St Ann Drax Hall Country Club owners press HOA on spending, ballots, and stalled repairs

At the Drax Hall Country Club gated scheme in St Ann, unease among property owners has sharpened into open criticism of the homeowners association, which they say runs affairs with too little openness or answerability—enough, they argue, that some people have already put units on the market.

“We have been having challenges with successive boards because of a lack of training or personality issues. They refuse to follow proper governance of an HOA,” Dr Tanika O’Connor Dennie, a resident who sat on the board in 2021, said in comments to Observer Online.

O’Connor Dennie traced part of the breakdown to her own tenure, when, she said, a chosen chair cut the rest of the directors off from the shared inbox. “It started with the board that I was on, where they selected the chair, and she unilaterally blocked all of us from the email. We didn’t know what was going on. We couldn’t see the books,” she said. A tight circle of about five people, she added, would meet beforehand to settle items in private, leaving two directors who wanted fuller disclosure on the outside. “They had a clique, which was about five of them, and they would do pre-meetings to decide on things, and then the other two of us that wanted greater transparency and communication would not be privy to the information.”

She said the present committee under chair Andrew Sewell still keeps financial detail in the hands of a small circle. “We are still going down this road where it’s personality-based. So, rather than being professional, when you ask for transparency and accountability, they start doing personal attacks,” she alleged. She also said community resources had been routed through private inboxes for private convenience. “Things like using their personal emails to do things and using the resources of the community for their own personal benefits, and they don’t really see anything wrong with it.”

On elections, O’Connor Dennie argued the proxy route is being misused so that ballots do not reflect informed choice. “The board members who live in Jamaica and live in the community, they go around and collect proxy votes from people and the people they usually collect the proxy votes from are not involved in the WhatsApp groups, so they don’t know what is happening there. They are writing their own names in the proxy votes that the person is voting for, and that is how they advance their election,” she said.

She linked the stand-off over records and civility to slow progress on physical upkeep, including a boundary wall she described as damaged and repeatedly raised with leadership, yet barely tackled. “Draxhall is a very quiet community. It has a lot of potential. It’s gorgeous, but because they put personality above professionalism, they’ve shut out board members that are truly brilliant who would have benefited the community, and there are some long-standing repairs [not] happening as yet because of it, and we’ve spent money unnecessarily,” she said.

Fellow owner Sandra Williams pointed to a roughly 35 per cent jump in maintenance charges within a compressed window, paired with little visible uplift in grounds care. “We are querying why our landscaping bill is $420,000 per month, when it is our workers who are doing most of the job. They just have one guy who comes in, cuts the lawn, and then our guys scrape, blow, bag, and so forth, and we’re paying $420,000. So there are so many things shrouded in secrecy when we ask for transparency,” Williams said.

She described abrasive exchanges online and disappointment with the estate’s entrance road. “We’re badgered, pickled, and gaslit on the chat, and that is it. If you see the road coming in, it’s such a beautiful community, but it’s just so terrible. We’ve been asking for it to be fixed,” she said, and added: “Our maintenance went up, we were at $8,500, it went up to $10,000, just recently it went up to $13,000, and nothing is changing much. We honestly can’t see where the money is going.”

Williams said letters and complaints aimed at better stewardship have left many feeling stuck. “People come back to call this home, and people have sold their homes because of the toxicity. They sold their homes not for profit; they sold it because they can’t deal with the toxicity. Some people don’t bother to come; they just rent the property, they can’t be bothered. It’s very toxic,” she said.

Separately, attorney-at-law Misha Powell, who also owns a home inside the gates, told Observer Online she brought court proceedings in 2025 against Draxhall Country Club Limited and a slate of current and former directors, aiming to secure redress for what she calls repeated breaches of proper governance rules. “I have filed a lawsuit against the directors. It’s currently still in litigation. It’s making its way through the courts. I really just want people in Draxhall Hall Country Club, mainly the directors, to take their jobs seriously. I want them to realise that when you don’t follow the laws, and when you don’t follow procedures, you can be sued, and that suit could result in monetary penalties,” Powell said, and added: “I think unless there’s a stop to what’s going on, we’re just going to continue to dig ourselves into a deeper hole.”

Powell, who practises law in the United States, listed among the estate’s worries a fallen perimeter wall and a wastewater problem she said was flagged years back but left unresolved. “We have some major structural issues. We had a wall that collapsed on one side of the community. In fact, I think the board at the time was warned that there were some structural integrity issues with that wall, and [Hurricane Melissa] took it down. So now that area is compromised. As far as I know, it’s been creeping up in the air, and nothing has been done,” she alleged, saying the board has declined to retain an engineer.

She also detailed the sewage matter. “We had a sewage issue that I brought to their attention many years ago. It’s been over four years where we had someone look at that sewage area and determine that it needed to be addressed. At the time, I was a director, and we reached out to the developer. We reached out to NEPA [National Environment and Planning Agency]. We reached out to a whole bunch of people asking for advice on how to address the sewage area, and then when I passed on the torch to the next board, I told them this was a major issue that they needed to address and deal with, and it just fell to the wayside. As far as I know, nothing has been done,” she said.

Powell is calling for stronger legislation and oversight to protect homeowners of gated communities, especially as more Jamaicans living overseas look to return home permanently. “Jamaica needs to come up with comprehensive gated community laws,” Powell said, adding “it’s very disappointing to see what’s been happening in that community.”

Observer Online placed several calls and sent messages to Draxhall Country Club chair Andrew Sewell; up to press time he had not responded.