September 13, 2022

Sierra Los Pinos Property Owners' Association
Board of Directors Meeting
September 13, 2022, 6:35 P.M. via Zoom

The meeting was called to order by the Acting President, Keith Rigney, with the following members present: Kristi Cross, Jeremy Oepping, David Stuedell and Josh Toennis. John Hines, non-voting member of the Board was present also.

Guests: Barbara Van Ruyckevelt, Mana Babicz, Mary Moore, Sandra and Ed Partridge and Suzanne Star. Guests joining later included Jonathan Morris, Harold Corn, Scott DeWitt and Amber Gaston.

Approval of Agenda: Jeremy Oepping moved to approve the Agenda; seconded by David Stuedell and, there being no opposition, motion carried.

Approval of Minutes: Jeremy Oepping moved to approve the minutes of the August 2022 meeting; seconded by Keith Rigney and, there being no opposition, motion carried.

Keith: I’m going to pause for a second to send Scott and Amber the link.

OFFICER REPORTS:

PRESIDENT (Vacant):

We do not have a president right now, so we’ll move on to Vice-President, Keith Rigney.

VICE PRESIDENT (Keith Rigney):

Keith R: The Cerro Pelado flooding reimbursement, I have kind of been working this task for the past three-plus months. I have not inherently got anywhere. I have been so busy during the workday. My wife’s friend has actually been trying to help out, to relieve me of some stress and get this moving. So, to keep you guys updated, she called FEMA. FEMA told us right off the bat that since there was no adjuster that came out here to look at the damage, that was already an issue. We explained to them that we had to get it fixed due to we don’t know when snow is going to fall. There were power lines showing, there were many things that could put the HOA at risk to whatever it may be, causing some harm to someone’s vehicle or even to a person’s life. So we decided to get it fixed. It is now fixed, which might cause an issue. The other thing FEMA said was since we are a private organization, that FEMA does not normally help organizations. They help individuals. So, ideally, what should have happened is every homeowner should have applied to FEMA on their own, and each one had a different person come out, assess the damage, assess the fixes, assess what it would take to get it fixed, and the list goes on. Obviously, that makes it very hard with our situation as we do own to the center of the roads, but the HOA is liable for the roads. So, we are in this weird area.

So, what ended up happening was Theresa Greeno from Cuba has been working with us. She sent me a FEMA form. I filled out that form for FEMA. That did not call for private land ownership. It actually called out directly for administrations or things like that. So I’m hoping Theresa Greeno can really make some headway on this and help us out to get some funding to reimburse us. The main thing I would like to get reimbursed is not just the $36,000, but we have further improvements that we would like to do, to really keep these fixes up.

Does anyone have any questions on the FEMA form?

Suzanne Star: I just wanted to ask you, on FEMA, you have to have an adjuster come out before you start the work, and somebody had told me that you need to have the work finished and have the amount needed, so it sounds like what you’re saying is that until we get an adjuster, we can’t do anything with the improvements. Is that correct?

Keith R: The improvements needing to be adjusted were for private land, but yes, you are correct. So we are in this spiral downhill to where technically an adjuster should have come out first while we had the four-foot trenches and adjusted then. To kick that off -- the HOA could not have kicked that off, it would have had to have been each individual landowner. But as I stated earlier, it was a huge liability to have it as is. So, we fixed it, for one because there is liability; for two, because our roads guy was here, ready to go, ready to fix it. So you’re correct on both fronts. Yes, you need an adjuster and yes, you have to complete the project before reimbursement can be started or looked at. So, we missed the first one, so that’s why I’m hoping Theresa can help us out in this.

Suzanne S: Can everybody mute their whatever, because somebody is breathing and it sounds kind of strange.

Keith R: Perfect. And since we last talked, I’m going to do a quick little roll call again. Scott DeWitt has joined us, Amber has joined us and Harold Corn has joined us, just so everyone is aware.

I’m going to move on to the NRCS referral. I sent the email out to NRCS, I included the Board in it, probably about a month ago. The NRCS representative called me during work hours. I went out to my phone, tried to call them back. Their voicemail is not set up. So I called them back twice that day and didn’t hear anything. Called them back twice the next day, didn’t hear anything, and called them back twice the next day after that and still didn’t hear anything. I diverted to an email to explain that their voicemail box is full and I can’t get through for a voicemail. So, I’m stuck on hold with NRCS funding at this time. So I’m really hoping that once we finish this meeting, get some more Board members on, we can really start tackling this reimbursement and see if anyone has any more time availability or just any more thoughts, period.

I know we kind of have a new Board and we can talk about this later if we want, but I would kind of like to look into moving some Board meetings back in person. I definitely like Zoom meetings; I think they’re great. I can sit at my own house and do whatever I need to do. Sometimes though work just needs to be done face-to-face, things work better, conversations don’t override each other. I think it’s just better. When the new Board finally gets enacted later today, I would like to look into doing quarterly Boards back in, or every other month. That’s something we will take about as a new Board and see what people think.

The third thing on my agenda, I’m going to ask for reimbursement for two receipts. This reimbursement is for the ice and drinks at the annual meeting. We, obviously, did not go through as much as I thought. I still have them sitting in my coolers, and I plan on bringing those out for the volunteers going to help us with the leak, and for chipping sometime either this weekend or next weekend. So those are still in my possession. I plan on trying to use a lot more of those once volunteers come out. The reason there are two receipts is I bought drinks, I bought some ice. I realized it wasn’t enough ice and I went back in and bought two more bags of ice. So the first receipt is for $73.87; the second receipt is for $3.98.

Ann Cooke moved to reimburse Keith the amount; seconded by Kristi Cross and, there being no objection, the motion carried.

My fourth item here is for the Water Management Team. We have not attended a meeting in two weeks, so I did not add any updates to this.

My fifth item is I didn’t really meet the deadline of trying to get a new budget planned out for our annual meeting, so I left this on here as a sight for sore eyes on my end, to realize that I missed that cut-off. But, other than that, there is no task for that one.

We will move to our secretary, Kristi Cross.

SECRETARY (Kristi Cross):
Kristi C: I only have two things. One, I’m working on the minutes for the annual meeting. Hope to have that done here in the next week or two. I have two reimbursements, as well. One is for stamps for all of the mailings for the ballots, and that one is for $180; a printer cartridge, because my printer died with all of the printing of everything, and that one is for $94.55.
Ann Cooke moved to reimburse Kristi her expenses; seconded by Keith Rigney and, there being no objection, the motion carried.

Keith R: Jeremy, your last report.

TREASURER (Jeremy Oepping):

Jeremy O: The first thing to you, and to Kristi, make sure you get me those reimbursements so I can get them submitted. I’ll get them submitted right away.

Keith R: Jeremy, would you be able to utilize these two reimbursements as kind of a trial run with whoever the new treasurer is?

Jeremy O: Absolutely. And I’ll speak to that a little bit. I mean, it doesn’t have to be a hard cut-off. Even though I have a set of notes and those sorts of things, I would expect that there will be a bit of a transition over the next month or so as the new person gets up to speed. So I am fully prepared to support in that manner.

Keith R: Thank you so much, Jeremy.

Jeremy O: The balance in accounts as of August 31, 2022:

◦ Operating Account: $153,922.46
◦ Reserve Account: $105,200.10

As of August 31st, we have 6 delinquent accounts totaling $13,325.84, which is a decrease of $962.87 from last month. And, as has been stated in past reports, each of those six delinquent accounts does have a lien now fully filled against those properties per the SLPPOA lien policy.

• The August amount of $666.67 was transferred to Reserves during the month.

• There were two changes in property ownership in the month of August. We welcome:

Russel P. Givens, 413 Trilobite
Mark Whitcomb, 123 Mimbres Way

I guess the only other item I have, I will talk about under legal when we get there, because it probably falls more under that. Any questions for me on the treasurer’s report, please?

Mary Moore: I have a question, Jeremy; it’s Mary. The delinquents, are any of those delinquents people who have paid absolutely nothing this year?

Jeremy O: Yes. There’s probably at least two or three who have paid absolutely nothing this year.

Mary M: Okay, thank you.

Suzanne S: May I make a comment, please? I wanted to try to get – before Kristi was finished and before Keith was finished for the secretary, I wanted to ask a question. At the annual meeting, did I miss this? We normally have the minutes that have to be approved by the membership, and I don’t recall that that was done. So next year, you’re going to have to approve the minutes from the last year and this year, this past meeting. Does that make sense?

Keith R: Yeah, Suzanne, that makes sense. I did not know that we had to approve minutes for the previous annual meeting. I figured that was status quo and it was done on the previous board with minutes for that month. I did not know that we had to do that. I will definitely take note and we can get that done next year.

Ann C: Keith, we could also just do a membership – submit them, because they’re in written form, to the membership and do it via email, and get it out of our hair.

Keith R: That is fine with me, too. As you all know, I am not savvy in this type of stuff, regardless, and I will heavily lean on people that have this kind of knowledge. And if that is an option, I will gladly move forward with that. Thanks for bringing that up, Suzanne. I really did not know, so that is my fault.

HOT TOPICS:

Keith R: It sounds like Jeremy is done, so we’ll move to some Hot Topics really quick, which is literally just the few batches of volunteers that we need, so this topic will be mainly me asking John Hines when is a good time to get volunteers lined up to help you with that leak? Is there any day that works best for you, any time, and I can start running that down for you?

John Hines: I’m going to say this next weekend, we could try for that. And if that doesn’t work, the following weekend, because obviously if they are volunteers, they can’t do it during the week. So, we can do it either weekend, whatever seems to work out best for everybody.

Keith R: I will ping everyone who has pinged me back. We’ll try for the 17th or 18th – preferably on the 17th, on a Saturday. I’ll try and get some equipment lined up and just some good hands.

STANDING COMMITTEE REPORTS:

Water (John Hines):

John H: For September, the big deals we had was we started on the project going down from the well down to Forest Road 10. In that process, we did find two leaks; we repaired those. The contractor, right now, his ex-wife and the mother of his children just passed away yesterday, so he’s requested that he have a couple days off before he comes back to work, which I granted him.

I read the meters on the 1st. We did receive materials for that project. The main thing is I have walked and drove the water lines after the flooding for visual inspections and located the line coming up from the well up towards the booster pump, to make sure that our line wasn’t damaged or exposed, and we’re probably going to have to get somebody over there with a tractor and a blade or something to put some cover back on, because I think there’s a couple of places where the flooding ditch crossed our water line and it’s only, probably, a foot or two deep now. Before winter, we want to get some more cover on that, so we don’t have a freeze-up.

Then I did quite a few line locations and recalled line locations. I have them done for over on Aspen Grove, so that’s ready to go when we are ready to dig there.

As far as water usage went:

System 1:
• Pumped 597,561 gallons
• Used: 259,775 gallons
• Average Daily Household Usage; 95.23 gallons per day
• Leak Rate of 56%; lost 337,000 gallons
• Leak Flags – 9, with 8 being repeats from month before
• We had 8 people using over 7,000, with 7 of those having leak flags.

System 2:
• Pumped 151,840 gallons
• Used: 127,992 gallons
• Average Daily Household Usage: 65.53 gallons per day
• Leakage rate of 1.5%; lost 23,000 gallons
• Leak Flags – 3, and two were repeats
• Users over 7,000 gallons – One, with no leak flag

As far as water compliance goes: System 1, we had total coliform was absent; e-coli was absent and our disinfection rate was .04 mpl
System 2, total coliform was absent; total e-coli was absent; disinfection rate of .07.

That is my report, other than I got some good news tonight, right before the meeting started. Paul Lisko called me and he received a $20,000 grant in the name of SLP to get the water tanks moved up here. So, he’s working on that right now and getting some bids from some crane contractors to get the tanks moved up to the fire station. Unless anyone has any questions, that’s my report.

David Stuedell: John, on the tanks, I remember before Paul saying that it was going to cost some $60,000 to move the tanks up here. If he got a thing for $20,000, that would leave $40,000 we would have to pay. Do you know anything about that?

John H: Not really. I do know that I think they were going to get the transport done for free by the National Guard. So all we’re going to have to pay for is for the cranes to unload the tanks. I think that’s what it is. So it doesn’t sound like we’re going to be any money out.

Keith R: Thank you, John Hines, finally some good news. We’ll move on to roads, David.

Roads (David Stuedell):

David S: Am I repeating what I said in the annual meeting, or do we just want to talk about new stuff?

Keith R: New stuff is fine, David.

David S: The only new stuff I really have is that I’m requesting a bid and a time frame for some loads of gravel to put on Aspen and Calypso before the snow falls. So I’ll get back to the Board with those. And if you’ve been up there – I went up there before this last rain – but after the one rain, and it looks like it flowed pretty good. It cut the trench. It looks like the design held, but you know, where it crosses the road, rather than put in a culvert, I think we should maybe just consider putting in concrete there, but it’s eating up the road pretty bad. I haven’t been up there since the last rain, so I’m not even sure if it’s passable anymore. So any discussion in that area?

Kristi C: Hey, Dave, it’s Kristi. When you go to get your bids, check with JPR out of Albuquerque. We just had 13 tons of gravel delivered this morning for our driveway and it was about $600 for 13 tons and they deliver. It’s actually a fairly decent price. We’ve gotten quite a few from them and they deliver it early in the morning, and it’s usually on a Tuesday.

David S: Thank you. Keith, have you or anybody been over there since it rained last; have you been over to Aspen?

John H: Dave, I was over there and it’s about one lane wide is all now. It cut it pretty bad this last storm we had, but it’s still passable.

David S: What are everybody’s thoughts on putting like a concrete “U” there, rather than a culvert? Does anyone have any thoughts, opinions?

Ed Partridge: Yeah, we had a pretty good flood a few days ago. The last one was just a stream, but Calypso is in good shape still until the very end, but it’s still passable, so the ditch worked pretty well here.

Keith R: I drove up there, my car passes it just fine. Your concrete idea is what the engineer recommended to us, a low-rise water crossing there, so I do think we will have to look into that.

David S: We have an echo going on, but okay, I will look into that. That’s all I have.

Legal (Vacant):

Keith R: We don’t have anyone here, but Jeremy said he had a topic. Would you like to talk about that now, Jeremy?

Jeremy O: Thank you, Keith. A follow up with something I have sort of been passively working. I have not put a lot of energy into this necessarily, but trying to follow up with our attorney, Scott Turner, on the Jemez Mountain Development lots. You may recall a number of months ago, the potential buyer for those lots wanted to put up fences, wanted us to do road work and those sorts of things. That deal fell through and, in the meantime, our attorney was trying to get Jemez Mountain Development to sign a roads agreement so that it could basically just pass on to whoever they sold to in the future. I did get a note from Scott earlier this week. Sort of the highlights are: Jemez Mountain will not agree to enter into any road maintenance agreement with SLP, and so when Jemez Mountain sells the property or properties, we will have to go through that process with the new buyer or buyers. There is no acknowledgement by Jemez Mountain that SLPPOA has no obligation to maintain High Road, and there is another couple of things. Again, I will forward this on to whoever takes the legal work. Keith, I will make sure that you also have a copy of it, but it’s not closing the loop, but giving an update on the stuff that is still sort of outstanding with those owners in Unit 6. Any comments or questions, please?

Keith R: Thanks for keeping tabs on that, Jeremy. The only question that I may have is would it be advantageous for us to inherently put a lien on those properties, like we past discussed, because what I fear is just like last time, the potential buyer was telling us, I’m going to buy it and we’ll figure it out afterwards, and that would not have been good for us. So, I don’t know if the lien is the correct way to look into this, or what’s better. I just want to make sure that we – I hate saying this, but I want to make sure that we hold some leverage; if something does come up, we have something there.

Jeremy O: Again, there is a comment in there and I will send you the exact email with the comments from the other attorney. Because Jemez Mountain has no obligation to us, because of the grandfathering of 30 years and so forth, no lien could be placed to pressure the buyer to enter into that road maintenance agreement, so it does sort of take us back to square one. I’ll get you this information. Again, maybe it’s something that our new legal person can put a fresh set of eyes on and go from there. So, again, not the best news, but it doesn’t have an impact to us right now, because I don’t think there’s another buyer in the works. Thank you.

Firewise (Ann Cooke):

Ann C: I have nothing additional to report.

Architectural (Josh Toennis):

Josh T: Just one update. We had one request that was approved for installing gutters on their house. That’s all I have.

Parks (Cindy Hines):

Keith R: Cindy is not here. I’m sure there’s not many updates there. Correct me if I’m wrong, John?

John H: She was in Colorado for the last four days attending a funeral, and she’s working late tonight, so I’ve only talked to her for an hour since last week. So, I don’t think there was anything.

David S: John, Cindy is leaving the Board; right?

John H: Yes.

David S: What was her plan with all the signage that she purchased?

John H: Couldn’t tell you. They’re all down in the watershed storage, but I don’t know what her plans are for getting the rest of them up.

Keith R: If no one has any issues with the standing committee reports, or the officers’ reports, we will move forward to our last topic of the night.

OLD BUSINESS: None

NEW BUSINESS:

Keith R: I wanted to just discuss a little bit about the annual meeting. I wanted to make sure that it went well, as intended. I am all for constructive criticism on my end. I’d like to be better at this, better at what we do, better at what I do. I’m just going to open it up to the floor and see what people think of how the meeting went.

John H: I thought it went really well. Nobody got shot; nobody got mad, so I thought it was a successful meeting.

Kristi C: From a minutes point of view, the Zoom meeting was really hard to hear, because we recorded on your phone, but with the backup mics, they were really good, so that helped a lot.

Keith R: Thank you for bringing those and using them.

Kristi C: I knew it would happen. I’ve done enough board meetings, school board meetings and police board meetings, so stuff happens.

Amber Gaston: The one thing I did kind of notice was sometimes on Zoom it was hard for us to hear the people talking. We could hear you clearly and, maybe when they ask a question, just in answering or responding to it, recap their question so that everybody could hear it through you. I can hear them all tonight, but we had a real hard time hearing it at the annual meeting.

Keith R: That is my fault. I had the phone, and then people just started talking and by then I figured it was too late, but to solve that, you are right, I could just recap the question or recap the statement. Thank you for that. I will definitely keep that in mind and do that going forward. I’m sorry it was hard for you guys to hear.

Amber G: It’s all good; thanks.

Keith R: Now, the new nominations. My very first thing about this is, as I’ve admitted clearly multiple times, is I’m not totally keen or fond or right up to speed of how politically this stuff should go. So I really have a process check here. So if anyone has experience here, can kind of run me down or run us down of how selecting these positions goes. I remember when I got in, it was very different people, very different compared to now. We have some returning board members. Do they get opportunity to choose positions and roles first? I’m trying to figure this out the best possible, if anyone has any input of the correct way. I read the bylaws and it doesn’t have anything in there. It’s so vague and ambiguous it doesn’t help me. So, if anyone can help, that would be great and we’ll get this rolling and start picking positions.

Ann C: So, Keith, as a first suggestion, and I don’t know that there’s any one way that has to be followed. Generally, the nine voting board members kind of take on a task or a role for the year. They don’t have to continue it for the next year. They can swap it out, though that doesn’t tend to happen. But one of the things that I observed is that John Hines, though very, very valuable to this board, has no voting options at all. In a sense, twenty years ago you would have a board member who would, if you will, share water. I would suggest that you also have a board member now that shares water, that has a vote as to how things should proceed with regard to water and partner with John to see that things get done.

Suzanne S: Keith, I’m going to volunteer to help John with water, because that’s my primary interest in this Association. So, if that is permissible –

Ann C: I would also like to chair water, because I also feel that it’s very important.

Suzanne S: I’d like to make one comment. I think that I’ve been more involved with John and this water system in the past than possibly Ann has. I don’t mean to be rude, but I have been more involved, and I’m on the Water Management Team, as well. So I’m still going to throw my hat in the ring for this one, because I think I have a lot of experience and I can offer a lot.

Harold Corn: I’ll chime in here. I would like to get the rest of the Board’s input if a water chair is what we would like to proceed forward with.

Keith R: If that is what we’d like to proceed forward with, we only need nine members or roles according to the bylaws, so I assume parks, or something smaller like that, can get morphed into someone else’s job and we’ll have nine people on the board hopefully, and we can move forward.

For someone representing John Hines, I would like for – I don’t want to put you on the spot, John, this is completely up to you, but if it’s somebody representing John, I want his input on it more than anyone else, because he’s the one that’s going to have to work with that person day-in/day-out for Excel spreadsheets, nominations, votes, whatever it may be, and so that person really needs to be an advocate for John. I don’t know if that needs to be settled tonight as a position or if we can delegate the nominal nine positions. We can think on the water position and then assign that next month. I don’t know if that’s an option, but I don’t want to put John on the spot when this would be his vote and his position on the board.
Well, a lot of silence here, and that’s not helping in the slightest. John, does that seem like a reasonable option – is that something you would be down for, would you like a water chair representing you, giving you a vote, or is what’s going on now working? I don’t want to step on your toes. I want to make sure what this does is whole heartedly helping you and not handcuffing you.

John H: I’m in full agreement of having a board member chairing the water. It would be nice so I don’t have to be involved in the politics and can just do my job. Keith, if you just want a suggestion from me, I think if you can take the rest of the board members – typically, the current board members like to stay in the position they’ve held and then, from then on, ask for anybody who has got a burning desire for a different position on the board. After that is done, whatever is left, maybe you can combine two of them together to come up with one. If I recall, the last time we had board-member elections, everybody kind of just assumed the role that they had already been doing if they were incumbents. If they weren’t, then they volunteered to do something that they had a desire to do. So that’s what my suggestion would be, is fill all the other positions and then next board meeting, let’s all think about it for a month or something, and next board meeting we can decide how that’s going to go.

Barbara Van Ruyckevelt: Can I add something, Keith? You could also vote on the positions and, second, whoever is the water chair will need to come to the water meetings.

Keith R: I do think that fits perfectly, Barbara. I think it’s a lot to take in as Board phasing out and Board phasing in. I do agree with every statement made tonight for that position and eligibility. I just don’t want to put anyone on the spot right now. That’s just my opinion. If the new board, old board, anyone thinks otherwise and they would like to make that position final tonight, that is up to them, not me, and we can move forward. But, if not, I would like to sit on it for a month, get people in their roles, get the new positions assigned, and then we can kind of divvy from there and someone can easily move positions and we can re-establish positions next month if that is okay with everyone. Or if you’re all for it right now, I’m just here to serve. Just tell me what you guys want.

Ann C: That’s good with me.

Mary Moore: I have another suggestion. I know in the past, Ann will remember this and so will Suzanne, there actually were two board members that took care of water. One was under compliance, dealing with the issues of water purity and quality and the other person was overseeing the maintenance issues. So you might actually – I mean, there might be enough for two people to take a look at.
Keith R: That’s an awesome suggestion. Once again, I’m going to divert that to John and see if that fits, but according to the bylaws, it says there needs to be nine positions. There’s a possible nine positions on the board. It does not say what those positions need to be. If you look at our annual dues, roads and water are a majority of that. So, we could get rid of Firewise, get rid of parks, and those both become water, I mean, that’s an option the new upcoming board can decide on.

Ann C: So let’s think about it for a few weeks.

David S: I think that’s a good idea.

Keith R: I think it’s a good idea, too. Let’s all give each other some homework and, from now until next months, let’s just weigh our options. If two board members for water is what we need, then that’s fine. We do have water issues at this time and I don’t think there would be any better time than now to do the two, if that is what we want. If not, we can go to the one and have someone else doing something else. But to keep this rolling and not prolong this meeting, since John Hines stated that we have the ability for returning board members to kind of pick their roles, I do believe Kristi Cross is the first board member to pick a new position or stay at where she is at.

Kristi C: I am giving up my secretary spot, and I would like to do legal.

Keith R: Thank you, Kristi. I must say you’re going to be missed as secretary because those have been some awesome minutes. I know you’ll help the new secretary coming in, so I’m not worried, but I will say you will be missed there.

Kristi C: Thanks, I appreciate that. I definitely will help the incoming secretary with all of the documents and how I do the minutes, as well. I will type this board meeting as my last minutes.

Keith R: Thank you, Kristi, and I can’t thank you enough for staying on still. Thank you for your help.

The next returning board member is Ann Cooke, and I know you expressed interest in a water role. We’re going to take a month and not do that just yet. So, if you want, you can pick any position. I can label those out for you, or you can stay where you’re at until we deliberate more for next month?

Ann C: Well, as I said, I really believe this board needs at least a partner with John to take the issues, at least the political ones, before the board, and I reiterate my wish to be the water chair. Otherwise, I will continue with Firewise, and I don’t even mind doing both. However, if someone would like to do the Firewise, please speak up.

Keith R: Thank you so much, Ann. We’ll get these ironed out next month.

Those are the only two board members we have returning. Jeremy is leaving, Cindy Hines is leaving. I would like to take a moment and say thank you to Jeremy. I know he’s been on this board for a long time. I wish I would have been able to spend more time with him, but we’ll move on from there.

Now we go to votes. Kristi, I think I have them all in my head in the correct order, but if I mess it up, please let me know.

The first person to now pick their new position would be Scott DeWitt.

Scott DeWitt: I had an interest in VP.

Keith R: Now my question goes back to the Board. I have talked to Scott off-line. I am currently acting president, got voted in as VP. I don’t necessarily want to throw Scott into the deep end as president. I will take whatever he doesn’t want to take. Do I have to get nominated for me to move to president, or do we have to push him into president; what is the correct –

David S: I nominate Keith for president. You’ve been doing a great job.

Ann Cooke: I’ll second that nomination.

Keith R: Thank you guys. Is there anyone opposed?

Jonathan Morris: I vote yes; congratulations, Keith. Keep doing a good job.

Keith R: I guess that’s official then. I will move up to president and Scott DeWitt will move in as VP. I’m excited to have some help at this level, so thank you, Scott for volunteering and thank you for being here.

Next most votes was actually Mana. Is that correct, Kristi?

Kristi C: That is correct.

Keith R: Mana, what position would you like?

Mana: I had a question. Besides secretary and treasurer, you said that parks is available?

Keith R: Right now, I’m looking at my list, it’s secretary, treasurer and parks are currently available.

Mana: I would like to take the position of secretary.

Keith R: Wonderful; thank you, Mana.

And then the next person to pick is going to be Amber?

Kristi C: That is correct.

Amber Gaston: I’ll actually take treasurer if somebody will show me how to do it.

Keith R: I would not worry about treasurer. Jeremy is going to be wonderful. I think you’re going to be set and if there’s anything, I will gladly help you there, as well.

Jeremy O: If I may, Amber, if you could send an email to treasurer1@slppoa.org, I will start to get you some information. Thank you.

Amber: Excellent, thank you.

Keith R: And then we have one last person and we all know her as Suzanne. We do only have one spot left. I know you were talking about the water committee and now that we have a board laid out of actual positions, we will hold this off to next month and you could possibly move into water or parks, but we’ll be in touch for sure. Is that okay with you?

Suzanne S: Not parks. I’m not taking parks. I’m not even interested in parks, so there’s no reason to go ahead and sign me up for parks. I’m sorry about that, but the way I’m feeling about it is, if there’s anybody who would like to take parks might be a family, somebody who uses the parks. In fact, maybe what we ought to do with parks is, instead of assigning it to somebody on the board, as you were suggesting before, is maybe get a group of volunteers that actually use the park with their children and they can help cut the grass and maintain the swing sets or whatever, instead of taking a board member. I think there’s other positions. There’s actually a couple other ideas that I would have to fulfill instead of parks.

One of those would be long-range planning and communication. We have not a very good standing right now, I don’t think, with our communications, and certainly we have nothing in long-range plan. We used to do that years ago, but it fell by the wayside, a little bit like this water chair thing and water maintenance seems to have fallen away for a while, but that’s another possibility. But please don’t sign me up for parks. I don’t have a lawn mower, and I’m really not interested in parks.

Scott D: I have a question. Is legal – I think I heard at our last board meeting legal was mentioned. Is that a position on the board?

Keith R: Kristi moved from secretary to legal tonight.

Scott D: Oh, okay, I missed that.

Keith R: So according to the current foundation of what we’ve had since I’ve been here was parks was a position. Once again, I’m going to leave this up to the new board, as in I don’t know what positions have nominally been in the Association in the past. Reading the bylaws, it says that the board can consist of nine positions. It doesn’t say who, what, when, where or why. There are some positions lower, so let me freshen up on the bylaws. We can move forward from there. I know we have water in discussion at this time.

I currently have Suzanne labeled as a board member. I do not have her under a specific position. If people would like to table this, do some research, do some thought, and we’ll meet again in a month and we can kind of really get this ironed out as to how we want the board to look moving forward.

Scott D: I’m fine with tabling it for more research.

Kristi C: I agree.

David S: You know, we can have a discussion. We don’t have to table it, like table-table, because by next month, it will be – we talk about it, then it’s another month. I mean, we can have a discussion right now. I mean, obviously, having someone on the board in the water area is key. We used to have that, but then when John Hines came on, he kind of took over. So I think we want that position on the board. Whether we have two of them is up to the board. And as far as who does it, I mean, it sounds like you could give it to both of them. It’s a useful position. The only thing I have to say is that if I was in John’s position, I’d want somebody who could go out there and help me in the field from time to time and I’m not sure if Ann or Suzanne are really up for that, but anyway, that’s my two cents and that’s all I have to say.

Keith R: I agree, but I think the reason why I wanted to “table” this is because everything is kind of pulling at John Hines. I don’t want him on the spot to make a decision. I want him to be able to sit down, relax, however he decides to do that and think about what he wants. What I don’t want is two people on the board and them to vote against each other when it comes to water. The other thing that I don’t want is two people on a nine-person board is powerful in the sense of voting. It may only be two out of nine, but there is power there. I don’t know what I’m trying to say, but I don’t want numbers stacking up, I want this all to be even keel, even playing field.

Ann C: So, Keith, what I envision isn’t so much that two people have, because if you will, John is occupying both – Mary commented that there was, and I don’t recall the titles of the two positions for water, maintenance and whatever. John is basically providing service for both of those at this time and has no vote on the board. So, at this point, he makes recommendations and there is no one basically presenting it to the board for him, arguments for what needs to be done or should be done. So this particular position, I assume, will just have one vote in regard to water. John would occupy the non-voting other position.

Keith R: And, once again, it’s a very hard situation, because I think one is great; I think two is great, and maybe we sit down and we kind of let John Hines kind of tone down a little bit and we let him choose. This is his advocate, I’d like for him to choose, but I don’t want him to do it on the spot. The other thing is maybe we do take Suzanne’s question to heart and we look into a communications. As of right now, she is right, as in the community barely knows what we do. We barely get people to join any of our meetings. We barely in person got anyone to join our meetings. And maybe if we create someone like Suzanne that is willing to do newsletters, willing to do announcements, willing to do whatever it may be that we can think of for that role, we can take that position and run. That gives John his one vote, and that really fills a hole in our organization that we haven’t been able to fill just yet.

Ann C: Well, as I said, I think it’s good to leave a little breathing room to think it over.

Keith R: I do think all of this is a good idea.

John H: I had no idea this meeting was going to turn out like this. That’s why I would like to table it for a month, and I would like to have a discussion with you, Keith, to let you know what exactly the water compliance entails, what the water maintenance entails and that way it would give you a better idea of possibly having those two positions, one person fulfilling compliance, one person fulfilling the maintenance, maybe combining parks and Firewise, or something like that, into one position. That way, those things would be covered. But I want to think on it awhile. I’ve got other things on my mind right now with two water leaks going on and a contractor working and meter readings coming up in another couple of weeks. So I really would prefer to take a little bit of time and sleep on it and think about how I would like to be represented by these two board members, or one board member. That’s my input.

Keith R: Well, I completely agree with you, John. I like all the ideas; I think this is great. I think it’s great we get to form this board into what we think we need for the future. I think that’s cool. I like thinking outside the box, so I’m all for all of it.
With that being said, I have no more things on the agenda, beyond I would like to include Scott in those discussions as well, as VP. We can get two takes on this if we can, whether it’s email, dinner at my house, I don’t really care, we’ll figure it out. I just want to understand how much workload that would be for those two positions, because I know my workload. But for now, we’ll table it, we’ll get it settled next month, and I don’t want it to go past next month. Like David Stuedell said, I would like for these positions to get going.

Kristi C: Keith, we’ve lost you.

David S: So, basically, I would say send your thoughts to Keith on those positions, so we have a plan to discuss at the next meeting. Right?

Mary Moore: I have one last suggestion. Along with communication is the website, which is no small task. So that might fold into the communication concept, but I think it needs some attention.

David S: I agree.

Kristi C: I know they are working on transferring the website over to an easier format, so that it’s easier to update and easier to change, so I know that’s in the works at the moment.

Keith R: Sorry, everyone, my phone just randomly shut off and I got disconnected, but I did hear everything. I do know the web browser is becoming more streamline, as Kristi just said. I also know that Cindy, the last time we talked, she kind of volunteered to update the webmaster and the email addresses and things like that. So, when I talk to John, I’ll talk to Cindy and see if she still wants to do that voluntarily, not as a member of the board. We’ll see what everyone’s availability is.

Suzanne S: I’m going to follow up, Dave, with what you just said a minute ago. As long as we’re going to think about the water thing for a month, I’ll tell you what I’ll do, is I’ll go ahead and send to everybody another – basically a proposal on this communication-type chair that I was thinking about and give you a little bit of information on that, as well, so that before the next meeting we might be able to discuss it if anybody is interested. But communications, long-range planning, which really falls into what we’re going to be doing on the WMT anyway, and that is looking into various options for funding, that’s a long-range-planning-type situation as well, so it might all meld together. I’ll be happy to go ahead and at least submit a draft proposal, so that you can kind of be looking at maybe another chair, maybe just another chair altogether.

David S: Yeah, I think it would be good to put together your thoughts before the next meeting, so that we don’t have to, basically, push it off to another meeting.

Keith R: All right, everyone. We’ll get this tabled. If you have any thoughts or questions or want to bounce ideas, please include me and Scott and we can kind of be a punching bag or a rubber ball, whatever you guys want, just let us know if you have any ideas and we’ll try to create something for that next month.

David S: I do have one more thing. Jonathan, I see you’re on the meeting. Jonathan will submit an invoice at the beginning of the plowing season for half of his amount. Jonathan, do you know when that date is?

Jonathan M: It seems like last year it was October 15th, or thereabouts. As far as the start of the year, frankly I’ll plow as soon as is necessary, so I guess I’ll probably get that invoice to you by the end of the month. Is that okay if I just make it payable by October 15th or something, and I get it to you here in the next week?

David S: That’s what I wanted, just to bring it up to the board. That sounds good to me unless someone has a complaint about it.

Jonathan M: Okay. Well, we can work on that. I’m pretty flexible, but I will go ahead and get that out. I guess it’s probably about that time already. Life is moving pretty fast.

David S: Well, you did a great job last year, so I think you’ll have plenty of plowing this year.

Jonathan M: Yeah, if the rains are any indication, probably will.

John H: How soon are the new board members going to be on the email list, so when I send out emails to all of them, they will receive them, or I can contact them? Does Kristi or – I can’t remember who was taking over secretary. Can we get them all transferred to that email list as soon as possible?

Keith R: Yeah, we can do that. I believe I can send an email out to Mike. I know last time Cindy was able to do that, as well. So I’ll just send out an email to both of them, and whoever can get to it first, I’m all for it.

Suzanne S: Just one quick thing that we have to take into account. Within the next 90 days, all the people on the board, and especially the new people, we’re going to need to have some type of documentation that the bylaws have been read. This is according to the HOA law. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that, and I don’t know where these documents reside, or how many people have actually signed them. Are you familiar with what I’m talking about?

Keith R: Cindy Hines did that last year for everyone, so I plan on talking to her about that, as well, when I was trying to change email addresses.

Is there anything else that we need to cover tonight.

The next regular board meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, October 11, 2022 via Zoom.

Keith Rigney moved to adjourn the meeting at 7:52 p.m.; Scott DeWitt seconded, motion carried and the meeting was adjourned.