A quick note: Sorry to be delinquent with the posts this week - I have been overwhelmed with watching TV now that many of my must see shows are on (Lost!) and I have also been doing some work which causes me to have a little less time to fritter away my life banging away notes into the computer and posting pictures of people being goofy. But, I will try to do better and provide those of you who make this Blog a daily visit on your Internet journey, a rewarding experience each day. No, I'm not running for any elected office.
So, then. My wife and I made the short trip down the street to the Lodge of the Great Northwest so we could attend at least the first hour and a half of the meeting of the Board of Directors of the Great Northwest Community Improvement Association. The audience was , dare I say, packed, with residents compared to normal meetings we attend. I don't have an exact head count, but it was easily triple or quadruple the normal crowd we see. Thank you residents; we need more people to show interest, and mark my words; you will enjoy the show, especially if you are a closet Springer Fan.
But I digress.
Following the fully participated in moment of silence and pledging to the flag, the meeting was called to order and such, then we heard from residents to complain:
Up first, Former Board Chair, Mrs. Kathleen Callahan and a few comments about the the content of letters from Board Chair Besing and Vice Chair Doherty in last months paper. Read it here. I'll save you some time and tell you that she was upset that two sitting Directors made comments in the official paper regarding intentions to run for the board. Multiple theories as to how this was a disadvantage to other potential candidates, and potentially, caused some candidates not to run knowing that they have to run against incumbents.
I don't know how I feel about the first part - is it an advantage? Who knows? Will it keep other people from running? In my estimation, if some potential board candidate made the decision to run based on whether or not an incumbent was running, I'll tell you right now, that person would not get my vote. Either do it because you intend to win and do a good job for the community, or don't run. If announcing their (Doherty and Besing) candidacy via Passages weeded out any crappy candidates, then I'm all for it.
Former (even before Mrs. Callahan) Chairman of the Board of Directors, Joe Martinez gave his concerns about a new GNW Group called The Happenings, not getting fair use of the GNW Lodge. I didn't quite get the full story, so I'd appreciate if someone from the Happenings group could fill me in, but the gist of it was that the Lodge people made the group meet at a smaller venue (Emerald Valley Lodge), which is not fair. That facility is not conducive to meetings, and I can testify. My understanding was that the reasoning was that it costs more money to open the GNW Lodge, so it needs to be for a group large enough to show that it is serving the interests of the community as a whole. I'm gonna have to side with Mr. Martinez on this one (at least the parts I understand). If a group is an officially sanctioned group of the association, let 'em have the good room. I recall my wife and I being the only attendees of a Board of Directors meeting, and our last GNW watch meeting only had about 5 or 6 folks in the audience.
Okay. You may recall the folks in Emerald Valley who had some drunk guy plow his car into their house. The residents spoke before the board to address their concerns and seek assistance from the board and security to help with the problem. This family has already made contact with the city and other agencies to try to address the problem, but you could see the look on the collective faces of the directors and most audience members; this is not an issue that the association can address in any substantive way. The resident made many informative and helpful points, explaining the problems with the street, the fact that vehicles speed and such. But, unfortunately, her suggestions of having the GNW Security basically sit on her street after hours and write down plate numbers of speeders is obviously a no go.
I was extremely proud of how Director Sigrid Long handled the matter in addressing the residents concerns. She made several suggestions on how to proceed and of course, mentioned the fact that the GNWatch group might be a place to start. (I later gave the family my e-mail address and number, and hope they will join the watch soon).
Have you had enough yet? There is more.
We had a surprise guest speaker, Judge Marcia S. Weiner who is the Justice of the Peace for Precinct Two, Place One. If you get in trouble, you will find her over in Leon Valley. It just so happens that my son is doing his Criminal Justice internship in her office, so, needless to say, I have nothing but glowing comments about Judge Weiner and her thirty or more minutes of informative material.
Seriously though, Judge Weiner has an informative pitch involving the the problems associated with truancy and the escalating troubles youth get into. She gave us ideas of the ways she deals with the little criminals to get them back on the right track. Turns out, she often gives the screw-ups community service and that if they live among us, they could perform said service here in the GNW! Sign them up! We need some fences painted.
Anyway, I believe the Passages will soon be running an article written by Judge Weiner, and if you'd like, she left some informative handouts with the office staff.
Okay. On to Committee reports.
Chairman of the Scholarship Committee, Mrs. Callahan gave a stirring report on the status of the committee and the resulting happy kids. Then the questions from Directors Garcia and Pucci started. There seem to be two concerns from the board members: Are there any conflicts of interest, and how is the money accounted for?
You should know that I have been sighted by two of the three factions of the GNW community for not giving a crap about all the details of every little thing in our community. But in the GNW, there are actually three factions.
One faction is made up of people who align themselves with former board chairman Martinez. A second faction is made up of people who align themselves with former board chair Callahan. The other 95 percent of the people in the GNW fall into my faction. We are the people who just want to pay our assessments, live in the community and not be inundated with this petty, petty, petty crap.
In this case, if some residents want to donate money to a scholarship fund and they want to take the proceeds of the vending machines at the pool to add to that fund, go for it. Keep it all legal and open, but go for it.
I have a better idea.
Do it, but do it as a private thing and don't even involve the association with it. They got a whopping $35 from the vending machines last year. My son is in college. $35 doesn't cover half the cost of his parking permit for one semester. The association (as far as I understand) doesn't provide any of the funds to the scholarship, right? So just do it on your own, and be done with it.
But, in the mean time, the deadline for this years scholarship is early April, so contact your high school and do whatever it takes to get the scholarship money.
I don't want to sound like I'm in a hurry, but it should not take 20 minutes of my life to hear about some stupid (Stupid is such a harsh and opinionated word - please don't let it taint the meaning of this report) scholarships at an HOA board meeting. What impact does that private group of well meaning neighbors (and I do applaud them) have to do with the running of the association? I'd like equal time for the Line Dancing committee and the Bunco team, please.
I was unexpectedly asked to give a few words about the GNWatch meeting coming up next Wednesday. I didn't expect to be peppered with questions from the board, but I was.
I have mentioned it before. I have a great deal of respect for Director Pucci. He asks everyone who speaks before the board questions that are intended to provide information he needs to make a decision. I'd like to think I had my shit together, but who knows? Bottom line, come out to the meeting next Wednesday, the 27th of February. I'll write more about it next week.
Our community Manager, Mr. Darrin Laraquente broke down a series of complaints he has received from residents and addressed each. I'm going to tell you right up front; Mr. Laraquente has hit the ground running and is doing a fantastic job for this association. He is still getting to know the community and trying to put people's complaints and concerns into perspective. Kudos to him and to how he is motivating the staff to get things done.
What he is facing is a series of things that are happening in neighborhoods all around San Antonio. First, people are tagging and vandalizing The Five Oh (78250 - get it?) daily. If that isn't bad enough, we have otherwise upstanding residents who are doing ridiculous things.
On a recent tour of the greenbelts in our area (also known as drainage ditches and dry creek beds), he got to see first hand how some residents simply dump garbage over their fences into the open area. Imagine this. You cut your tree limbs and you toss them right over the fence. Someone looks at them and can see exactly where the tree in your back yard has been cut, and exactly where the branch that matches the cut limb is laying on the other side of the fence. Hello? This isn't CSI people. You don't need a sperm sample to figure out who the donor is.
Okay. If you are still reading this, this is where it ends. My wife and I had another, more important meeting to attend, so we left promptly at 9PM.
On the way out, one resident stopped me to suggest that I stay for the next round of action. I'm sorry, but I'll wait for the official minutes.
Oh, I did hear from several people who stayed that there was an attempt to censure a few directors, but in keeping with my new policy of not reporting anything that I don't witness first hand, I'll have to read about it in the official minutes, and so will you.
Help me out people. We need more eyes and ears at these meetings. Why don't you come on down on the first and third Thursday of the month and sit in with us. You can pick any faction you want to sit with - there are no assigned seats.
As always, I tend to get things wrong. Don't file a lawsuit, just send me an e-mail or make a comment and tell me how bad I screwed things up. If you were at the meeting, I'll be happy to print your take on events, unedited, with or without attribution. My goal is to get the information out to my neighbors.
Wow! That was a fast one with little to no controversy to report - which is a good thing, right?
My wife and I made the short trip down the street to the Lodge of the Great Northwest to attend the meeting of the board of directors for the Great Northwest Community Improvement Association.
A very brief agenda and Chairman Lee Besing knocked it out in near record time. Kicking off the reports from the department heads, Community Manager Darin is getting acclimated to the new position and the community. He and the staff have the yearly assessments ($222.00, down from $235.00) in envelopes and you should be getting yours soon. Pay it!
Jose our Deed Restrictions officer is back on the streets and hitting it hard. Having filled in as CM for a period, he had not been able to focus as much time on notifying residents of their crimes against good taste, and thankfully, he is back at it. He mentioned that yes, he does understand French, and many upset residents give him quite an earful when he cites them. Keep up the good work Jose!
Jose also mentioned that the five members of the Architectural Committee should be given new three year terms beginning in January so their tenure's can be normalized. It seems that there had been many members leaving and new people filled the slot. By resetting everyone's tenure to the same month, it will normalize things. Director Guy Pucci agreed and made a motion to do it and the board agreed.
Speaking of the Architectural Committee, did any of those five members approve the new color scheme of the painting project on the Lodge? Apparently, the color is Mustard (on the bottom) and Yellow (on the top). Egads! As I looked at it to take the picture, I could tell how it might work in an industrial sort of way, but again, Egads!
Then again, nobody has ever accused me of having taste or style.
Stephanie, our director of all things Recreation made note of the Hot Chocolate Social scheduled for Thursday the 13th of December. Santa is supposed to be there and apparently, pictures will be taken. Check out the GNW website for more details. She also mentioned that T-Shirts have been ordered for the Polar Bear Swim scheduled for New Years Day. If I weren't so concerned for the wellbeing of the public, I might consider plopping my own fat ass into the chilly waters, just to be able to report the commotion here. We'll see.
Chief Burton was out on business so Chairman Besing made note of the security related details: A new truck and new security systems. Taggers, beware.
Fred from Maintenance gave us details on lots of good work being done to improve the parks and also to make sure the board knows they are getting their money worth from the painters.
With that, Directory Janet Doherty wanted to bring to the boards attention that certain groups renting the lodge during December had some issue with the Christmas tree and associated decorations being in the lodge during their events. Though Jose had no issue with removing the tree to accommodate these folks, I think the idea of someone being offended by these type of decorations was 
equally offensive to many others.
Chairman Besing, though finding the idea (of being offended by the tree) silly, suggested that this was not so much a board issue but a personnel issue - as in, do we pay the staff to remove and replace the Christmas tree every time someone doesn't want it for their party? (Agreed).
At least one audience member voiced his disgust for these tree haters and asked what's next, are they going to want us to remove the Texas flag? Actually, they do remove the flags when the lodge is rented out.
Here's the deal and this is just my take on it from the perspective of someone who just recently rented the lodge. First, it is not a minor expense to rent the lodge if you pay for security and clean-up (security is required if you have any beer/alcohol). So, I don't recall the exact fee we paid but it was well over $650 from roughly 7PM to Midnight. Don't get me wrong; it was very much worth it.
Here's the deal. A Christmas tree would not have fit the scheme of my daughter's daisy-filled wedding. When you rent the lodge, you get the use of tables and chairs and such, but you are not required to use all the tables and all the chairs. In other words, the staff assists with set-up and sometimes the tables get set-up classroom style, sometimes they get set-up dinner style, or sometimes, there are no tables and only chairs. For all the work that it takes to set-up the tables and chairs, moving the Christmas tree once or twice during one month out of the year is not the back-breaker, or the offensive anti-Christian thing that it might appear to be at first blush.
Oh, and by the way, it was actually a religious group who rented out the room who were opposed to the tree. Go figure.
Sorry folks, wish I had more dirt to stir up but really, it was all very calm and everyone behaved rather nicely. My own observation is that our new community manager has had a calming affect and is quick to defuse things when blood pressures raise.
The final order of business had to do with adopting of the a few changes on the budget and there was one insignificant issue (to everyone but the person who raised it) and the CM was able to immediately rectify any concerns and the vote commenced. Great work!
NOTE: I appreciate the feedback that I receive from people present in the meetings, especially when they are able to clarify something that I might have recalled or mis-recalled. That was the case in my notes reported from a month ago. Specifically, I did something that I try to avoid with my blog in general and that is to present information that I wasn't first-hand aware of. Several folks e-mailed me to tell me that I got a few things wrong and of course, I made the corrections to the blog entry. But, I wanted to be clear that it is my intention when I present these notes, that I do so in an honest and hopefully accurate way. This doesn't mean that I expect you to agree with my take on things or agree with my opinion about them. I do appreciate when folks (especially Directors) leave comments that help expand the notes or at least give their opinion. I hope that these notes can make residents (and people interested in HOAs in general) aware of the activities with our little association. But by all means, if I get it wrong, let me know!
I made the short trip down the street to attend the meeting of the Great Northwest Community Improvement Association board of directors this evening. Herewith my notes, but first, I really need to make something clear to those folks that live in the community who read my take on things.
There are in fact a few factions of homeowners who attend the meetings, belong to the board and are former board members or want to be board members. I fall into none of those categories. That is to say, I do not turn away from conversations with anyone at the meetings nor do I take cues from anyone when I write these notes. Yet, I have been told to my face by members of both groups that they know I am secretly for the other side. The funny thing about it is, if someone was keeping track, I routinely agree with and write about positions supported by a faction and a paragraph later, poo poo the ideas of the same group. But in my opinion, the bizarre part isn't that people are convinced I'm part of one faction or the other, the bizarre part is that there are different factions of people who attend these homeowner meetings.
When my wife and I attended meetings and we were the only residents in the audience, we sat there and reacted to things the same way we do when the audience is packed - we either roll our eyes and laugh when we hear something stupid, or we shake our heads in agreement when we hear something we agree with. The strange thing is, when we were alone in the audience, there was no one there to tell us which side we were supporting when we had our little reactions. And frankly, there still is no one telling us how we should agree or disagree with the things the board of directors say or do.
Having said that, read on and hopefully I'll write something that falls into your faction!
This was the first meeting with the new Community Manager officially present, and Mr. Darin Laracuente set the tone from the beginning. As the directors began to find their seats complete with the new awesome sounding audio system in place, the projection screen behind the board alternated a logo of the Great Northwest and guidelines for participation in the meetings. The bottom line was, if you fell to show respect, follow the rules or get out of hand, you'll be asked to leave. If you don't leave when asked, you'll be escorted out. Bravo Mr. Laracuente!
Residents to speak included a guy concerned about his filthy neighbor who never mows his yard, has a back yard that looks like a city dump, has junk yard dogs assembled in the city dump-like backyard barking and howling and when the dogs aren't barking and howling, they are howling and barking. He asked the board to look into efforts to do something about it.
The same gentleman went on to lambaste a writer to the Passages who called for doing away with the GNW Security staff. Good Call.
Next up, senior Silver Creek Resident, Ms. Olivia queried the board about a rumor she heard regarding the management of pools. Chairman Lee Besing nipped this in the bud, stating that yes, the board had looked at some options but found that our staff does a much better job for a lot cheaper.
Finally, Mrs. Rodkey had two points to make to the board - her first was to offer praise to Director Richard Garcia for his continued graffiti abatement efforts. As I wrote previously, Director Garcia is out and about painting over graffiti and fighting the good fight to keep the neighborhood free of the stuff. Kudos!
Mrs. Rodkey also asked the members of the board to please work together and vote their conscience, and not necessarily for or against other directors based on which faction they seem to be aligned with. I have it on good authority (Mr. Joe Martinez) that every current board member has been aligned with his Sentinel faction at one time or another, so I'm not quite sure how they line up now, but regardless, I believe Mrs. Rodkey was quite correct in her observation.
I should tell you at this point that the continuing display of the "Rules" must have been working as there were no real outbursts by audience members or board members alike.
As they moved into the agenda, Director Besing introduced Mr. Laracuente to the group and reported that there has been some minor restructuring of office personnel. Mr. Laracuente announced that the office would now be open from 8:30AM to 7PM Monday-Friday, and he hoped to soon open as early as 8AM to accommodate residents.
Chief Roger Burton did recommend yours truly to fill the vacant GNW Watch Coordinator position (which my wife will surely help me with) and the board approved my selection.
Maintenance and Recreation directors gave some updates and then the new business started.
Director Sigrid Long who is part of the GNW Scholarship Committee gave a report and provided a letter and information to the directors. In probably the only real fireworks of the evening, and I should say that it was extremely civil compared to previous meetings, Director Garcia asked a few thoughtful questions regarding the Scholarship Committe.
He asked if the board had oversight. Director Long responded yes.
Director Garcia asked if the names or the applications of the past winners were available to review. Director Long reported that there were some hard copies somewhere but added that they may have been destroyed to protect the privacy information of the applicants.
Director Guy Pucci then asked if the scholarship money was drawing any interest? Chairman Besing responded that the program was actually operating in the red.
Director Long stated that it was not actually in the red, but not drawing interest and that in fact, the account was losing $5.00 a month due to some banking penalties.
Director Garcia then asked if there was any criteria that would disqualify a board member from the committee as a conflict of interest. Director Long replied that none of her kids had applied for the scholarships.
I think several suttle points were made and the meeting moved on to the next item.
Director Long questioned why an article she submitted for publication in Passages was not included in the paper. Chairman Besing responded that they ran out of space and that the article will be in the next issue.
The meeting got to the budget discussion at which point in apparent protest (or not - I don't know for sure) several residents (or members of a single faction if you choose) got up and left. Too bad. The fact is, in just a short period of time, the new CM and (once again) temporary accountant have gone through and weeded out a boatload of items that were either mis-categorized or wrong. The budget looks a lot better than it did a few weeks ago. And, because there were hardly any procedural disruptions from the peanut gallery, the department heads were able to address questions the board and other audience members had.
Only one point I care to address and that is salaries. I overheard several audience members questioning the amount of money the staff is paid. We have a staff of between 18-24 employees supporting one of, if not the largest homeowners associations in Texas, covering over 5,000 homes and multiple community facilities, and apparently, many of you would like to hire people for minimum wage or less.
I was talking to my parents and my aunt and uncle this past weekend and they laughed when I told them people are bickering over an assessment fee of $235.00 a year. They pay that a month for their associations. Don't get me wrong; I'd like to see the board lower the yearly assessment if only to send a signal to the residents that they are trying to keep fees under control. But please don't tell me that you want to run the facilities of this association with illegal immigrant wages.
And with that, I welcome your comments. I don't always get it right and I may miss a few things, but I promise, you'll get more information from my notes and sooner than you will otherwise.
NOTE: Regarding the strike through of comments about the Sentinel group, Mr. Martinez advised me via e-mail that he did not recall the conversation I mentioned and further that at least two board directors, Mr. Sharma and Mr. Miflin have never been part of his group. I have no issue with making the correction and setting the record straight.
2nd NOTE: I received a second update indicating that Ms. Long also has no affiliation whatsoever with the Sentinel group. In other words, apparently very few members of the board have any affiliation with Sentinel. I apologize to any board members who may have been wrongly identified as being associated with the Sentinel group.
A quick note: Sorry to be delinquent with the posts this week - I have been overwhelmed with watching TV now that many of my must see shows are on (Lost!) and I have also been doing some work which causes me to have a little less time to fritter away my life banging away notes into the computer and posting pictures of people being goofy. But, I will try to do better and provide those of you who make this Blog a daily visit on your Internet journey, a rewarding experience each day. No, I'm not running for any elected office.
