I made a solo trip down to the lodge of the Great Northwest to attend the meeting of the Board of Directors of the GNWCIA this evening; my wife was off gallivanting with the girls over at Johnny Carinos, and by all accounts, I got the better end of the deal. My wife can address the failures of Carinos on her own time; I'll fill you in on the details of the board meeting.This new board is all about getting on with it. No endless whining or demands to consult the lawyer. But in fairness, some of the audience members would like to get a little more interaction. We had several folks sign up to speak and instead of being able to ask questions to the board, they are simply making statements. The board takes note of anything that needs to be responded to and I assume it is addressed later. I know some of my neighbors don't like this; a resident should be able to voice a complaint and get an answer from the board.
Hmmm. I'm gonna have to say I've witnessed the free-for-all in the past, and I prefer this method.
The other thing the board is doing is sticking to the three-minute rule. And in fact, we had one resident speaking on multiple topics regarding the recreation department, the pools, the bulletin boards and, oh yes, some person threw-up in one of the pools today, prompting it to be closed for an hour. Apparently, upon close inspection, no chlorine shock of the system was conducted which meant that it may well have been a re-make of the pool scene in Caddy Shack! Eewww!
Okay, so with that the speaker's three-minutes were up and she responded with, "But I just got to the best part!" To me, that's like saying, "Hold my beer and watch this!"
What I could discern from the conversation that took place away from the public address system, was that the speaker felt that another resident owed a board member an apology for comments that had been made at the previous board meeting. This resulted in the challenged resident to respond that she did not owe anyone an apology. There was some Yes you do - No I don't back and forth, and then the speaker left the podium.
As God is my witness, my camera was sitting in the console of my van in the parking lot and my cell phone was powered off, so my primary source of pictures and the alternate were both out of action. I was convinced fisticuffs would ensue in full cat fight fashion, and I'd be standing there gawking with a pen and the back of a Styrofoam coffee cup trying to sketch artist my way onto the front page of the Express-News. But no luck. Calmer heads prevailed and the meeting moved on without further incident.
I am pleased to report that the story I did regarding the greenbelt in our area was picked up for publication in Passages. I'll be happy to sign your copy next month.
One other thing to note. There is an issue about getting the budget or the financial report submitted for review. Some of the residents who spoke would like to see the thing finally finished up and presented to members. I've said it before and mentioned it again to a few of the concerned residents that, maybe we should give the folks a chance to get things figured out. We have a fairly new community manager, we have had numerous staff changes in the accounting area and of course we have a new board. But, it has been a while.
Okay, so there you have it. My quick minutes. You do know of course that as a resident, you can always go to the office and request the official minutes of the meetings and the closed sessions. All you have to do is ask. But I bet there won't be any cat fight references. So always check here, first.
