The letter frames this as a proactive investigation -- as though the Board identified a question and set out to answer it carefully. The documented sequence reveals something different: the conclusion came first.

The fence was installed on November 4, 2025. Residents were notified at the last minute, with no opportunity for discussion. The meeting minutes from August through October contain no record of resident input or alternative assessments before the fence was installed. If the Board had intended to discuss this with residents, they would have emailed everyone before the decision -- not after.

The "three-month review" the letter describes was not a proactive investigation. It was a response to community opposition that appeared only after the fence went up.

This statement -- that PSE&G requested the lock -- is the characterization that has shaped the Board's entire narrative. It implies the outcome was externally driven and therefore not within the Board's control to reverse.

On November 21, it was property manager Karen Yuhasz who contacted PSE&G to ask them to add a chain, because residents were already forcing the hinge open to reach the bus stop. The HOA asked PSE&G to harden a barrier the HOA created.

At best -- the most charitable reading -- what PSE&G may have required was a keyed gate for their own technician access. That is a narrow utility accommodation. The HOA's decision to use that occasion to permanently close the pedestrian path was entirely their own choice.

Board meeting minutes are the permanent official governance record of this community. A false statement in those minutes -- directly contradicted by written primary evidence that was available at the time the minutes were written -- is not a clerical error. It is a material inaccuracy in an official document. It has never been corrected.

The "legal guidance previously shared" is the January 12 letter from attorney David Merritt of McGovern Legal Services. The liability analysis it contains is real and professionally argued. But it has a structural limitation that has never been disclosed: it analyzes exactly one scenario.

The letter addresses the liability exposure from "simply unlocking the gate and willfully ignoring pedestrian use" -- a fully public, uncontrolled opening with no accountability. The most exposed possible position.

Since December, residents had been requesting analysis of a controlled-access model -- key-fob or lockbox access limited to residents, combined with signed liability acknowledgments. The December 11 Board meeting minutes contain an explicit commitment from the Board to seek this analysis:

That analysis was never requested. At the January 22 meeting, Board President Elliot Fox declared these alternatives "moot." Residents were not asking about a constructed path. They were asking about locks and waivers for a gate that already exists.

The commitment made in official minutes was broken. The wrong question was answered instead.

The Board's entire case rests on the premise that a controlled pathway creates liability exposure the Association cannot accept. These are real concerns, and we do not dismiss them.

What the closing memo does not tell you: the Board has been sitting on documented evidence since December 2025 that its chosen alternative -- a locked gate -- is producing a worse outcome on both the injury and the liability fronts.

When you close a path people have used daily for over a decade, and they start climbing a fence instead, the injury risk does not go away. It gets worse.

Based on the information shared with us to date, the Board has not asked their attorney to compare the liability exposure of managed resident access with key-fob controls and waivers against the documented liability of known, ongoing fence-climbing with no mitigation effort.

Under established premises liability principles, documented knowledge of a foreseeable dangerous condition without reasonable mitigation efforts can increase -- not decrease -- an organization's legal exposure. When an association records knowledge of an ongoing physical hazard in official minutes, and then takes no meaningful steps to address it, that record may be used to establish that the harm was foreseeable and the response was inadequate.

Whether signage and a camera constitute reasonable mitigation of a documented fall risk is, at best, a question a court would need to evaluate -- and one the Board apparently chose not to ask its own attorney.

The documented response to known daily fence-hopping: custom surveillance signage ordered from Amazon and a battery-operated camera mounted on a tree near the fence line, according to HC2 management.

Since December 2025, the $50,000 figure has anchored the Board's financial argument at every stage. It appears in the attorney's January 12 letter. It reappears here. It has been cited as the floor cost that makes any pathway financially implausible -- before a single contractor estimate had been obtained.

The Town does not give cost estimates. That is not their function. Yet a figure with no documented professional source was embedded in formal legal correspondence and cited to residents for three months as definitive financial evidence.

The letter presents Falcon's cost range as a barrier. Falcon's own proposal -- provided to residents by the Board -- offered a preliminary feasibility study for $3,950: a first-tier assessment specifically designed to answer foundational questions before committing to a full engineering engagement. The $14,000-$19,000 range covers the complete package. The $3,950 entry point was not presented as an option at the January 22 open meeting.

Since December, the Board cited Falcon's engagement as a necessary step -- and enforced it in writing as of January 14 as a mandatory prerequisite:

The Board has not shared anything to indicate that Falcon was engaged in any capacity before obtaining the South Shore Construction estimate on February 11. That estimate arrived without engineering plans, without a feasibility report, and without the Falcon prerequisite the Board itself had enforced in writing.

It is misleading to enforce a prerequisite on homeowners asking questions, then ignore it when it serves the Board's conclusion.

The Board had this estimate as early as February 11. Residents first saw it on February 24, thirteen days later, in the same document that permanently closed all discussion. There was no opportunity to review, question, or propose alternatives.

The letter calls it an estimate for "a basic, code-compliant crossover." Residents asked about access through a gate that already exists. Here is what South Shore actually priced:

We formally asked the Board in our January 24 letter to present tiered options, including a controlled-access mitigation option, a minimally compliant safe path concept, and a full build-out. The estimate that came back priced only the most expensive possible version. That price was used to permanently close the question residents actually asked.