SUNSHINE ACRES PROPERTY OWNERS ASSOCIATION

June 10, 2005

CALL TO ORDER:  The meeting was called to order by Dave Taney at 7:04 p.m.  All Board of Directors were present with the exception of Everett Stauffer.  There were 11 attendees present.  Dave - You will notice on the agenda a couple of opportunities for those in attendance to speak or ask questions; so if you would hold your comments to those sections and to the topic we are discussing.  Dave then called on Kathleen DeStefano for the minutes from our last meeting.

MINUTES OF 5/13/05:  Kathleen handed out the minutes to everyone.  She asked if there were any corrections or additions to please let her know.  Lew made a motion that the minutes be accepted as written; Irma seconded that motion.  The motion was passed unanimously.

TREASURER’S REPORT:  Irma read the treasurer’s report from April 30, 2005.  The balance of the SAPOA account was then $11,740.43.  The balance of the Beach Road Account is $6,581.49.  We have $16,350 in prepayments over the next 3 years.  Kathleen made a motion that the treasurer’s report be accepted as written; Sarah seconded the motion.  The motion was passed unanimously.

Open Comments:  Sam Mrakovich – The prepayments of $16,350, how many years does that cover?  Irma – It covers all 3 years with the most being taken up with the first year.  We have only added $600 to the account since our last regular meeting.   It might be good to know how much is for this fall and then how much forward.  Irma – I can give you that if I pull the other report out.  Sam – Well, maybe next time.  Irma – Nothing is coming in any more.  Somebody has thrown a wrench in there; nothing is being deposited now.  Les Stuhr – the financial report does not show how much has been spent on the Beach Road so far.)  Dave – Not really.  I think we included that more generally in the annual report in January and July.  So it will be a part of the July Meeting, that annual report.

OLD BUSINESS

Document Request:  Dave – The next thing on the agenda is the document request.  I see Larry Werner is not here this evening so far.  Sam – He has authorized me to take the papers for him.  Dave – I have no problem with that.  For the record, since Larry is not here, back on May 16, 2005, Larry Werner sent a request to the SAPOA Board Members asking access to all documents from the year 2000 thru the year 2005 to date.  We responded and gave him access those records on June 8, 2005.  Larry accompanied by Diana Davidson went through all records.  Irma, Kathleen and I gave them all the time they needed or wanted.  There were no restrictions put on the amount of time spent or the documents that they could examine.  Every document that we had in our possession for the past 5 years was presented.  They had an opportunity to go through them.  They flagged the pages they wanted copied, and we subsequently copied all those pages.  There were 74 pages and Mr. Werner owes the Board $8.01.  Send the check to the Treasurer.  Those papers are the total extent of the pages he and Diana Davidson flagged.  The pages on top are the financial aspects.  With that I will turn the meeting over to you Sam.  You can bring us up to date on Mussel Beach Road.

Mussel Beach Status:  Sam – The worst news is that I can’t get a response out of Olympic Excavation.  I have left 10 messages by telephone; I’ve left emails a couple 2 or 3 times.  I have received no response so far.  I am at a loss as to what more I can do in that respect.  It may take something a little stronger from the Board to get a response.  Lew – Did we finally get a punch list?  Sam – Yes, the punch list has been transmitted but no response in regards to that.  Bill Andrew – Can I just ask a question – what was the first time and the last time that you tried to get a response out of them?  Sam – Last time was last week, there was an email sent, but I started calling right after the punch list.  I made a couple of calls to the office and left messages; I called Kevin’s cell phone and left a message, same thing, nothing.  Bill – So would you say that has been over 2 week time period?   Sam – Yes, a couple of weeks.  The problem is they don’t care to respond to those inquiries, so Dave – Well, it is safe to assume that at this point that the discussion of the $4100 for the topcoat on the road is a moot point until you get the other aspect handled.  Sam – That is what I wanted to talk to him about.  Dave – Obviously the ball is in his court; and the next issue would be, depending on what is considered to be the finished date of the project, is the hold-back.  He has one last payment coming of $8796, which obviously we are not going to pay until the punch list is taken care of.  Sam – I would agree with that.  Dave – Also something is presented in the way of a Surety Bond or bond of some sort for that.  Lacking that, I will assume that the holdback will be held for 12 months and then paid, if in that time the punch list is taken care of.  Sam – The punch list is his only real requirement right now.  Dave – Anything else Sam?  Sam – I was told there was a lot of grass and some weeds coming up.  A couple of days ago I went down to Wal-Mart and picked up some Round-Up concentrate and I think it will get used up eventually.  I would like to know what authority I have in regarding the spending of discretionary amount which was approved on the ballot; and, what kind of approval I have to get from the Board for making purchases such as this.   This purchase was $46.  Dave – It sounds to me like that would fall well within the discretionary fund Sam.  Sam – I would assume it goes into that.  I don’t perceive any big expenses.  Dave – The amount that was approved was $3000.  Now whether that is $3000 times 1 or 1 times $3000, I guess it comes up the same.  Sam – Well, can I go out and make a $2000 purchase or do I have to come to the Board to and request Dave – I would suggest you follow the normal guidelines of the SAPOA budget and that is $100.  Sam - $100, okay that is what I am looking for.  Dave – That is the normal guidelines as far as the rest of the operation goes.  Sam – I would like to submit the bill for the concentrate.  Dave – While we are talking about bills, we still have a bill to pay for Dave Hanna.  Irma has a couple of bills to pay here, one for is for Hanna.  When we did the punch list and had that meeting where we finalized the punch list, I asked that we change or make some sort of notation on Dave Hanna’s report where there are 14 references were it refers to the Association and it should refer to the Beach Road Committee.  So, if you would follow up on that Sam.  Sam – I’ll follow up on that.  You have not heard from Hanna?  Dave – No, just the bill to be paid.  Sam – I would like to request again that Jim Conquest, who is here today, be appointed to the Beach Road Committee.  It was brought up at the last Board Meeting.  Dave – It was tabled at the last Board Meeting until Jim could attend.  Would you stand up a minute Jim?  We have a tape recorder set up here and sometimes when you sit down it can’t pick up the sound from the back of the room.  Would you please give us a little idea of your back ground, as I may be familiar with you, but the other Board members probably are not.  Jim – I am retired, but I worked for about 42 years in highway construction and inspection.  Thirty-two years with the Washington State DOT and the rest with the Federal.  I have done a lot of inspections and dealt with a lot of contractors; plan reviews; documentation, specs and design reviews.  Dave – To answer Sam’s question, since the normal process is for the President of the Association to recommend committee members and the Board approve them, I would normally not have any reservations whatsoever adding you to the committee Jim, but with the recall petition, which is the next thing on the agenda, I think I would defer that to whoever the new president is following July 1st.  Sam – But you are the president.  Dave – I am at the moment.  I do not want to saddle the new one with someone they would prefer to have otherwise.  Dave – Yes, would you state your name please?  Kathy Williamson - I am on the outskirts of all of this.  I have been getting all the mail and everything.  So now I understand that there is a vacancy, and that the road is supposedly just about done.  I just want the road to get finished and I am concerned that if anyone new comes on is it going to help us move forward or is it going to be them saying this isn’t right, etc.  Dave – Let me answer that the best way I can.  I don’t think there is anyone in this room that wouldn’t like to see this whole thing resolved.  Probably there are a few of us, or a couple of us, which would in hindsight, maybe not have been so eager to go forward.  But, we are so far downstream that there is no turning around.  We probably, with a very few exceptions, want this thing done and done right and done as quickly as possible for the least amount of money.  And having worked with Jim over the phone and talked to him, I think Jim would be the type of person that would try and move that forward.  Kathy – The punch list are things that need to be done.  Dave – Right, it is just like if you bought a house and you went through the house and said this light switch doesn’t work or this door doesn’t close properly.  Kathy – So that has already been done and has gone back to somebody Dave – It’s gone back to the contractor, waiting for his Kathy – If he comes on and goes down there now and working with the Beach Committee and says there’s more things that he thinks, is that going to Dave – I will answer that question the best I can using the same analogy I started with as the house; you went through your new house and gave your contractor a list of 15 or 20 items, he is probably going to take care of those 15 or 20 items.  But, 6 months later or 3 months later if you come to your contractor and say I found 14 more items, he may or may not be as willing to correct those and as you get down stream he will get less and less willing.  That is why we have a 1 year surety warranty bond, that if there is some major defect or problem that shows up in the first year we have some sort of warranty to fall back on.  The actual punch list as far as we were talking with payment and stuff, is relegated, to 9 items, if I remember right.  Jim?  Jim – When Sam asked if I was interested in filling the vacancy, I would only do that in order to help get the thing done and get it out of the way.  I’ve walked the Beach Road and looked at it.  It looks pretty decent.  There are a couple of things that I had looked at independently that showed up on the punch list.  Dave – If Jim will verify what I am saying; I have asked Jim in the past to be on that committee.  At the time I asked Jim it was not feasible or conducive for him to do that, so that acknowledges my willingness to have him on that committee.  I am just reluctant to make changes until we finalize the Board of Directors.  I don’t know if that answers your question, but it is the best that I can do.  (There was a lot of discussion regarding the road, punch list, Jim and if or when job would get done.)  Dave – Bill Andrew?  Bill – Yes, it is my understanding that the final road cap surface on the road bed has not been done and would it be normal now or would it be done before the road would be paved?  Dave – To answer your question Bill, no there has not been and I would think that if it was going to be done it would be done by the paving contractor prior to paving.  Bill – So it’s not in the contract now?  Dave – No, it’s not.  Sam – Neil walked the road with a Town and Country representative and looked at a tree that needs to come down.  The price just to fell that tree is about $265 dollars.  Irma – We could find someone that wants to use the wood, and there’s no house to fall on there.  It could be done cheaper.  Dave – Probably not in this case Irma.  The tree that Sam is talking about is what is commonly called a widow maker because it is hanging in another tree.  It is a fairly good size tree and if you don’t drop it right it will land on the culvert that is already there, and it could do more damage then what you could save by having someone else do it.  You definitely want some one with experience to do it.

Recall Petition:  Dave – The next item on the agenda is the recall petition.  Kathleen – So far we have received 133 ballots back as of today.  Hopefully we will get more, as I would like to get at least 200 of them.  Dave – The requirement is that we sent out 376 ballots, and 29% percent of them have to be returned for it to be a valid issue; which 110 have to come back.  So, you have a legitimate issue and it is just a matter of counting the ballots July 1st.

NEW BUSINESS 

2005-2006 Budget:  Dave – In the packet you were given there is the proposed budget.  On the second page you can see kind of what we have done versus what we budgeted for last year.  If you look down at the bottom row you can see very quickly that the budget is dollar for dollar bottom line the same as last year.  We had a budget for 2004-2005, a total budget of $12,280.  That is what we are proposing for 2005-2006.  There is really no change in the overall bottom line.  There are a couple of little minor changes within the figures themselves.  Member communications we raised slightly, by $500; for two reasons: it seems like we are sending out more and more all the time.  But, we are going to try and do (Les I am glad you here); Les made a suggestion at one of our last meetings that we look into putting the newsletter, which is one of our more expensive items that we send 4 times a year, on the web or by email.  We are hopefully going to give that a shot and try.  There are 4 newsletters a year, 2 of which we have to send via first class mail as those are the 2 that announce the annual and semi-annual meetings.  We don’t have the option of sending those out by email.  The by-laws say we have to mail out 2 by first class mail.  What you could do Les, is to send all the newsletters by email and send a separate notice by first class mail that was simply a notice of the meeting.  So there are some possibilities there.   I just wanted to point that we are restricted somewhat on a couple of them because of the first class mail requirement.  We are going to look into that and see if we can put together a data base.  My wife (Vicki) has already started a few months back, and whenever somebody’s email address is used on the web site, that we know what it is, we have tried to record it.  So we are starting to build a data base.  The only problem with web sites and email is a lot of people change email providers, so a data base that is good now may not be 6 months down the road.  It takes a lot of work to maintain it, but we are going to try it so we can reduce our mailing costs.  We also use bulk mail whenever there is something big that goes out that doesn’t have to go by first class, which reduces it from $0.37 to $0.23.  The storage facility we raised by $50 only because we badly need to put some shelving in.  I found out the hard way when I was going through trying to meet Larry’s request for 5 years records, which things are in kind of a mess.  There is a lot of junk in that storage building that doesn’t need to be there.  So, we need to, sometime this summer when the weather is nice, clean out and rearrange and put some shelving in there and organize things a little better.  The other thing is the Detention Pond operation and maintenance we reduced by $500.  We’ve been building over the last 2 or 3 years a contingency fund for that.  We haven’t had to spend any money for 2 years, so that we feel we can cut back on a little bit now.  That will give us almost $3000 in that fund and that’s more than enough to cover the replacement of one pump or the repair of both pumps.  The bottom line, if you look at the very last line on that sheet it says “It will not be necessary to increase dues”.  We can do it with the budget we have been operating on for the past number of years with the money we have.  And, as near as I can tell, I don’t think the dues have been raised since the 1980’s or so; except where it pertains to the Mussel Beach Road.  Irma – "We will actually have $3,500 after this year $1,000 from the budget goes into the reserves".  Dave – So we are doing well.  If you didn’t pick up on it for any body that may not be familiar, when we were talking about the Mussel Beach Road there was a comment that there was $4000 in restricted funds; those $4000 in restricted funds are to be for a surety bond that sets that money aside to pay for the Beach Road Boat Launch Lease with the Dept. of Natural Resources for the next 15 years.  So that money is sitting in the bank drawing interest for 15 years, which we will get.  So as long as we pay our lease payment every year for the next 15 years, we get that money back.  So it is not lost money; in fact it will gain interest.  Any questions or comments?  Les – In regards to that boat ramp, if there was only a walking path down to that path, would we still need to keep that?  Dave – No, I don’t think so.  The only problem is that you would lose the aquatic land lease for the land that goes with the boat launch and that’s pretty difficult to regain.  Les – Would that prohibit walking on it?  Dave – No.  You can walk on any tide lands – it is called mean high tide.  Les – It is my understanding that the Board has been advised by people who allegedly have the knowledge that when holding ponds are going to be required down there are put in, there will be no parking whatsoever down there.  Dave – There should be some parking.  Now, granted you would not be able to park 25 vehicles down there.  You should be able to park about 4 or 5 vehicles with a trailer.  The ponds will require some maintenance Les.  During the fall, when leaves are falling they will fall in those culverts; a little bit of gravel or soil will wash into them; in a heavy rain will be flushed out at the bottom into those settling basins; and probably at least once a year we are going to have to send a crew down there with a shovel and wheelbarrow and dig them out.  Bill – Are the basins for collecting silt?  Dave – No, it’s really for the water going down the culverts builds up a fairly fast flow.  There are some big rocks down there that are probably 5 feet tall and they break up the water flow and slow it down, which lets the silt settle out.  Occasionally you have to clean them out.  (There then was a discussion between Bill and Les, I think, regarding settling basins and silt basins.)  Dave – There might be I would guess, because of the channels, a 10% or 15% percent reduction in the total area down there.  But then again, once there are some trees taken out and parking lot area is regarded and rocked, you will gain some of that back.  The net loss will fairly minimal, maybe 5% or 10%.  It won’t be dramatic. Les – Will our SAPOA insurance cover anybody using the boat ramp?  Dave – Up to 2 million dollars.  It is 1 million per occurrence, 2 million aggregate.  Any more questions regarding the budget?  This will go out next week to the property owners.  For any one who is not familiar on how it works, we are required to send an annual budget out to the property owners in time that 30 days can elapse and it can get it back and counted before the July meeting.  So with the July 20th target date of that meeting, we have to get it out at least 30 days prior to July 20th.  So it has to go out in mid-June.  That is why we are working on a budget now that does not take affect until September.  Kathleen made a motion that we accept the budget as put forth; seconded by Pastor Na.  The motion was passed unanimously.  Dave – Any other questions or comments?  Les – I want to make a strong recommendation that we eliminate the Beach Road Committee.  I don’t see where we have any use for them right now.  It seems like it is not furthering the right of the SAPOA Board and if they can’t be gotten rid of totally or eliminated completely, I certainly can’t see any need for more than 3 or 4 persons on it.  Lew – As Dave said as he is not sure if he is going to be the president or not, in a short period of time, I recommend any motions at all concerning the Beach Road Committee be tabled until after the recall ballot has been counted.  Les – I will bring it up at the July meeting.  Kathleen – It should be taken care of before then.  Dave – Anything else?  Irma – If any one is interested in the costs of the Beach Road you can make copies of this report I have.  If so, you can just copy the figures down.

Annual Meeting:  Dave – The last item on the agenda is the Annual Meeting.  That is scheduled for July 20th.  We are doing something a little different than we have done in the past in that, a couple of meetings back somebody suggested that we get away from Saturday, as we do have a number of people in our community that are Seventh Day Adventist who can’t attend the meetings on Saturday.  For a change we are doing a Wednesday evening and we normally preceded those meeting with a potluck.  We are going to dispense with the potluck this time and go with just coffee and refreshment type food, just to see how it work; just a trial, which is easier to do in July than in January because the days are long in July and it’s not so dark and dreary out. 

Meeting Adjournment:  Kathleen DeStefano made a motion that the meeting be adjourned; seconded by Lew Morello.  The meeting was adjourned at 7:45 p.m.