Valleyfield Homeowners Association, Inc.

Third Quarter Community Town Hall Meeting

Hunt Community Center - July 20, 2005 7:00-9:00PM

 

Attendance information:

Board members: President, Arnie Sheldon

     Vice-President, Dori Barnard

     Vice-President, Laura Bradley

     Treasurer, Tony Perry

     Secretary, Joe Krager

Community members: According to the sign in sheet, 45 other homes were represented by one or more members of the community for a total of 50 homeowners represented.

 

Order of Meeting:

 

-       Tony Perry started off the meeting by introducing the Board and making additional comments about the food available.

 

-       Spoke about the Mr. & Mrs. Keddie’s daughter passing away and taking donations for them.

 

-       Laura Bradley spoke on her role as the moderator and how we are going to run this meeting and deal with questions not related to the current topic.

 

-       Update/information on the balance of community accounts

o       Tony Perry announced that we currently have $36,000 in two community accounts. Currently $20,000 is in a 26 month CD.

o       Currently, there is $7,285 owned to the community in back dues. 54% of the outstanding dues are from 4 homeowners.

 

-       Update/information on the website

o       Arnie Sheldon announced that the Board has paid $766 thus far on the website.

o       Arnie Sheldon discussed the bulletin board and why the Board pulled it from the website.

o       We put it to the community to vote on what to do with the bulletin board in the future:

§         Keep the BB offline – 1 vote

§         Put the BB back online like before – 0 votes

§         Make the BB for sales/services only – 20 votes

§         Make the BB password protected – 27 votes

o       Arnie Sheldon mentioned the community e-mail distribution list to save money on postage.

-       Update/information on the improvements made to the community since April

o       Dori Barnard spoke about the improvements to the community since April

§         $363.80 for the mulch at the playground.

§         Picnic table for the pool area.

§         Picnic table and barbeque grill for the playground coming. ($187.00 est.)

§         $246.10 for mulching of trees on Grigsby and around the common areas around the pool/playground.

§         The wetlands project was announced and volunteers were sought to run the committee.

 

-       Where to spend our money going forward

o       Arnie Sheldon took over to talk about where to spend the community’s money

§         Signs for the community entrances on Morton Farm and Mizelle Meadow - approved

§         Adding a password protect feature to the bulletin board on  the website - approved

§         Furniture for the pool/playground – not approved

§         Ice cream social - approved

§         Pig barbeque (member serving in Iraq) - approved

§         Restoring our wetlands and green way – approved

o       The community put a motion to have the Board bring future proposals to the community after enough research is done on all the costs and balances of the accounts.

 

-       Update/information on the pool contract

o       Pool is currently broken and the contractor is working on fixing this.

o       Tony Perry announced that we fired US Aquatics and hired Sacerio Empire, Inc, Pool & Landscape Service. See any improvements?

o       The Board will report the information on the cost of the new contractor following the meeting. The Board forgot to bring this information with us to the meeting.

 

-       Ask for volunteers for the pool/ground maintenance committees

o       Arnie Sheldon announced that we are looking for additional volunteers for the pool/ground maintenance/ wetlands/newsletter committees.

 

-       Update/information on the street signs project

o       Arnie Sheldon announced that we are looking for help redoing the signs (paint/straighten/cement).

o       Waiting for cooler weather.

-       Interest/Liens/Foreclosures

o       Tony Perry announced that we are going to start adding interest to all homeowners who are late on dues payments. 12% interest will start being charged as of August 15th.

o       Laura Bradley started talking about the process the Board uses to assess liens and foreclosures. At $165, the Board will lien a property. At $750, the Board will foreclosure on a property.

 

-       The community alcohol policy

o       Arnie Sheldon announced that there was a request for a new policy to prevent alcohol at the pool:

§         For this policy – 17 votes

§         Opposed to this policy – 25 votes

o       This new policy did not pass, and it continues to be allowed to drink in the pool area. However, alcoholic beverages can only be contained in plastic cups or cans. No glasses or bottles allowed. Additionally, homeowners should not use the pool under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

 

-       Declaration amendment

o       Laura Bradley gave a background on why this amendment was necessary. The amendment to assess fines to homeowners who are not in compliance with the community declaration. The policy was announced that the Board maintains for how this amendment would be used. The Board has agreed to limit the fines to $10/day.

o       Question/answer phase was initiated.

o       A motion was made to delay the vote until a further definition of the amendment is made. This was seconded and approved, but a vote still needed to be taken since this was a special meeting that was called just for the vote of this amendment.

o       Ballots were cast by community and a count will be taken after the meeting. The final vote was:

§         For – 15 ballots + 42 proxies = 57 total

§         Against – 24 ballots

o       Amendment was not passed since a two-thirds vote was needed to pass this amendment. There are currently 161 occupied homes in Valleyfield, 121 for votes were needed to approve this amendment.

 

-       Questions/comments from the community

o       Amendments to the bylaws

§         Setting a cap on how much the Board can spend on their own without the community’s vote. The community decided they wanted the Board to have a $1000 limit on purchases without the approval of the community. This only includes the costs associated with non-emergency costs.

o       Reducing the cost of the quarterly dues was discussed. The Board will spend the next three months gathering data on whether this is possible.

 

-       Meeting adjourned at 9:06PM.

 

 

Post Meeting Information:

 

-       U.S. Aquatics, the contractor who was tending our pool last year, and the contract was rolled over this year, was fired July 5, 2005. Their monthly charged, averaged out over the course of the year, was $609.50/per month, or $7314/for 2005.

 

-       Sacerio Empire, Inc. Pool & Landscaping Service was who the Board hired to start on July 6, 2005. Their monthly charged, averaged out over the course of the year, is $878.92/per month, or $10,547.00/for 2005.

 

-       The difference in cost is $269.42/more per month, or $3233/for 2005. It has to be taken into consideration that we had to hire Sacerio in the middle of the busy season, and the high quality of work we are getting compared to with U.S. Aquatics. The point was made during the meeting that we will get what we pay for.