Door Creek Homeowners Association Feb 9, 2017 Board Meeting Minutes The Door Creek Homeowners Association held a Board meeting on Feb 9, 2017, at the home of Nick and Heather Banuelos. Attending were: Nick Banuelos, President Matt Oren, Treasurer David Cortez, Board member at large, ACC member, and liaison between the Board and the ACC Mark Riordan, Secretary Heather Banuelos, Board member at large The meeting started at 6:32pm. Annual meeting Nick is having difficulty finding a date for the annual meeting. The meeting is usually held on Saturday morning, but some Board members work certain weekends, and the room at Door Creek Church is not available on April 8, 15, or 22. We agreed that Nick should try for another room at the church, and also consider Tuesday evenings, possibly at 6:30pm. Two Board members will be leaving their posts at the time of the annual meeting: Nick s term as President is up, and he won t be running for reelection. However, he is willing to serve in some other capacity on the Board. Mark is selling his house and will be leaving the neighborhood. However, he is willing to continue to perform some of the duties of the Secretary. Of course, he will not be able to serve on the Board, since he won t be a homeowner. Thus, at the vote at the annual meeting, there will be 2 Board positions open, as well as the usual 5 Architectural Control Committee positions. The Board is required to send notice of the annual meeting to all homeowners. We usually send the notice by postal mail 3 to 3.5 weeks before the meeting, and plan on continuing that practice. However, this year, we will also send the announcement by email. Matt has compiled a spreadsheet of all homes in the Association, including the owner s mailing addresses and in some cases, their email addresses. We ll use this spreadsheet for the email
addresses. We ll also use this spreadsheet for the postal mailings, because it is more accurate for homeowner s addresses than the generic spreadsheet that has been used for years. (Some homeowners rent their homes out; in these cases, the homeowners rather than the renters are the members.) Mark will write a draft letter announcing the annual meeting, even though we don t have a date or location yet. Homes not previously recognized as part of the Association Matt had previously discovered that 14 properties on Herndon Dr belong to the Association, but had not been recognized as such. Since the covenants require us to assess dues from every home in the Association, he mailed the affected addresses, explaining the situation. The proposal was to assess dues going forward, not dues prior to 2017. He got two replies, both from people who were upset and did not believe they were members of the HOA, since their deeds did not explicitly call mention it. But Matt searched through the deeds and every single deed said "subject to restrictions and covenants of record". And our covenants of record do mention these addresses. The unhappy affected households said this is going to have to go to court. While we don t want to spend Association funds on legal fees, the Board agreed that to be fair, we have to either assess the newly-discovered households, or change the covenants. Changing the covenants is difficult because it requires a majority of the members to vote to change, and getting that type of turnout for a vote on almost any issue requires a lot of effort. It was suggested that if the covenants are to be changed, the affected households be required to do the legwork. Matt will speak to the representatives of the 14 households again. We needn t resolve this immediately; we can assess them this year, but we have many months before the dues would be overdue. Budget The previous treasurer had failed to pay the PO box fee, so this year we had the unexpected cost of paying back fees and a replacement key fee. Matt was effective in getting households to pay back dues, so our revenue was higher than expected. And for 2016, we had only 8 properties fail to pay in full; this is a 96% pay rate. Next year, the income will be less because there will be less back dues being paid. We are supposed to register every year as a Wisconsin non-profit; it s $30. We started this year.
Landscaping and sign We shouldn t be paying for mowing of the property on the corner of Cottage Grove Rd. We need only spring cleanup, and landscaping during the 5 months of summer. Matt will draw up a document describing exactly what we want from a landscaper, and Nick will send Matt a list of potential bidders. We considered the idea of soliciting volunteers for cleaning up the sign areas. However, we rejected it, reasoning that turnout would be low. We ll stick to using a landscaping company. No sign and fence painting is needed this year. The sign painting last year was a success. Nick replaced 3 Wyalusing sign bulbs that had shattered because too high a wattage had been used. The sign now looks better, even though there are some empty sockets. The Cottage Grove Rd sign doesn t look as good. We proposed, as a short-term solution, to at least replace bulbs on that sign. The condo association is currently powering our Wyalusing sign, and paying the electricity bill. They will come up with a payment plan when they figure out how much it's costing them. It should be only about $5/month. Due to the high cost, getting our own box would be silly unless the condo association is difficult about it. Cottage Grove Rd costs are $26 flat fee and $5 consumption. For the budget, we ll use an estimate of $750/year for electricity. The fence at the Wyalusing sign is failing. And it's unnecessarily high. But it should be OK for a few more years. The Cottage Grove Rd sign may have to be rewired. Redoing the sign will be expensive, about $14,000 to redo the sign completely. To address issues like these, Matt proposed a deferred maintenance fund, in addition to the existing reserve fund. Legal fees No liens were filed last year. But 9 are to be done this year, and 2 lien removals. That's $55. Regarding legal fees, Matt is learning that foreclosures do not always require an attorney. Foreclosures are common and we are always going to be a defendant. But the document sent to us during a foreclosure is more a courtesy copy. We agreed that the proposed dues will again be $25/year.
Architectural Control Committee There was nothing to report in terms of recent owner-requested reviews. However, we did discuss the 741 Amnicon property that always has a messy yard. The ACC had sent them two letters, requesting them to clean up their act. They acknowledged the first letter, but refused to even sign for the second one. It seems clear that they aren't going to do anything. They are violating both HOA and city rules. The Board agreed that a complaint should be filed with the city. Some of us have dealt with the city before, and found them to be responsive. However, we will wait until the spring, when the lack of snow will make the reason for the complaint more obvious. The meeting ended at 7:50pm.