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"No such thing as a county circuit court in this state, they are State courts, but I understand the conflict of interest that you are getting at, and it doesn't go away at the State level. That's why it has to go to Federal court."
Mahalo for the correction! And concur with Federal court being the best( and maybe only) chance of a fair trial. We all most likely will end up paying more road fees but I agree with Johnd .
"One does not throw more money into a black hole, let alone without demanding an audit." and I would add, more money , in the hands of current leadership ,is not the answer either.
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We shouldn't put out any more money beyond the road fees which are due around the corner, until we find out what exactly's been going on with our road maint fee monies today and over the past year.
Over 6 months of non transparency by the previous Finance Committee, and now denial of financial info to the new FC. That's a red flag.
The road crew devoted a lot of time to the chip seal project over the past year. We were already behind in maint during the interim GM's era, and the chip seal project compounded that further. Almost ALL of our roads needed road material laid on the entire road back then.
We've had a high turnover of road crew since 2014. Hence the lack of experience. It's possible the crew knows more about chip sealing than how to properly compact roll and grade a dirt road???
Bottom line, the road crew can't be working on the chip seal project and keep up with road and easement maintenance, as is evident to us all by the condition of our roads and easements today. That is the crux of the problem coupled with the large sum of money going into the chip seal project, instead of road material, road striping and reflectors.
The previous 2 boards combated membership involvement and were non transparent w/chip seal biz. They prob knew questions would come up. i.e. How would they fund this project, and maintain our roads and easements? There's a road that's been prepped ready to be chip sealed but w/all the rain and member road maint complaints... hopefully the road crew is catching up w/all the backlog and will be until it's caught up. That would keep them busy for some time.
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The crux of our problem is expecting volunteers, inexperienced in running a $2 mil. corp to be able to efficiently run our corp.
Hiring the wrong people, high turn over of employees, locking us into a bond at over7% interest rate with an astronomical prepayment penalty, not making accurate road re-surface decisions, not overseeing our employees within the guidelines of law, not providing owners with accurate accounting information, etc. are symptoms and the expected outcome of a corp. in the hands of ill equipped people, no matter how well intended and decent people they may be . They just haven't the skills or experience required to run our corp.
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Mermaid
There is no room for "hopefully", this a serious matter of mismanagement involving copious amounts of money. The staff turn over you mention, should be an indication that the association should contract an established management company to contract out all maintenance and road building and get rid of our crews.
It will cost more, but they will have the responsibility to do the job right and they would be clearly accountable as well.
Otherwise, get the Board out of the way, send the bloody subdivision to bankruptcy in the hands of a court appointed administrator,and restructure the debt or even have it canceled given the things we know about the original negotiations.
On our road we are reverting to jungle, 0 maintenance from the association and we have to clear it ourselves, on top of paying yearly fees!, ask me if I care?
OK, so it's only 285 a year right? big Whoopee! But it has gone steadily and rapidly up and it will continue to do so. What if one has more than one lot? , now things are a bit different. What if you live in dead end road?, where the association now says will never be paved, and refuses to maintain, where getting in an out may soon require a 4x4. What about maintaining paved roads that are used by external residents so they can avoid traffic jams on a daily basis? What about those clamoring to have RR open for their convenience? There are way too many issues that must be properly addressed but thus Board cannot even manage to clear the sides of the roads!
This was not what we signed for when we bought here, clearly there was a huge misrepresentation if one cares to put it that way. The Board does not follow the by laws, plain and simple.
A bunch of volunteers that drop like flies when it gets too complicated CANNOT be allowed to operate a sizeable community like this, let alone operating behind "close doors" without an audit. Because make no mistake, given the current conditions of our roads.. we do need one.
And this is a VERY large subdivision. Well managed, it can be a jewel. Right now is going down the hill very fast and the Board only demands to be fed more money each year. Clearly, if the subdivision is not maintained....then there is mismanagement and lack of skills. I agree with Reni that giving this kind of responsibility onto the hands of volunteers, is totally innapropiate.
The chip seal project is a very big ?.. to me. As I said, after I saw the crew trying to simply grade our road... I would not hold my breath with the quality of the job they are "suppossed" to be doing now and I don't recall ever receiving anything from the association indicating the very particulars of the project. It is not their money to play with!, that is something each Board member should have imprinted on their forehead.
jdo
jdo
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the association should contract an established management company
I refer to this as the "disinterested third party" -- said professional management should explicitly not include any landowner or resident of the subvidision being managed.
It will cost more
Still much cheaper than lawsuits, receivership, or embezzlement.
What about maintaining paved roads that are used by external residents
I think all the subdivisions should install gates at key points to exclude all non-residents from their "privately owned" roads. While this would be incredibly inconvenient in the short term, the resulting furor might actually force the right thing to happen.
Well managed, it can be a jewel. Right now is going down the hill very fast
I've always assumed that dysfunctional management has a side goal of manipulating real estate prices. Maybe if enough people contested their County valuation for property tax purposes...
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This is only a hunch, but my suspicion is that the lawyer representing the association in the pending lawsuit has told the board that the monies being spent on the lawsuit are confidential and not being reported as legal expenses/liabilities. If this is true, then it is also likely that anyone 'in the know' has been made aware of their personal liability for breaking this confidentiality. Nice setup if you're an hourly attorney.
This would explain the lack of transparency, shortcomings in road maintenance, and the odd footnote from the auditors about only being able to validate what has been shared. I can't recall if the footnote was from this, or last year's financials.
For those of you that haven't been to a board meeting, and it has been over a year now for me, there is no quick fix for this. There are a lot of passionate people involved, the board and many committee members, but they show an incredible amount of contempt for each other. My observations led me to believe that this is the rule and not the exception. Some of them are regular posters on this forum. It's an environment that would drive most reasonable people away.
I'm just going to keep on filling the potholes and mowing my street myself, but I will gladly relinquish the work if things change.
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I'm just going to keep on filling the potholes and mowing my street myself
Deduct the expenses from your association dues and send in the receipts -- should make for a very entertaining episode when it gets to court.
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I timed how long it took me to mow the easement from the road to my property line. I have 130 feet of road frontage. It took less than ten minutes. City where I came from required the property owner to maintain the sidewalks and areas from the street inward to their property (and this included the curbs).
Puna: Our roosters crow first
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"I timed how long it took me to mow the easement from the road to my property line. I have 130 feet of road frontage. It took less than ten minutes. City where I came from required the property owner to maintain the sidewalks and areas from the street inward to their property (and this included the curbs)."
Cool! And Mahalo!!!
It's a little effort but what an improvement right?.....especially if it starts catching on with the neighbors! It was a little work to get 1/2 of our street's easement "riding lawnmower ready".... but my husband has been doing it for years now. Only the width of his riding lawn mover in front of vacant lots of course but our street looks so much better than it did. He even gets an occasional beer from our neighbor!
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So much has happened these last 2.5 years and yet nothing has changed. It is difficult to wrap a sane persons head around what Jo is up to and her desperation to control EVERYTHING! It is also mind boggling that anyone would listen to her let alone follow her, standing with her as she breaks by-laws and state statutes. Who could look at her and believe her. She is greasy looking, with always slimy hair, dirty shirt and torn shorts no matter where she goes. Some blindly believe this chronic liar rather than even try to read the by-laws. So one will say, "lets do something".Problem is some(a very few because others would rather gripe and do nothing) have tried. Right away with a special membership meeting to trying to get a recall going to arbitration. Arbitration is really the only recourse the by-laws allow. The previous board and this board do not acknowledge this and it is factually impossible to ask the board o sit down and have an adult discussion. They would rather hire multiple law firms and spend freely. No one can fight this. It would take hundred of members to contribute funds and that just is not going to happen so though I can understand why people keep saying sue etc. It won't work. Most are apathetic. Most are just to lazy or uninvolved or even afraid of retribution. Remember, there still is a law suit going on with the illegally fired employees. Not once has the board tried to get the matter resolved instead, Jo blames B.J. for it all. Convenient since B.J. has moved. The only one left is Jo.. B.J was not a nice person but we are not so foolish to not be able to see who is the leader and continues to lead the pack. The new president should have moved when he was handed a golden opportunity but he didn't. He does not show any desire to get things right and that is mostly because he does not know the by-laws and appears to want the board to like him more than listening to sensible people. Jo has rebuilt the board with followers. Don't expect any improvements. I hear she has her fingers in every pot. Amazing how much energy she spends keeping all her lies straight and her followers following when it would be so much easier to do things the right way. Instead we now have an inept GM and 2 women in the office who are nasty. My road has gone from bad to worse and I drove down 1 chip seal road and it is really really awful. So somehow they spend money doing a bad job that is already falling apart and spending more funds hiring Grasshopper to do basic road maintenance. We are really getting screwed. I can not imagine everyone going into the office threatening to not pay their road fees but to maintain their own frontage. That would be great but I don't think the GM really cares. He certainly does not have pride in himself or his job. Not the brightest lightbulb. It would take a massive movement to get a professional management company here but I can say, that even though I am not in Jo's district I will help do what ever we can to not let her get reelected and the election committee to have a real election. Would anyone else help with this? If she is not on the board, the followers will fall by the wayside and then maybe we can get back to the way it was before. I think a whole lot of us miss the former GM and staff. It was a pleasant experience going into the office and they knew what they were doing. Not perfect but who is.
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