HPP Biz

[reni]

Reni writes:
"send the board a certified letter stating that they and their unlicensed contractor will be immediately reported.... and if they choose to ignore, report them"
Kalakoa response:
WRONG. Board has had more than enough opportunity to correct their mistakes, it's time to take off the kid gloves and bring out the big stick___________________________________

purpose of the certified letter is to prove they have been duly informed of the law they intend to ignore . If they TRULY ARE BREAKING THE LAW, have been informed IN WRITING and continue, I see this as willful misconduct....and they need to be removed from the board.
(if people wish to "complain" , fine with me, but if this board is incapable of following the law and or by-laws, this Board needs to be replaced.)

[mermaid53]

I will post in two parts...this is the presentation regarding chip seal given at the membership mtg 28 Feb 2016:

At the Oct membership meeting, a motion was passed requesting the board give us an informational Chip Seal presentation, to include total costs per mile and the determining factor on which roads would be done first. After their presentation the membership would vote on whether we wanted to go with chip seal instead of asphalt for our road improvements. The motion included their not doing any chip seal work until the membership vote. Their having a presentation would give the members an opportunity to ask the board questions before voting.

The following month at the Nov 2015 board meeting, the majority board voted to hire an attorney to see if they could overturn the membership vote. If the board is acting in the best interest of the association, why would they do this? This board action is oppositional and resistant to the members' wishes to have a presentation and the right to vote yay or nay on a very important decision that affects all of us and the roads we'll travel on for years to come.

As you know, we have a 12 million dollar bond that the membership voted for several years ago to have our roads paved with asphalt. Asphalt raises our property value because it's a proven product that lasts at least a decade.... The membership voted for asphalt. The board wants to put a lesser value product on our roads that doesn't last as long as asphalt, and will require more maintenance than asphalt. At an RTSC mtg, the GM stated the turn around period of chip seal is 5 yrs.

A previous board contacted an engineer several years ago to see if chip seal would be an option for HPP and he said no. The reason was our wet climate and humpey roads. This is why chip seal wasn't discussed again and a previous board and management started a Test Road Committee to explore different road material mixtures to improve our dirt roads. This is less expensive than chip seal and would suffice until our roads were paved with asphalt.

The board won't discuss any of the details with us and has now taken away our right to vote as is evident in their overturning the membership vote. This decision will affect all of us for years to come, long after this majority board has gone.

The majority board hasn't been transparent about the chip seal project for almost a year now. They continue to conduct chip seal business in exec session which is against our bylaws. It's evident to us since it's not being discussed in the open at board meetings. Members have asked simple questions at board meetings and have gotten no response. Per our bylaws, Article VIII Sec 9 under meetings of the board, "only matters of personnel issues, matters of litigation, or matters of attorney/client privilege" is discussed at exec sessions. Why is chip seal business being conducted privately at exec session meetings?

Many members were very upset when they learned the board overturned the membership vote and questioned the board's motives. Since this is a lot OUR money involved and it's OUR roads many spoke up stating it's the members' right to vote on whether we want to switch from asphalt to chip seal for road improvements. And most agreed that the membership should've been given a presentation to inform us and include us in the decision.

[mermaid53]

Here's 5 things we KNOW. Some of the info was provided by member research w/data to back it.

1. The Fugitive Dust Committee was working w/the Finance Committee to come up with a 5-10 year chip seal plan.

2. The project with only 1 bid submitted, which is contrary to our corporate policy requiring 3, was to rent the contractor's equipment and hire his crew to operate the equipment. Now the project is going to be done in house w/the GM training our road crew to chip seal on 32nd and 33rd DE Makuu before pursuing the other roads.

3. The contractor the board was going to hire has legal issues with Orchidland over the chip seal work he had done and his company was shut down. We are either renting or have purchased this contractor's equipment to do chip seal. We've seen the contractor's equipment on HPP property.

4. Several months ago, the board quoted that the project would cost $350,000 for 7 miles, and further discussion at a board meeting was that HPP had an additional $500,000 to budget for chip seal. approx. $850,000 going into this project and it's an approximation because the board isn't talking.

5. The clearing and grubbing work started this month on 33rd DE Makuu. 32nd DE Makuu was done a few months ago. There's evidence that a stream crosses 32nd when it rains. Some chip seal was laid down on 33rd Thur or Fri this week.

Here's 11 things we DON'T KNOW: I want to be clear that I have nothing personal against the GM but the questions are legitimate professional questions regarding the business of HPP and it's chip seal project.....

1. Does the GM have a current contractor's license to do the road work since this is NOT road maintenance? This question was posed at the Oct 2015 membership mtg.

2. Did the board inquire with the State and County whether they need permits for the chip seal project? This was also brought to their attention at the Oct 2015 membership meeting. According to the County when clearing and grubbing more than an acre a permit is required.

3. Is an engineer involved in this project as should be to assess each road's topography prior, and oversee the project during and after laying emulsion down? Past HPP business practice was to hire an engineer because of existing drainage issues and humpy roads. This too was discussed at the Oct 2015 membership mtg.

4. Does the GM have experience in chip sealing?

5. Are we renting or have we purchased this contractor's equipment to do chip seal? If renting, is this legal since the contractor's business was shut down? How much is it costing per day/month if we're renting it?

6. How long will it take to train our road crew?

7. After their training period, will there be a test road done elsewhere in the park? If so, how long will it be tested to get accurate results? Some members feel it's a no brainer to test for a year minimum before proceeding with all the roads to ensure the chip seal holds well through our climate and traffic.

8. What is the time involved laying chip seal per mile?

9. What is the total cost per mile including our road crew labor?

10. Won't this put our daily road "maintenance" further behind? How will the board be handling the backlog?

11. Will there be enough money left to fund the restriping of our main drags and feeder roads, including the installation of reflectors? Many members feel this should be number one priority to make our roads safer for night time driving.

Many unanswered questions about chip seal and how it's business is being conducted. This degree of opposition and non transparency by the majority board should be a concern to all of us with the amount of our monies involved.

The board had plenty of opportunity to give the membership some answers but continued to be silent. One claimed falsely that there was a presentation given at a membership mtg.

Once they start chip sealing..no more asphalt for HPP. There won't be enough money left.

Here's food for thought...if the board is so hot to mitigate our dust issues in HPP as they claim, then why are they laying down substandard road material? Stuff that turns into dust in a short time. Is it to further their justification in laying chip seal down when people start complaining about the dust they're dropping on our roads? All road material isn't created equal and our road crew is inexperienced in grading and compacting it properly. They were hired to cut our grass. We CAN have better dirt roads no matter what the inexperienced board says while we wait for asphalt for our improved roads. There ARE other options.

[flyingsurfer]

You will still have the dust.

[mac nut]

Ok, today I went to makuu and 33rd to see the chip seal. Looks like they did one lane and then recently laid down the other lane as they had cones up to not drive on the recent lane. It actually looks just like asphalt and seems to be a pretty good job. They seem to have done a nice job with the road prep base as it is very smooth.

[mermaid53]

The chip seal will look good in the beginning...give it a year.

flyingsurfer, remember when that stuff was laid on your road that made many people on your road go up in arms and wanted the @ # & % removed? That's the same low grade stuff that's getting laid on our roads today.

Dust isn't dust...there's dust that lingers or hangs in the air and there's dust that quickly dissipates. I witnessed some members researching diff road materials and you could see some material lingered in the air a lot longer before dissipating than better quality material.

Red cinder doesn't create half the amount of dust as the stuff that's prevalent in HPP. It dissipates twice as fast. I'm not promoting red cinder, just using it as example. Before 2009/2010, there wasn't anywhere near the amount of complaints about dust until that grey stuff started getting laid all over HPP from 2009/2010 on. The intent was to save money.

The hard rock bits is what we see on the side of our roads and the rest is dust. The poor quality mixture can't bond sufficiently. Part of the equation is getting the material rolled and compacted well. Professional road people who work on dirt roads know their equipment and have expertise. That's not who we've hired to lay our dirt roads.

My geotek friend (his book is used for university geology engineering classes) advised, "pay more for your road material, it will last a lot longer and you won't get that kind of dust. What's on your roads is more for base coarse under asphalt or good for the garden. It's not road material. What you have happening is what occurs when you mix hard rock w/cinder. All that will be left is the hard rocks and dust." As long as we cut corners and keep paying for low grade substandard material we'll have bad dust problems. You get what you pay for.

The road test committee was researching different mixtures of road material. Before they got very far, the GM was terminated and the new board didn't keep that committee going that was composed of knowledgeable road people. Historically boards don't have this knowledge so this committee was formed w/the GM to advise the board. We should revive that committee to work w/the GM. I'm sure there's some experienced road people in the community.

I haven't had material laid on my road for about 3-4 yrs now. In fact lots of people are saying similar things.

[mermaid53]

I recently biked all of Kaloli Pt and discovered that all the roads, even the dead ends, are like mine...composed of dust. Since they appear the same, one could conclude that like my road, no road material has been dropped and rolled for at least 3 yrs. I know there are other roads in the park who have the same looking roads.

There's money budgeted every month for road maintenance, which includes laying material down on our dirt roads. The GM isn't dropping and rolling road material near to the level as what's been done in the past before his time. Where's the checks and balances in the GM Report? 14 miles of material dropped and rolled where? The small minority that are getting material dropped on their roads said it wasn't compacted. If it's substandard, it won't bond properly any ways. This material has already turned into dust in less than 6 mos. Substandard material = dust = a waste of our money.

Why has the majority board and mgmt. who claim their decision to chip seal is for dust mitigation, not taken care of the dirt roads in the park for at least 3 yrs? If we have only dust on our roads, then a drought is only going to compound the dust issue, as we are experiencing right now. I heard this drought may continue for sometime.

We all pay road fees and our roads are not being maintained. Are they holding back dropping and rolling material on our roads to put towards the chip seal project that only services a small percentage of us? Is this where some of that money is coming from to pay for chip seal material including the training of our road crew and the payment of the chip seal equipment?

At the membership mtg, it was announced they were hiring more road crew. Didn't say if they were replacing terminated employees or hiring additional road crew. We are already outsourcing at approx. $80,000 a year to pay someone to maintain our main road easements. The GM presented one bid and he was supposed to get more but we have already hired this guy I've been told.

If you have nothing but dust on your roads, it's time to request good road material be laid down. They aren't going to lay any road material unless you ask, as is evident with our current road conditions. It appears the monies for our road material is being pulled into the chip seal project. The majority board and mgmt are focused on chip seal. Where's the balance in how they spend our road maintenance money?

[kalakoa]

We all pay road fees and our roads are not being maintained.

More likely, the roads are being maintained, just not by your house (or the houses of anyone you know).

County and State do the same thing when "prioritizing" projects.

[leilanidude]

mermaid53 - With all of the complaining you do, why aren't you running for a position on the board?

[shockwave rider]

quote:

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Originally posted by kalakoa

We all pay road fees and our roads are not being maintained.

More likely, the roads are being maintained, just not by your house (or the houses of anyone you know).

County and State do the same thing when "prioritizing" projects.

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Nope, all the roads suck now, even ones that in the past were in good shape. If you lived here you would know that.