Board Meeting Minutes (August 14th, 2007)

August 14th, 2007

The meeting was called to order at 7:30pm at 1607 Woodstream Ln.

Present

• Robert Butler - President
• Yesika Fletcher - Vice-President
• Stephanie Butler - HOA Management

Items discussed

• Review meeting minutes and action items from the last meeting.
  • Rob - Write help document for homeowners wanting to pay with PayPal.
  • Rob - Update violation form for materials in driveway. Done.
  • Rob - Update violation category to allow for sending landscape crew. Done; also updated the wording on all violation severity notices to provide more information.
  • Rob - Make up more new homeowner binders. Supplies purchased, material printed, just need to finish assembly.
  • HOA Management - Mail new homeowner binder to Fred Jones, he never received one at close last year. Done, dropped off at residence.
• Rob noticed a $10 service fee on the checking account, called Sandy Pereira about it. She reversed the service fee, and said that our account still had the flag on it to waive all services fee from earlier this year that Joshua put on, so she didn't know why it showed up.
• Collection notices from the attorney went out on the 6^th.
• At the June 12^th City Council meeting, Stage 3 "light" watering restrictions were approved. Andrea Smith forwarded Rob an advance copy of the notice that will be mailed out by the City.
• Several homeowners contacted the officers and attorney claiming never to have received any previous notice of delinquent dues or the possibility of having a lien filed. Rob replied to Allison While I could believe not having received one notice, or in an extremely unlikely situation two missed invoices, missing four notices and sending the original payment amount three and a half-months late is not credible.
• Andrea Smith sent the final version of the water restriction revision notice out to all of the HOAs in Allen. Rob replied back to her, Hi, Andrea, thanks for the update. FYI, the address book entry you have for NMI ("Beacon Hill, Glendover Park, Reid Farm, Stacy Ridge, Maxwell Creek. Woodland Park" <nmi2003@sbcglobal.net>) still has our association listed. We fired NMI last fall, so any communication for Maxwell Creek should not be sent to them. Andrea replied back, I need to call all of the HOAs and try to pin down new contact info. They change frequently. I pulled up the old list and sent it in case the newsletter got to someone that needed it. My next step will be calling everyone on the Planning Dept.'s list and trying to get contact info. You will probably see that flyer several times before I'm done. The Chamber of Commerce is also supposed to send it out to all members. I emailed it to them last Wednesday.
• Two homeowners called about the light at the rear entrance sign being out. Stephanie called Frisco Electric to look check / repair. The bulb was burned out, apparently they put a too low-wattage bulb in it previously. Stephanie is going to try and get them to write off the cost since it was their mistake.
• Rob went through the old meeting minutes from the last year to find any action items that still needed to be done.
• VRI has been up and down for the past two weeks; Rob called to find out what the problem was, and the support personnel said the server hardware had failed and was expected to be back up and operating again on Friday.
• Our latest TXU bill still shows us being charged sales tax. Rob called again to find out what the status was of the exemption form Stephanie mailed in last month. Rob received a call back later in the day and was told that the form had been faxed and needed to be mailed. Rob replied that the form had been mailed back to TXU in the self-addressed envelope that they provided; he was told TXU will continue looking into it.
• Rob called Charles Martindale with Landcare and left a voice message trying to find out about the status of the work he had requested about a month ago; so far, he can't tell that much of it has been done (straightening of trees on Malone and Shelley, removal of wires, hoses and other older restraints on the trees, trimming / pruning of the trees, seeding / sodding of bare areas), and the mowers are still missing random strips throughout the property.
• Rob has done a large number of updates and a handful of relocations on the web site over the last few months, and fixed several misspellings. He's also updated the spam filtering to block additional messages, and the average number of spam messages reaching the mailing lists or aliases is down to a handful a week total.
• Rob still hadn't received a call back from Charles Martindale, so he called his cell phone again. Charles answered, and said that he was aware of the issues but that he has been busy cleaning up storm damage for the last month and a half. He would not give Rob an estimated time when he could get to the list of items, but hoped it would be some time in July. Rob responded that that "estimate" was not satisfactory, as the list of items had been provided to Chris Collins back in April, and Rob had specifically met with Charles in mid-May to go over all of the items. Charles stated that the items I'm asking about are not part of the contract, and Rob replied that he understands they're not part of the contract, but that he had specifically expressed these items (and a number of other theoretical items) to Chris Collins before signing the contract, and Chris said they would be handled ad hoc; Rob reiterated that he's not expecting them to be covered under the contract, and understands there may be additional charges for some of the items. Charles said that he needed to be the person doing all of the items; Rob responded that it doesn't require Charles (an arborist) to remove the left over restraints on the trees, to discuss the issue of missed areas when mowing, and so on. Charles said he would speak with the crew that does the mowing, and that he would try to come out next week.
• Rob called TXU back about the tax exemption form again; they have not returned his call from last week. Once again, they are going to contact the exemption department, and are supposed to call him back again. Rob asked what the escalation process is for this, since this is his third call in the last week.
• In a conversation with Randy Barta about a few homeowners that have contacted the HOA regarding their bills, Randy recommended that the officers and management company not speak with the homeowners, and only refer them to the attorney.
• Rob received a call back from TXU, yet again they cannot locate the tax exemption form, and this time they recommended faxing it back, which completely contradicts their earlier statement about not sending the form via fax. They will mail out a third copy of the form to be completed.
• Rob cashed out the last remaining CD from Comerica and deposited it at Chase.
• We received a quote from Superior Wood Care for restaining the Bethany border fence, still waiting on quote for repair work.
• Now that all of the Comerica accounts have been closed and CDs have been cashed out, Rob deleted the remaining information from the website. Backups are still in the version control system.
• Rob noticed that the city-owned lift station lot (1720 Elm Spring Ct) hadn't been mowed in a while, which has happened a few times over the last year. He emailed Steve Massey to see about increasing the frequency of mowings.
• Rob drafted a letter to the affected homeowners for the fence repairs along Bethany and Maxwell Creek Dr. Stephanie will mail out.
• Rob sent an email to Charles Martindale with Landcare, and CC:ed Luther Bruce (account manager) and Debbie Lee (branch manager):

  Mr. Martindale, there are still several outstanding issues that have not been taken care of. Specifically:

  • There are two trees (one near Malone / Oak Brook, the other along Shelley) that are leaning from the winds that went through three months ago. Please stake and straighten as we discussed.
  • There are two trees on Malone that are growing curved. Please stake and straighten as we discussed.
  • The mowing job continues to be below par; there are a number of very visible strips along Malone that are missed completely, and others where the mower is turned around and the inside circle is missed.
  • There are several stretches along Bethany where the ground has eroded / settled, and also where grass has died from too little sun. We discussed options, and you were going to send me a quote.

  I first emailed these items to you at the beginning of May, and we also met and discussed them in person mid-May. I called you mid-June (no response to my voice message), and we spoke again late-June about why the work had not been completed yet.

  I think I have been more than patient. Overall, my entire experience thus far with Landcare has been dissatisfying. I don't want to have to go through the effort of finding another landscape company, but I can assure you it wouldn't be a long search.

• 
  Maxwell Creek HOA_Maintennace_40.pdf
  Rob hasn't received a response from anyone at Landcare in the last two weeks. He's currently reviewing a bid from David Sivils with Lindsey's Landscape. Their bid is significantly higher than what we're currently paying, but it also includes a few services and schedules that we can remove. Rob will try to renegotiate the bid with David to get it more in line with what we're currently paying / needing.
• Rob wrote a response to Solid Yi about his architecture change request, and asked Stephanie to mail it.
• Rob sent a message to Allison Dantzler with Riddle and Williams:

  Hi, Allison, I wanted to give you a brief heads-up on a request for assistance that may be coming your way. Stephanie said that you primarily handle foreclosures and collections, so I suspect this will end up being passed off to one of the attorneys in the firm.

  There is a homeowner in the neighborhood that has decided to paint his residence mauve (light purple). Despite numerous attempts to resolve this, it is likely we will need to take him to court to have the house repainted to either the original color or one that more closely matches the requirements of the Association.

  Can you recommend who we should speak with about this?

  Allison recommended Dean Riddle, and he and Rob spoke about the process for filing suit as well as some of the homeowner's requests for reviewing the Association's records.
• Discussed whether to try and collect the funds still owed by Clarence Robbins or to write it off. He moved out a year and a half ago, and declared bankruptcy. The HOA was not listed as a creditor, but it's unlikely he would be able to pay even if we tracked him down. Decided to write it off, between the unlikely ability to collect anything and the attorney fees equal to the amount owed, it's just not worth it.
• Rob met with Phil Brown from Brown's Fence & Repair, Inc. on 8/8 to go over a revised bid for additional repair work. The new bid is about $900 higher, but includes straightening of three sections of fence that are leaning over (14 posts), as well as replacement of additional boards. Rob gave him the go ahead to schedule the work for 8/10.
• Rob spoke with Allison at R&W about a few items that came up; we're missing a few charges on the invoices for liens that they filed, and discussed pending foreclosures on 10 properties for non-payment. Rob asked Allison to please send all invoices via email/pdf so we can get them posted sooner.
• There was a brief outage on the web site on the morning of 8/9, the uplink provider for our ISP was down.
• A CD came up for renewal on 8/10, Rob rolled it over into a new one, which unfortunately is only at 5.00% instead of the 5.3% we were getting previously.
• Rob updated the info page with the new CD information, insurance policy information, and a few other updates.
• 
  Lindsey Revised Bid.pdf
  We received the updated bid from Lindsey's Lawn & Landscape, discussed.

Action Items

• Rob - Finish 3rd Quarter newsletter. Done.
• Rob - Write help document for homeowners wanting to pay with PayPal.
• Rob - Go through all of the YOTM and send certificates and awards that haven't been mailed yet.
• Rob - Contact City and try to get ordinance changed on contractor construction notification.
• Yesika - Get quotes for new signs specifically for the block party and Halloween party.
• Yesika - Take the HOA signs to the storage unit.
• Yesika - Contact Mandy Diercks about the HOA's trash can that she's still storing, and move it to the storage unit.
• HOA Management - Get quotes for repairing fence on Bethany and Maxwell Creek Dr. Done, work completed.
• HOA Management - Mail letter about fence repair to homeowners on Bethany and Maxwell Creek Dr. Done.
• HOA Management - Get quotes for repairing fence on Shelley.