When I moved in this community 8 years ago, it was indeed a great and beautiful place to live. Now that I lived here I’ve notice all the dishonest and wrong doings going on in here and decided to let the residents know how dishonest the developer was and all his associates including the CDD, and the HOA Believe me I was completely wrong about this community. They were misleading the residents about this community about being a private community. Anyone can come thru the gate including Bin Laden and all his terrorist. The clubhouse is not private, you have to pay to use it, $375.00 if you live here or $750 for a outsider. And they call this private. I call it the biggest rip off in Florida.
If you feel you are safe living here, you are 100% wrong. They are more interested for you to register your guest and also no fishing off the bridge leading to the island golf pudding green near the front entrance gate. Mr. Al Miller of Ashton Club Drive was bitten by an alligator while playing golf near the storage units. The alligator drag him into the water and by some unknown reason the alligator let him go. Mr Miller was in aguish pain for over a month. Do you think they would let the residents know and inform them to be more careful playing golf. NO. They were very much afraid it would hurt their golf business and made no mention of him being attack at the Monday morning coffee meetings or in the L A Times. Yet this insistent made national news thanks to me. I inform the press and they quickly jump on the story. This story made national headlines and news. The management and the developer doesn’t give a hoot about you being dead or alive as long as there money coming in.
Now we have the MX. (Cable and ADT security) Do you think that the MX will go away. NO It will be here until dooms day. The HOA is control by idiots. Thousand of dollars have now been spend on Lawyer fees to get rid of it and it is still with us. This is the biggest joke and no one seems to care anymore. Again we have been ripped off.
No sidewalks, and you would think the L A Times would tell the residents to be very careful while walking in the road. Its only a matter of time before someone will be hit by a car or golf cart. No one cares anymore, just as long as you register your guest, no fishing off the bridge and no business card telling the residents the truth are in the library makes them happy. Have you seen a 55+ community without sidewalks? Also please notice the distance between the garage and the road, your lucky to be able to park your car in your own driveway. Note also the width of the road, it is very narrow, no place to walk if cars are coming in both directions.
The developer walk into the Billiard room and took all the animal heads down, $15,000.00 dollars or more and hung them you know where. Did he have the right to take them down after he hung them up and said to the residence what a beautiful place we live in and a great place to play billiard with the boys, look at all the animal heads hanging on the walls. Yes, he sure knows how to screw us by luring us in this community by throwing out the bait. I am glad he can’t find a large flat bed truck trailer because if he did he would haul away the clubhouse.
When he ran the restaurant the residences paid the light bill, broken dishes, water, repairs, pots and pans
etc, and he kept the profit. What a contract he had with the CDD. I wish I could find a package deal like that.
Now if you sell your home by the resale dept, he gets 1% of the sales price for doing nothing. You can’t put a for sale sign in front of your house or you will be fined, and have a date in court. The developer wants you to list it with the brokers so he can get his commission.
Every time something goes wrong in the community and he thinks he might get sued, his company’s goes belly up. China drywall was one of his biggest problems here and his business went belly up days after this was known.
If you’re a resident and you wish to play golf you must pay $!00.00 but if your not a resident you only pay $40.00, This sounds like a rip-off. Reason being, he wants you to pay a yearly fee of $3600.00 to play golf. Only the developer can pull this off. And if you visit their Lake Ashton internet ad it says this community is only minutes from Tampa and Disney. If I could be in Disney or Tampa in less than a minute I would be Superman or the rocket man. It is much more than an hour away. Why is it noted just minutes away? You can fool some people some of the time, but you can’t fool the people all the time.
You can take or steal things or animal heads from the Clubhouse but if you leave your calling card you get ban for four months for using the clubhouse. I left my business card in the library along with 1,000 other cards but they hate my blog because I tell the residents the truth. The Developer and the CDD don’t like the truth being told. So they ban me from using the clubhouse for 4 months. It is better to steal but you can’t leave your business card.
Lake Ashton does have a Web site but you are not allow to post anything on it. We did at one time that was when the pick-up trucks was a issue. They did they not want anyone to read about all the complaints. Please remember this is a no complaint community, nothing ever is bad in this community.
We had one resident that had is house build and it was agreed that the developer would not build a home between him and the pond. Guess what! A home was build between him and the pond. He sued the developer and won a settlement. The developer can not be trusted, money is his game.
One of the biggest expenses was when the bowling alley was out of order because of water problems.
They went out and dig up all the trees around the bowling alley and dig a drainage ditch to the pond. Than they placed pipes around that area. They still had water problems. They hired a water finder specialist to find where all this water was coming from. The water was coming from the Kitchen that the developer was running. Over $100,000 was spend on this issue. I might add that the bowling alley was build with second hand parts with little life left. The residents was left with the bill.
The roads in Lake Ashton are not private roads but public roads but the residents must pay for the upkeep of these roads because of the CDD with the city. Everything in this community is billed to the residents of Lake Ashton even thou the Developer is still building homes here. This community was turn over to our CDD last year with all these problems and nothing was done. Even the road issue, they spend thousands of dollars on lawyers fees and research companies to get the developer to pay for the road repair and the CDD drop the suit. I can honestly say that this CDD we have now has got to be the dumbest idiots after spending well over $200,000.00 for nothing. They are only interested in banning me from the clubhouse.
Then we have the issue with Bingo, Paul and Carol Pontious keep no records of all money they received from 50/50, Concession stand and bingo. No tax money was ever paid to state or federal. The man in charged hired a bus and filled it with his friends and drove it to the finest restaurant in Florida using the money from the residents who played Bingo. With this in mind, his wife and him are on the CDD and the HOA. Yet we file a complained with the local law officials over 3 years ago and to this day nothing was done. Doesn’t this tell you something about this community and law enforcement! Something very crooked is going on in here and even the local law officials won’t do anything to correct this issue. We are all fighting a loss cause here in Florida. Jack Van Sickle called the police on my Blog hoping to find my AK47. and shut me up. As you can see, I am still on my blog and still telling the residents what the truth is.
