Renee and Meredith returned to the utility shed together, this time accompanied by a full inspection team, and Jocelyn no longer had any say over what happened at the site. A formal notice was posted on the door—not at Barrett's request, but because the entire facility now had to be preserved intact for the ongoing administrative investigation.
The inspection team mapped the system completely and confirmed every troubling detail uncovered so far:
-
One unauthorized connection tapped directly into Barrett's private main
-
41 residential submeters installed without proper authority
-
One entirely unmetered branch feeding the HOA's own common areas
-
No recorded easement anywhere in the county's files
-
No approved cross-connection permit on record
-
A certification number on the manifold that belonged to a completely different project miles away
-
And backflow protection that failed to meet the required safety standard
Around the same time, the municipal utility presented a plan for transitioning all 41 homes onto a legitimate water source of their own, but the price tag now dwarfed the $286,000 the HOA had once avoided, since the work now required re-excavating the roadway, obtaining proper permits, installing an entirely new main, conducting full pressure testing, adding certified backflow devices, establishing 41 individual utility accounts, and repaving everything that had to be dug up in the process.
Homeowners were furious—though not at Barrett, but at their own board—because the association had spent 18 months collecting water fees from every household without ever using that money to build the legitimate system it should have built from the start.
During a special emergency session, Jocelyn tried once more to place the blame entirely on the original contractor. But Elise stood up and read the contractor's email aloud, followed immediately by Jocelyn's own reply instructing them to proceed on nothing more than board authorization.
The mood in the room shifted completely the moment those words were read aloud. A motion was raised almost immediately to remove Jocelyn Pike as president pending the outcome of the ongoing investigation, and this time she did not have the votes to stop it. She was removed from her position on the spot, though before leaving the room, she insisted that Barrett would still have to prove his damages in court like anyone else making a claim. Graham responded simply that she was correct, and that proving those damages in court was exactly where they intended to go next.