, as their frustration almost boiled over.

Others were just as angry over the board refusing to let residents have a say in the action. At one point, the president said, "I'm not paid enough to be heckled."

It was not a pretty sight.

So, would-be civic association dictators: Think about that before you move the garbage cans without first consulting We the People.