Family fined more than $1,000 for memorial banner.
A mother’s attempt to memorialize her 2-year-old son who passed way in 2022 has yielded a years-long battle against her homeowners’ association, which she says has lacked sympathy in their efforts to down her son’s memorial banner. Rather than a knock on the door, she received more than $1,000 in fines piled on top of mounting medical bills from her young son’s illnesses.
Ashley Arguelles’s son, Bradley, was born on October 10, 2019, with serious birth trauma complications. He suffered from hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, more commonly known as HIE, which is caused by a lack of blood and oxygen flow to the brain during birth. As a result, Bradley struggled with seizures, cerebral palsy, and a gastronomy tube. However, he remained a very joyful baby, Arguelles recalled.
“He was a very happy baby. I mean, I have videos of Bradley trying to get IVs – nurses and doctors trying to put IVs in him – and him just smiling and laughing,” Arguelles told MySA. “He was somebody that walked into the room, and he was smiling, no matter if he was in his wheelchair … [or] even coming out of a seizure, he would just look at you and kind of smile…. Even in the hospital, he was always laughing, always playing, kicking his feet, loved to have his hands in his mouth.”
Bradley continued his smile-ridden fight against his health battles for more than two years, but an unfortunate turn of events in 2022 claimed the life of the toddler. Arguelles remembered the fateful night her son left the world. Arguelles and Bradley’s father spent a day with only their son in a serendipitous turn of events, leaving their daughters with a family member unaware that day would be their last with Bradley.
Arguelles said she and her husband took Bradley out in a car his father rebuilt for him and painted purple for epilepsy awareness in honor of Bradley’s diagnosis. The three spent the day riding around and enjoying each other’s company.
A San Antonio mother is battling her neighborhood HOA to keep up a memorial of her 2-year-old son who passed away, Bradley Arguelles.
A mother’s attempt to memorialize her 2-year-old son who passed way in 2022 has yielded a years-long battle against her homeowners’ association, which she says has lacked sympathy in their efforts to down her son’s memorial banner. Rather than a knock on the door, she received more than $1,000 in fines piled on top of mounting medical bills from her young son’s illnesses.
Bradley continued his smile-ridden fight against his health battles for more than two years, but an unfortunate turn of events in 2022 claimed the life of the toddler. Arguelles remembered the fateful night her son left the world. Arguelles and Bradley’s father spent a day with only their son in a serendipitous turn of events, leaving their daughters with a family member unaware that day would be their last with Bradley.
Arguelles said she and her husband took Bradley out in a car his father rebuilt for him and painted purple for epilepsy awareness in honor of Bradley’s diagnosis. The three spent the day riding around and enjoying each other’s company.
Bradley continued his smile-ridden fight against his health battles for more than two years, but an unfortunate turn of events in 2022 claimed the life of the toddler. Arguelles remembered the fateful night her son left the world. Arguelles and Bradley’s father spent a day with only their son in a serendipitous turn of events, leaving their daughters with a family member unaware that day would be their last with Bradley.
Arguelles said she and her husband took Bradley out in a car his father rebuilt for him and painted purple for epilepsy awareness in honor of Bradley’s diagnosis. The three spent the day riding around and enjoying each other’s company.
“At the services we held for my son, there was a lot of people that ended up coming. It was a bigger turnout that I thought was ever possible,” Arguelles recalled. “And then at that point, my husband’s best friend, he actually gave us a banner to memorialize our son, and we put it on the front of our house. That way, instead of not being able to see him on a daily basis, we would be able to see him when we leave, and we would be able to see him when we come home.”
This was the crux of what would become a very expensive and arduous back and forth between her family and her HOA. Thinking they were following the neighborhood rules – rules which prohibit front porch extensions – the couple tied the banner to their front pillar with a rope. The memorial was surrounded with flowers and lit up for easy viewing.
Within a couple months of putting the banner up, the Hunter Pond Village Green HOA, operated by Spectrum Association Management, stated the family would need to remove the memorial or risk being fined $50 a day. The family, in turn, argued it was not an extension of their property because it wasn’t attached with any kind of permanent fixture. The HOA disagreed.
“They denied [our] request, and they said that it would be unfair to other people – that it may be a trigger to them, and I told them, ‘Well, then they don’t have to drive down our street. There are multiple streets that they can go to get out of the facility. It’s not, you know, a one way.’ They still denied it,” Arguelles said.
The parents took to social media to fight back against what they called a heartless move from the HOA, especially noting the president of the HOA is a neighbor of the Arguelles family which they say could’ve been more neighborly with a simple knock on their door. In response, the parent company managing the neighborhood HOA responded on Facebook saying they waived the fees. But three weeks later, the family got a letter in the mail and found a shocking $1,000 worth of charges on their HOA account.
Arguelles says this sparked a string of emails between her family and the HOA managers trying to meet with the HOA board to resolve the issue, but the efforts were unsuccessful. Each time a meeting was set, it would eventually be cancelled because “board members were unable to attend.” The family ultimately paid the fine and begrudgingly took down the memorial, citing concern the HOA could put a lien on their house or make their lives more difficult.
MySA reached out to the Spectrum Association Management for a comment but did not hear back by the time this story published.
The family hasn’t given up hope just yet, and Arguelles says she’ll continue to reach out to the HOA board for a meeting to get the right to proudly display the sign honoring her son. She says it not only is a beacon of light for them, but it helps avoid awkward explanations or hurtful, albeit ignorant comments, from visitors unfamiliar with the family’s loss.
“It gives me a chance to talk about him when people come over, and they don’t really know the whole family or friends or family cover over of extended family,” Arguelles said, noting the banner brought her community together who could relate to her loss. “They see our three girls, and they kind of, they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, waiting for that boy, huh?’ And that kind of stings because you have to tell them, ‘No. I have my son.’”
