December 2022 Meeting Minutes

Warner Creek Board Meeting Minutes

Dec. 7, 2022

Call to order

Attendance: Chris, Eric, Bob, John, Megan, Stacey S. (Compass), Anh

Approval of previous meeting minutes

• President

• Discussion with legal

• Sending out sign policy

• Vote to revoke 72 hour limit on specific signs is approved

Committees Updates

• Treasurer -- Colleen

• Discussion of account balances with specific residents

• ABR – John

• No updates

• Welcome -- Megan

• Waiting on information from Liz

• Activities -- Megan

• Activities have been successful

• Parks (Bob)

New Business

• Survey results (discussion was very quick and notes were hard to take)

• Megan: People want friendly neighborhood

• Anh: Agreed with Megan on friendliness

• John: Question 1 vast majority 10+ years, could have added additional useful options. Question 3 - no consensus, so status quo should remain.

• Chris: No need to email out individual results, or questions about demographics. Compass questions won’t be useful to subdivision either. We should focus on conveying responses regarding capital improvements, activities, fence question, sidewalk enforcement (or lack thereof beyond Pittsfield)

• Eric: Many households without kids is surprising.

• Bob: People tend to want to be left alone, with less enforcement. Need for a management company needs to be communicated better. Wants to send out results as transparently as possible.

• Bob: Motions to summarize survey, and send full results to subdivision, including full responses.

• Discussion phase: John and Chris want to redact comments as the comments could reveal personal information

• Chris prefers to misalign free form comments so that they’re more anonymous, and was under the impression that they would be anonymous

• Megan wanted to send out comments as well, as openly as possible

• Bob: New motion to send out summary only, and the free form comments will be summarized in an easy to read format

• Next steps: Stacey will send Chris the updated email list, Chris will draft a response with Megan’s analysis (to be finalized by Megan), Chris will send draft to board, then send the survey out to updated Google Group for entire subdivision

• Concealment of trash cans – John

• New images to discuss, showing pervasive non-compliance

• Discussion on whether to send policy reminders to all residents, or specific residents who are violating the previously approved policy.

• Motion to amend trash policy (Less stringent time requirements)

• Motion approved

November 2022 Meeting Minutes

Meeting Minutes

Nov 2, 2022

AGENDA

Call to order

Attendance: Chris, Bob, John, Megan, Colleen, Anh

Missing: Eric

(Liz and Stacey resigned)

• Bob motions to approve meeting minutes in September, John seconds

• No discussion

• Passes unanimously.

• President

• Discussion with legal RE: fences - Compass wants to meet with legal to discuss the legal limits, ramifications, process, etc, for updating bylaws surrounding fences

• Nobody is opposed to this meeting

• Bob will tentatively schedule for middle of December

• Finalize sign policy via email

Committees Updates

• Treasurer -- Colleen

• No significant updates

• Future agenda item to address - $25 discount for annual meeting

• As previously discussed, legal basis is that the rebate needs to go away

• Compass is largest expenditure

• ABR – John

• No updates

• Welcome -- Megan

• No updates

• Activities -- Megan

• Fall festival went really well, food guesstimate was very accurate

• Activities committee will look at the results of the survey to see where to spend efforts

• Parks (Bob)

• Resident asked for swing for disabled kids - Bob is working with Compass on this

New Business

Review of compass management’s performance.

• Bob: This isn’t an immediate vote to end our relationship with Compass, but is the initial discussion. If we find we don’t want to go in this direction, we would have to develop a plan to pull out of this agreement.

• Anh:

• Positives:

• ABR process is much easier than before.

• Negatives:

• Compass isn’t very responsive

• Status letter debacle (Compass overcharging for status letter)

• Chris:

• Hasn’t been on board without Compass, so looking at this through limited lens

• Positives:

• From resident survey, supermajority of residents who interact with Compass had their issues resolved

• Negatives:

• The cost analysis of Compass isn’t accurate to Chris

• For example, not having to pay legal fees was previously cited as a reason to go with Compass, but if we were in legal trouble, we’d still have to pay legal fees

• Bottom line: from surveys, far fewer residents voiced support for Compass than against Compass.

• We’re going against the will of Warner Creek

• Colleen:

• Cost of Compass is questionable, but a management company is still a benefit moving forward.

• Compass takes their time getting reimbursements out

• John:

• Positives:

• Financial reporting

• ABR approval process, record keeping

• Collected delinquent dues

• We receive good advice

• Compass was recommended by Warner Creek’s own attorney

• Areas that need to be improved:

• Site visits need to be reported to Warner Creek Board

• Need to know what bylaws are being violated

• Return phone calls and emails

• Need to know what residents are being fined

• What board needs to do:

• Give list of things to Compass to improve

• Devote more time to bridge the gap between self management and third party management

• Give Compass one more year with list of things to improve on

• Megan:

• Negatives:

• The fact that most people didn’t interact with Compass means we don’t necessarily need them in the first place

• Megan things that 32% of residents not feeling their issue was resolved is a negative

• Reimbursements do take forever, problematic for Board members who have to front the cost of events/etc with their own finances

• Leans towards no

• Bob:

• Positive:

• Compass is effective at mailing out communication

• Assists in evenly enforcing bylaws

• Reduced delinquencies to zero dollars

• Calling contractors is a huge time investment, Compass doing this reduces a lot of work for the board

• Bob tried to get the playground fixed for years, Compass finally helped get it done

• Ensured we’re following a legally sound process for voting at annual meetings

• Negative:

• Reimbursement timing is unacceptable

• Neighbors not hearing from Compass is unacceptable

• Stacey Sherille is the only person we talk to - if she’s out, we have no point of contact

• Summarizes everyone’s thoughts, proposes that we proceed for another year

• During this year, we evaluate Compass quarterly

• 9 months from now, we definitively decide on a plan moving forward

• The contract isn’t a yearly contract, the only requirement is a 3 month notice

• Colleen: Willing to continue, if we evaluate after Q1 2023, and not 9 months from now

• Chris agrees

• Megan volunteers to take on the work of researching management company alternatives

• Next Annual meeting is going to be in April

• We’ll have a go vs. no go prior to April

• Need to draft a list of deficiencies to send to Compass, send to Compass, then evaluate in February

• Bob asks each board member to write to him several areas where Compass falls short, so we can send to Compass

• Colleen, John and Bob will have meeting with Stacey with expectations

• December board meeting will still happen, will evaluate survey results

• John wants to send out guidelines on construction for trash concealment

Wait...It's November already?!

Surveys

We have received well over 100 surveys! Thanks very much to all who took the time to respond. Again, we apologize for those of you receiving empty envelopes. We have taken steps to make sure that doesn't happen again

Currently, we are in the process of reading/analyzing your input. Since we extended the deadline to Nov. 4th, we will be discussing this in the December board meeting. We plan to send out an analysis of all the surveys and will make the raw surveys available so that you can read them.

Special swing in the park

We are working with Compass to get a special swing installed soon to make our park accessible for all.

Management Company

It has been a year since we formally transitioned to Compass as our management company. In that time, we have had a park update, repaired the sign, and had two annual meetings (one of which did not meet quorum). In our November meeting, I heard from our board members about their viewpoint regarding the management company. We decided to continue for now, but will re-evaluate in February 2023. As part of the evaluation, we want to ensure that Compass responds promptly to your question/problem. Please let us know if they do not respond within a reasonable time.

Policies

We are making one last tweak to the sign and trash policy. These policies will not be materially changed from what was mailed to you. Other than that, we are not working on any policies at this time.

Cocoa + Cookie Party

We will have cookies, hot chocolate, Santa, and a Santa Parade in the park 12/4! Bring your kids down for a picture with Santa and to participate in the parade. This is one of the few times we might hope for snow!

Website

Make sure you check the website periodically, as it is updated regularly. That includes FAQs, all of our policies, meeting minutes, bylaws, and activities.

(Note from Chris: The date this post was published was in November, but shows as December 7th as this post had to be re-created due to a formatting issue)