Gleneagle Votes September 15 on Recalling Its Entire Board

Every seat on the Gleneagle Civic Association board is on the ballot at a special meeting on September 15, called after homeowners petitioned to force one. The stated grievances are money and communication, and the association’s own financial statements bear out most of what its critics say. How many votes it will take to remove a director is a separate problem: the board’s notice and the association’s own bylaws state different standards, and nobody has said which will apply.

Gleneagle is a subdivision of roughly 700 homes in unincorporated El Paso County, north of Monument, whose residents carry Colorado Springs mailing addresses. El Paso County and a set of overlapping public districts provide their governmental services; the private covenant association that governs what they may build, park and rent is run by the five volunteer directors of the Gleneagle Civic Association. All five now face removal at once.

The association’s notice, dated August 27, says the board received a petition signed by owners representing at least 5 percent of the votes and is therefore obliged under Colorado law to call the meeting, “to consider and vote upon the recall of one or more members” of the board and, if any are removed, to elect replacements for the remainder of their terms. The bar is deliberately low: Article III of the bylaws lets any 5 percent — 36 owners on 704 lots — oblige the president to convene a meeting, and U.N.I.T.E. Gleneagle, the residents’ group behind the effort, said it submitted 37 signatures. A petition of that kind is a procedural trigger rather than a measure of support: it puts the question to the membership, and the meeting answers it.

How many votes it takes

The board’s notice tells owners that “assuming quorum is achieved, Owners representing at least a majority of the votes present, and entitled to vote, must vote in favor of removal.” Article IV, Section 6 of the bylaws, as amended in March 2025 and posted on the association’s own website, says something different: directors “may be removed with or without cause by a vote of a majority of the Members.” Article II sets a general rule of a majority of votes cast, but only “unless otherwise specifically provided by” the declaration, the articles or the bylaws.

State law points in more than one direction. Section 38-33.3-303(8) of the Colorado Common Interest Ownership Act lets owners remove a director by 67 percent of those present, “notwithstanding any provision of the declaration or bylaws to the contrary” — but Gleneagle’s declaration was recorded in 1983, and section 38-33.3-117 lists which parts of the act reach communities created before July 1, 1992. Section 217(7), the provision the board used to go to court, is on that list. Section 303(8) is not. A pre-1992 association can opt into the whole act only by a recorded election under section 38-33.3-118; U.N.I.T.E. says Gleneagle never did, and a county-index search turns up only a one-page association “statement” from 2005 whose image is not available online, so The Independent cannot say either way. Separately, the association is a Colorado nonprofit corporation, incorporated in 1995, and C.R.S. § 7-128-108 of the nonprofit act says a director “may be removed only if the number of votes cast to remove the director would be sufficient to elect the director” — while § 7-127-207 lets bylaws set a higher bar than the statutory default.

Which rule controls on September 15 is a question of law, and this newspaper does not answer it. What can be said is that the difference is not academic. At a bare 20 percent quorum of 141 lots, a majority of those present is 71 votes; a majority of all 704 members would be 353. Under the standard the board has published, a recall could carry on the votes of a small fraction of the neighborhood; under the reading its bylaws invite, it could not carry without half the neighborhood turning out or sending a proxy. Nobody has said publicly which will be applied.

The money

U.N.I.T.E.’s door-to-door packet makes the case for removal in financial terms: that reserves fell from about $185,000 at the start of 2025 to about $135,000 at the end of it, that the association is running a deficit of about $19,000, that it is overspending by roughly $4,000 a month, and that reserves are on course to fall another $50,000 during 2026.

The documents are on the association’s own website, in an archive carrying monthly statements for every month of 2025 and for January through July 2026. Read against them, most of the group’s case holds up.

Reserve assets stood at $184,604.27 on January 31, 2025 and at $133,197.25 on December 31 — a fall of about $51,400 across the year. The association recorded a net loss of $45,305.91 for 2025, with legal expense of $20,135.48 against a budget of $5,000. Through July 2026 it was $26,420.90 short on operations and $24,441.84 down overall, an average operating shortfall of about $3,774 a month, and legal expense of $17,957.26 was already on the books against the same $5,000 line.

Where the group’s figures are imprecise they are mostly conservative. Its $19,000 deficit is behind the association’s own July figure of $24,441.84. Its projection that reserves will fall another $50,000 this year is not yet visible in the reserve line, which stood at $135,757.20 on July 31, about $2,600 higher than in January — but that line moves in steps, not on a slope. Gleneagle holds its reserves in certificates of deposit, and the balance falls only when one matures. Reserves were flat through July 2025, drifting up to $188,466.19; in August, when a $57,000 certificate came due, they fell $57,466 in a single month as the proceeds moved into the operating account. Nearly the whole of last year’s reserve decline happened in that one month.

The operating account is the leading indicator, and it is thin. At the end of August 2025, with that certificate just converted to cash, it held $57,491.08. At the end of July 2026 it held $9,517.05. What is left in reserve is two certificates — $73,000 maturing on November 16 and $61,000 the following April — against an operating shortfall averaging about $3,774 a month.

The board’s answer, given repeatedly and on the record, is that a community of 700 homes with 90 acres of open space cannot be run on volunteers alone. It moved bookkeeping to Balanced Bookkeeping in May 2025 and covenant enforcement to Centerpoint Management, and told an October 2025 town hall that arrears had fallen from 72 households to 12. Glenn Leimbach, who has lived in Gleneagle more than 33 years, told a September 2025 meeting that the old approach — neighbors reporting neighbors — was either unenforced or unfair, and that “both options are not good options.”

On the cost of the fight itself, president Mark Connell told the May 12 board meeting that the 2025 voting process ran to about $20,000 and the court petition about $7,000; treasurer Steve Kouri said the larger figure covered an attorney’s flat fee, other legal fees, and printing and mailing ballots with return envelopes to every lot owner. Residents citing a $27,000 legal bill are adding the two; by the board’s account only part of the larger one was legal spending.

How it got here

Gleneagle’s covenants were restated in 1983 and amended piecemeal afterward, and in January 2025 the board began rewriting them. It held informational meetings in August, September and October and, by its own account in court, sent owners four notices. Ballots went out in October on three questions: a rewritten declaration, a short-term leasing amendment, and an increase in the annual assessment from $67 to $140.

Section 309 of the declaration requires the owners of two-thirds of the lots to amend it, and neither the declaration nor the leasing amendment reached that mark. They were not voted down — among returned ballots both drew clear majorities — but they fell short of the threshold the covenants set. The assessment ran under a different rule, and here the association’s own records do not line up. Dues are governed by section 203 of the First Amendment recorded in 2001, which allows a rise of up to 5 percent a year without a vote and requires, above that, two-thirds of owners voting in person or by proxy; section 205 sets the quorum for such a meeting at 60 percent. The January 20 minutes record 417 ballots from 690 members, which the board itself calculated as 60.4 percent, then report that “quorum was not met, quorum was 690 X 0.667 = 460 ballots, 43 ballots short” — a two-thirds quorum, not the 60 percent the amendment specifies. The measure would have failed regardless, at 251 of 417 or 60.2 percent against a two-thirds requirement. But the reason given and the standard in the association’s own recorded amendment are not the same. Dues rose 5 percent, to $69.50.

What the ballots produced is recorded twice, and the two records do not match.

In January 2026 the board turned to section 38-33.3-217(7), which lets an association ask a district court to approve amendments its members have not adopted, provided owners were sent at least two notices, the amendment was discussed at a meeting, and owners holding more than half the votes otherwise required voted in favor. Against a two-thirds requirement that last condition works out to 33.5 percent of the lots; the petition reported 38 percent and 36 percent. The association retained Altitude Community Law P.C. of Lakewood, filed on April 10 and paid $265 in fees. The case went to Judge Jennifer Viehman in Division 17.

One provision explains much of the heat. Paragraph 15(h) of the board’s own petition states that under the rewrite “the Owner consent requirement for future amendments would be lowered from Owners of 2/3 of the Lots in the Subdivision to Owners holding at least 51% of the total Association vote.” A court order approving a document that had not reached the threshold its members set would also have made every future rewrite easier to pass.

Whether to call this a lawsuit has been argued at length in Gleneagle, and the court’s record cuts both ways: the docket captions the case Gleneagle Civic Association v. Homeowners, with the association as petitioner and “Homeowners” as respondent, heard in a civil division with counsel on one side and residents testifying under oath — but it is in form a petition, not a suit for damages, and no individual homeowner is named. What is not in dispute is that the association went to court to obtain what the ballot had not delivered, and that association funds paid for it.

The statute also gave owners a way to stop it: the petition fails if more than 33 percent of eligible owners file written objections. Residents canvassed door to door, and a member of the group who represented the objectors at the hearing himself, rather than retain counsel, said 308 objections were filed on June 2. The hearing went ahead on June 9 and the judge ruled on June 18. By the objectors’ published account she denied the petition, rejecting the association’s arguments that each objector should have paid a separate filing fee — put at $222 an objection, more than $68,000 in total — and that the objections were hearsay or unverifiable, while giving the association 60 days to challenge individual signatures and bring the count below the threshold. On the 704-lot denominator, defeating the petition requires more than 232 objections to stand, so at least 76 of the 308 would have had to fall; the group put the figure at 74.

U.N.I.T.E. says the 60 days passed with no challenge filed and the matter is closed. The Independent has ordered the case file and has not received it; a docket printout the group supplied confirms the caption, judge, division and hearing date but was generated on April 20, seven weeks before the hearing, and carries nothing about the ruling. The association’s website, which posts the special-meeting notice, contains no account of the litigation at all.

Who is on the ballot

The five directors facing removal are Mark Connell, president; Glenn Leimbach, vice president and open space manager; Steve Kouri, treasurer; Ray Micklewright, secretary; and Jeff McLemore, who chairs the architectural review committee. Micklewright, who told a board meeting he practiced law for the federal government for 20 years and remains licensed, was appointed in 2026 and has said he is not the board’s lawyer. The previous president, Jimmy Owenby, told the January meeting he was resigning effective January 31 and moving to the Denver area.

How directors reach the board is a separate question. Article IV, Section 1 says all five “shall be elected by a majority vote of voting Members,” and Article IV, Section 4 provides for nomination by a committee and election by secret ballot at the annual meeting, which Article III sets in October. Article IV, Section 5 covers something narrower — a vacancy arising for any reason other than removal, which the remaining directors may fill for the balance of that term. That is how Ray Micklewright joined the board in 2026, after Jimmy Owenby resigned mid-term.

What the record does not show is a membership election. Our Community News reported at the end of September 2025 that a call for candidates was coming for two seats, board president and member at large, and that Owenby and Leimbach were not returning. The ballot mailed the following month carried three questions — the declaration, the leasing amendment and the assessment — and the January minutes record results for those three and nothing else. Leimbach is still vice president. The association has not published a seat-by-seat account of which directors were elected by the membership and which were appointed, with dates and terms.

U.N.I.T.E. proposes five replacements — Kevin Baker, Michelle Bowles, Carolyn Deaderick, Mike Rosas and Jeane Turner — and calls them an interim board that would vacate its seats for an election in October, which the group says all five have agreed to serve on. That plan is the group’s, not an automatic consequence of the vote: the association’s notice says successors elected on September 15 fill the removed directors’ unexpired terms. Article III does set the annual meeting in October, though recent ones have been held in November.

Owners who cannot attend may vote by proxy, and two versions of the form are in circulation. The packet published on U.N.I.T.E.’s website, dated August 16 and still linked from its home page and its recall announcement, lets an owner vote for or against each removal and each proposed replacement, and either name a proxy holder or authorize any recognized member to carry it. The group says that packet is out of date and that the form now used drops the voting block and the any-member option, requiring a named proxy holder so the vote can be confirmed as cast; the revised form is not posted. In the canvass, it said, owners who want to vote for recall are offered the form and can name one of the group’s members, while those who want to vote the other way “should contact the board for a name.” Members of the group hold the recall proxies, which are valid only for this meeting. The group put the cost of the campaign at “a couple of grand,” paid by members rather than from association funds, and said it thinks a quorum unlikely to fail.

The Independent put questions to the board on September 2, asking for the court’s order, the association’s financial statements and an account of the removal threshold, and requesting a reply by September 4. The address published for the board returned an automated acknowledgment within seconds and nothing since. The board did not respond to the questions before publication. Its answers will be reported if they come.

On September 15 the owners of 704 lots will decide whether to remove five unpaid volunteers from the board of their association, without having been told how many votes that will take. Whoever holds the seats on the morning of the 16th inherits the same 90 acres of open space, the same $9,517 in the operating account, and the same difficulty persuading neighbors to do unpaid work. The vote decides who manages that. It does not change it.

Sources & further reading

The Independent’s own coverage: Woodmoor, Explained · the same structure Gleneagle has, an unincorporated community run by a private association alongside county and special-district authority · Not an HOA: The Government That Runs Much of Monument · on the difference between a covenant association such as GCA and a taxing metropolitan district, which determines what powers a board like this one has · At the Ford Amphitheater, the Complaints Track the Wind · Gleneagle residents organized over amphitheater noise, and some of the same neighbors appear on both sides of this dispute.

Association documents: Gleneagle Civic Association · Bylaws as amended March 18, 2025 · Meeting minutes and monthly financial statements · Covenant declarations and recorded amendments · Board leadership.

Court record: Notice of Petition, Hearing and Notice of Objection Rights, and the Petition filed April 10, 2026, El Paso County District Court case 2026CV030889, Division 17; objection form under C.R.S. § 38-33.3-217(7). Copies are hosted by U.N.I.T.E. Gleneagle.

Statute: Colorado Revised Statutes 2026, Title 38, sections 38-33.3-116, 38-33.3-117, 38-33.3-118, 38-33.3-217(7) and 38-33.3-303(8); Title 7, the Colorado Revised Nonprofit Corporation Act, sections 7-127-207, 7-127-208 and 7-128-108.

Prior reporting: Our Community News, by David Futey · Sept. 30, 2025 · Oct. 15, 2025 · March 17, 2026 · May 12, 2026.

Methodology

Documents were read in full rather than searched. Financial figures come from the association’s own monthly statements, prepared by Balanced Bookkeeping and posted on its website. All nineteen monthly statements from January 2025 through July 2026 were retrieved and the reserve and operating balances read from each, which is how the timing of the 2025 reserve decline was established; ballot counts and the quorum calculation from the minutes of the January 20, 2026 board meeting; covenant provisions from the restated declaration and the 2001 First Amendment; bylaws from the association’s own nine-page PDF, checked against a copy hosted by U.N.I.T.E. and found identical; vote counts from the April 10 petition and the notice mailed to owners. The statements, notice and petition are image scans without a text layer, read by optical character recognition with every quoted figure checked against the rendered page. Statutory text is from Colorado Revised Statutes 2026, Titles 7 and 38; the provisions relied on are unchanged from the 2024 edition.

The illustrative vote counts apply each stated standard to a bare 20 percent quorum of the 704 lots named in the petition. They show the size of the gap; they are not a prediction of turnout and not a legal conclusion.

The account of the June 9 hearing and June 18 ruling, the objection and petition counts, the proxy canvassing and the cost of the campaign come from U.N.I.T.E. Gleneagle, which answered written questions on September 3 through the member who represented the objectors at the hearing, and from the group’s post of June 18, removed from its website and restored on September 3 after The Independent asked about it; the group said the removal was an administrator’s error. It cautioned that its account of the ruling rests on that member’s notes and may be flawed. The Independent has withheld his name at his request; he holds no office, and nothing here turns on his identity. These are one party’s assertions and have not been independently verified. The case file was ordered from the El Paso County District Court on September 3 and had not arrived; the caption, judge, division, filing date and $265 fee total come from a docket printout the group supplied, generated through a commercial records service on April 20, 2026, which predates the hearing and carries nothing about the ruling or the 60-day period. Any order obtained later that alters this account will be reported and the article corrected. U.N.I.T.E. answered seven of eight questions, leaving aside the one asking what documents its financial claims rest on. Written questions were sent to the association at [email protected], the only contact address it publishes, on September 2, 2026, with a reply requested by September 4; the address returned an automated acknowledgment and the board had not responded by publication. Quotations from board members at the September 2025, October 2025, March 2026 and May 2026 meetings are taken from Our Community News reporting by David Futey; The Independent did not attend those meetings, and does not quote residents from neighborhood social media.