More minutes and budgets

I've obtained minutes for May through October of 2009, and they are now posted in the "minutes" section. I've also posted budgets from 2008 and 2010.

Governing documents and minutes posted

After a (very) quick Google search, I came upon a free web hosting service. They provide 1.5GB of space and 100GB of bandwidth all for the low, low cost of free. I've set up an account with them, and now the association's governing documents as well as all of the minutes for which I have electronic copies are posted for immediate download. As before, documents can be accessed with the username of "parklane". The password is the same as the current gate code.

It's not required, but I've placed a link to the web hosting service, 000webhost.com, on the page. It is really the least I could do in thanks for hosting our files for free.

Fire danger

At the annual meeting the other night, one of our members was explaining to that he had just returned home after a fire had damaged his house and forced he and his family to move out for an extended period of time. He explained that in some models in Park Lane, the clothes dryer vent vents upward through the wall and out through the roof. If too much lint builds up in the vent, the force of the air leaving the dryer may not be enough to overcome the force of gravity causing lint to block the vent. In his case, this caused heat to back up into the hose and back to the rear of the dryer eventually causing a fire.

Please take care to ensure that this doesn't happen to you. Either manually inspect your vent or call a professional out to do it for you. It's cheaper than having your house burn down.

General philosophy regarding homeowners associations

[I originally wrote this article in December of 2007 near the end of a previous term on Park Lane's Board of Directors. I've republished it here so readers can have a better sense of how I view my role as a director.]

Most recently, I've been dealing with the homeowners association at our rental property. I'm not only a member; I'm also the president. Recently, it became necessary to remove trees from the common areas in the community because of the invasive root systems that some of the trees have. We made the mistake of failing to notify homeowners of the action prior to beginning the removal, and people just went nuts!. Never in my life have I seen (granted I've only got about 28 years under my belt at this point) people be less reasonable or more childish, and the passive aggression (from grown adults!) is just astonishing.

I don't want to relate the whole saga of the tree removals in our community, though. Rather, let me address something related, and that is what seems to be some fundamental misunderstandings/myths about what a homeowners association is and how it functions.

• A homeowners association is not the board of directors that governs it.
  
  A homeowners association is exactly what its name implies. It is an association of owners of a given set of homes. All homeowners have an equal right (and in my opinion, responsibility) to participate. The board merely acts to handle the day to day business of the association and see that business gets done in the event that homeowners do not participate (usually the result of apathy, of which there appears to be a great amount). Homeowners who don't speak up should not be surprised when the board acts in a manner inconsistent with what they might have done.
  
  
• A homeowners association does not absolve homeowners of individual responsibility.
  
  If the neighbors' kids are playing too loudly, ask them to quiet down. If a resident lets her dog poop in the common area, ask her to pick it up. The homeowners association has become an excuse for people to stop dealing directly with each other, and I would argue, actually serves to decrease the sense of community in an area. There are cases when the association needs to involve itself, but when registering a complaint, consideration should first be given to the course of action in the event that there was no association.
  
  
• Being a member of a homeowners association is not an excuse to be petty and unreasonable.
  
  I've seen people complain about everything from a wreath hung on a front door, to trash cans being placed out too early, to having too many doormats. Nobody wants their neighbor to paint her house pink or to have to deal with raging parties every weekend, nor should they. Sometimes, though, a homeowner may forget to put her hose away after cleaning the car or will put the trash cans out early due to scheduling conflicts. These are not reasons to involve the association. See the previous point.
  
  
• The homeowners association is not out to screw individual homeowners.
  
  The board of directors of an association has a fiduciary duty to the association, not its individual members. Decisions are made in the interests of the association. While the board should make an effort to be as accommodating as possible, eventually unpopular action may become necessary. This can have a disproportionately negative effect on individual homeowners, but that does not automatically make the decision a product of malice.
  
  
• Homeowners associations help keep property values high.
  
  How often do you hear, "I'll never live in a neighborhood with a homeowners association [again]"? I rest my case.

Over the past two years, I've learned a lot about business and people, in general. I believe that a homeowners association can be a good thing, but it takes the involvement of its members. It takes a reasonable group of people acting on the board of directors. It takes a membership, including the board of directors, that understands that the relationship between the board and the members is not an adversarial one; it has to be collaborative. Most of all it takes a group of people working toward solutions rather than pointing out problems.

Organizational Meeting - 21 Jan 2010

The 2010 board of directors met briefly to assign officer positions. All positions were by unanimous vote, and they are as follows:

President: Tom Crowder
Vice President: Evert Gerritsen
Treasurer: Tom Bebrin
Secretary: Mark Abbott
Member/Director-at-Large: John Tyner

The meeting was then adjourned without further discussion.

Annual Meeting - 21 Jan 2010

The 2009 board convened Park Lane's annual meeting at 6pm. At the time, only about 5 homeowners were present (by the end, it was no more than 10). Two inspectors of election were chosen from the audience and began counting ballots; the association met quorum with a total of 85 ballots [it may have been 84, I don't recall exactly]. While ballots were being counted, the board president gave a statement about the association's financial situation. In short, the association is about $22,000 behind in collections; has about $10,000 in operating funds; $70,000 in the bank; and about $10,000 more in reserve. [It was unclear to me how much of this is allocated to the "reserves," and I don't have the most recent reserve study handy while I write this.] The board went on to say that it did not raise rates this year, nor does it intend to raise rates before the end of 2010. [In light of the fact that the board made no mention of cutting services, I can only assume that the $90,000 that the association currently has will only shrink over time.]

The reading of last year's annual meeting minutes was waived following a motion by yours truly, and the minutes were approved. At this point, an introduction of the candidates was made (no nominations were made from the floor). Candidates agreed to decline to make statements since ballots were already being counted and the statements would therefore not sway any opinions.

After the counting, Mark Abbott, Tom Bebrin, Tom Crowder, Evert Gerritsen, and I (John Tyner) were elected to serve as Park Lane's 2010 Board of Directors. (There was little interest in hearing vote tallies among those present, and so they were not announced.) The annual meeting was adjourned at approximately 7pm.

Open Board Meeting - 21 Jan 2010

The 2009 board met prior to the 2010 annual meeting for the final open board meeting of its term at 5pm. I arrived about 10 minutes late and missed the "homeowner forum" portion of the meeting; the board was discussing regular business when I arrived. After general board business and discussion of delinquencies and liens, the board moved on to adoption of the rules.

Prior to making a motion to adopt its new rules, the board distributed a two page piece of paper to the members present detailing comments made by homeowners regarding the rules changes. It appeared that only about 6 total homeowners had made comments regarding about 10 different rules. (Not all homeowners commented on all rules.) Many of the rules that drew comments had been part of the association's rules since at least 2003 and were not actually being changed. For this reason, the board elected to adopt those rules as distributed to the membership. [I, personally, agreed with many of the comments made by homeowners regarding the rules in question, though, I had a hard time arguing with the board's position that these same homeowners did not complain about these rules when they were previously adopted and re-adopted.]

I did speak up against the adoption of a rule that homeowners must notify the association of all dogs kept in homes and prove that they are licensed. I explained that keeping an unlicensed animal was already illegal, and there was no reason for the board to interject itself by demanding proof from members. The board felt that it was protecting itself from legal liability and that the threat of fines from the association would provide further incentive to members to properly license and care for their animals. The board said that it did not intend to go door to door enforcing this rule but rather would only use it as a tool against members who do not properly care for or restrain their animals. At this point, I asked about the wisdom of having rules that were not intended to be enforced and also raised the issue of legal liability for unequal enforcement.

At this point, another homeowner spoke up, made some references about how the association is not a "gestapo" [funny how Nazi references seem to go hand in hand with HOA's], and explained that the board was using its rules to notify people of their obligations and not necessarily for punishment. I again raised the issues of unenforced rules and unequal enforcement but eventually had to cede that the board was going to adopt the rule regardless of my arguments.

Finally, the board did relax the rule regarding play equipment so that it could be used in cul-de-sacs so long as it does not interfere with traffic. (See actual verbiage in the forthcoming notification of adoption of the rules.) The board then adopted the rules, as amended.

The board adjourned at approximately 5:50pm.

About this site

The intent of this website is to disseminate information about board meetings, decisions, and the financial state of the association among other things. In addition, you may find the occasional (or not so occasional) opinion or commentary about what is going on within the association. I will also do my best to post electronic versions of meeting minutes, governing documents, if/when I am able to create them and make them available.

I've set up a "To Do List" on the site to keep track of items that I would like to accomplish for the site and/or the association. If you have an item you would like to add to the list, please let me know. If you can help by taking care of an item on the list, please also let me know (I'll do my best to give credit on the site).

Password protected areas of the site can be accessed with the user name "parklane". The password will be the current "resident" gate code.

I know that this site may seem a bit one-sided or one-way, but that is not my intent. Please keep me honest in the job that I do, and hold me accountable for keeping this site accurate and up to date.