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SAPOA |
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May 15, 2006 Board Meeting |
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SUNSHINE ACRES PROPERTY OWNERS ASSOCIATION BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETING MAY 15, 2006
The meeting was called to order at 1:00 pm by President Dave Taney. There were 6 Board members and 64 property owners present.
Dave Taney: One unfinished piece of business from the last meeting on March 22nd, apparently the motion made at that meeting wasn’t clear as to the Secretary of the Board’s position. We nominated and approved Kim (Jacobs) to fill the position. My intent was to fill the position and also appoint her to the Board to fill the remaining term of Kathleen DeStefano. So, I’ll start by remaking that motion that we appoint Kim to the Board to fill that unexpired term. Everett Stauffer seconded the motion and it was carried unanimously.
Dave Taney: With that, I’ll turn it over to Kim who has the minutes of the March 22nd meeting. Kim Jacobs: There are copies of the minutes out there, I don’t think there’s enough that everybody has their own individual one, but they are written. I hope that you’re able to share them. Is there a motion to accept the minutes as written? Everett Stauffer made a motion to accept the minutes as written, Sarah Kincaid seconded the motion and it was carried unanimously.
Irma Martin read the Treasurer’s report. It can be viewed in its entirety on the SAPOA website. Everett Stauffer made a motion to accept the Treasurer’s report; it was seconded by Lew Morello and carried unanimously.
Dave Taney: The purpose of this meeting today was not what it ended up being. The first order of business is the fact that 5 of the 7 Board members present are resigning effective this evening, and we need volunteers to fill those positions. The only remaining Board members will be Kim Jacobs, who is our Secretary, and Irma Martin, our Treasurer. So don’t everybody stand up and volunteer at once.
Dave Rodgers asked if these were interim positions to be filled. Dave Taney said they would fill the positions of the departing Board members until the July annual meeting and then they stand for election for a full term. To expand on that further, in July at the annual meeting, you’ll be electing a whole new Board. The reason being that Kim is filling the unexpired term of Kathleen, which means she has to run for election in July if she wants to continue. Irma has fulfilled two three-year terms and can no longer run for a third term. Somebody will have to fill her position come July. And because all 7 Board members are being elected at once, there’s a process in the By-Laws for how you arrive at staggered terms. So not everybody will be running for a 3-year term. It will depend on how many votes each individual gets; there’s a 3-year, a 2-year, a 1-year, etc. So that process will take place in July at the annual meeting, which will be under the auspices of the new Board, whoever replaces us effective this evening.
Nancy Drake stated that we need a petition form for nominations and that there was someone she wanted to nominate. Dave Taney said that would be up to the new Board.
Catharine Maxwell asked if the Board was stepping down because of the beach road. Dave Taney: Yes. Everett Stauffer: It isn’t just because of the beach road; it’s many things. Kathy Williamson: So whoever steps into this is going to step into the same bees nest, right?
Dave Taney: Possibly, it depends on who those individuals are, I guess. Notice that on the agenda I have a review of open issues. These are not in any particular order or in any particular priority. So maybe we can start with one or two of those and answer some of those questions in the process. First is the Olympic Excavation litigation. There is currently an open lawsuit from Olympic Excavation vs. SAPOA. Nothing has happened to that litigation in the past 2 or 3 months, and it’s just in limbo at this point. SAPOA filed a counter suit against the excavator and against the bonding company and that’s where it remains. It remains in the hands of the attorneys to take whatever further steps they might take. So the new Board will probably have to deal with that whenever it becomes active again. I’m going to jump ahead and take on the issue of Lot 28.
In response to a question posed by Mike Connors, Dave Taney replied, “Our By-Laws call for arbitration and mediation, but that is within SAPOA.” Everett Stauffer: The contract calls for arbitration too but it isn’t a forced arbitration like the By-Laws call for, so he elected to go the other way. He’s done this about 3 times in the process.
Dave Taney: One of the issues that’s been prevalent in discussion recently is the Lot 28 sale. As you know, we ran a ballot asking for approval to sell that lot. It was 157 ‘yes’ vs. 91 ‘no’. Now the next issue that comes up is what was required to sell that piece of property. There’s several different opinions. I’ve heard 100% approval, I’ve heard 2/3 majority, and I’ve heard a simple majority. I can find documentation and notations to support either the 2/3 rule or the simple majority. I can’t find anything to support the 100% rule, with one exception. If you go back, way, way back in the files, you’ll find that when the developer sells the first piece of property, the absolute first piece of property, it requires 100% approval. One equals 100%. Once you get past the second one, when you have 2 people that own property, it goes down to 65% or 2/3 majority. So that 100% is out the window. The problem is to resolve which is correct, 2/3 majority or a simple majority, it would require possible litigation to determine that. We’ve had long discussions with the DPAA Board of Directors, and it boils down to neither one of us see a point in going to litigation and spending money fighting each other within SAPOA when we could put that money to better use somewhere else. It just doesn’t make sense. So we’ve backed off and tabled the sale of that property and it is not our intention now to sell that property through any action of the current Board. We have different opinions but we are not going to fight it out in Court to resolve that opinion.
Everett Stauffer: But we will take DPAA up on their volunteering to keep that place cleaned up and mowed.
Dave Taney: I would suggest, and this is just a suggestion, that DPAA meet with future boards to work on removing control of that lot, of those 2 lots, from SAPOA to DPAA.
Ernie Hansen: I’m Ernie Hansen, President of DPAA Board and I was authorized by our Board to make that offer to take over that; we have the manpower and the ability to keep those lots maintained.
Dave Taney: On April 10, I filed a request with Clallam County to determine the exact status of Lot 28, to give us a written firm decision as to what the status of that piece of property is. We were told that it would take 6 – 8 weeks to get that answer from Clallam County and when that information comes back, it needs to be shared with DPAA and the SAPOA boards. Maybe we’ll be able to go on from that point without continually guessing what we have or don’t have. Les Stuhr: I don’t understand why it wouldn’t be up to the County to designate the usage and zoning for that lot as opposed to the airport association. Dave Taney: That’s exactly what they’ll do. They’ll tell us it’s designated as a residential lot or whatever the case might be.
I want to go to Lakeside Paving contract. I have a bid from Lakeside Paving to pave the beach road for $34,000, actually its $32,000 and some odd change and then taxes. It was our hope to pave that road this summer. I don’t know that that’s going to happen. We have a bid that’s probably the cheapest bid we’ll see for some time. I’m sure none of you are surprised at the cost of asphalt going up with the cost of oil going up. The bid we have is good through the 1st of October of 2006. The problem is you need to schedule something like that 2 – 3 months in advance to get it on their work schedule. They asked that we commit to that prior to the 1st of June. In other words, during the month of May, if we commit to that contract, they will then pave the road sometime in July, August or early September, while the weather is still good and dry. As you saw from the Treasurer’s report, there’s about $15,000 in the Treasurer’s file for that account. Unfortunately, $15,000 don’t add up to $34,000; that leaves us about $20,000 short. There’s an opportunity there, and I will personally commit right on the spot here to advancing to SAPOA, not a gift, not a prepayment, but an advance zero interest loan for $5,000 on my own personal account. So there’s a start if anybody’s willing to match it.
Kit Maxwell offered to match that ($5,000 zero interest loan to SAPOA to pave the beach road). Dave Taney: So there’s an opportunity. It just needs to steamroll on through. Everett Stauffer asked if it was legal to do this. Dave Taney replied, “Yes”, and reiterated it was zero interest.
Kathy Williamson: Is there some way that the pilots association could, this is just an idea, I’m just throwing it out there, come up with the $20,000 and it could become their lot, and they’d have their safety issue under control and we’d get the $20,000 and take care of the beach road issue.
Ernie Hansen: Now that we’ve got all of this many SAPOA members present, I’d like to give a brief overview of why DPAA took the position they took on Lot 28. DPAA also is charged with managing the airport in trust for everybody in Sunshine Acres. DPAA, after we looked at the history of that lot, and that lot was donated in 1998 to the community, and actually there’s some documentation that shows it was offered to DPAA and then to SAPOA. It was offered by the developer because of recognition by her that it was not appropriate for residential development. It was supposed to be an extension of the recreational lot. I don’t want to get argumentative about this but there’s references in minutes of SAPOA to that effect, and also in conversation I had with Mrs. Dent. I understand that SAPOA needs some money to finish the beach road and we would offer to help in any way we can with that, but I also hope that we’re not given too big a black eye over our role in discouraging the sale of Lot 28. I’m afraid we are. We’re looking out for the interests of everybody in Sunshine Acres. In our opinion, there is an extension of the runway on both ends that are in Federal law and State guidelines that’s called an extension of runway surface area. All of the one recreational lot and a portion of Lot 28 are in that area. Those areas are supposed to be protected for the safety of aviators and the safety of people on the ground. We think we’d be remiss if we didn’t object to the residential development of that lot, especially since the developer also recognized that and donated it for recreational use. DPAA has gone to the extent of working with the State, getting a letter of opinion from them. We also have drawn up a filing and have a recording on the deed of that lot of adverse possession of the airspace above that lot for airport use. Without bringing up a lot of back history, the real unfortunate thing is that since we started working together, we’ve worked together great. By ‘we’, meaning DPAA folks and SAPOA. The unfortunate part is that we didn’t work together prior to you folks all receiving the ballot and having to make a decision and perhaps not having the other side of the story. The other side of the story is that there still is grave concern for the safety of people on the ground and in the air, and in an effort to protect your interests as Sunshine Acres property owners, DPAA felt that we need to protect that lot. We’re still in a position to try to help work with the SAPOA Board to fund the beach road. I don’t think we’re interested in purchasing the lot that was offered to us in 1998. The then DPAA president and SAPOA Board agreed that SAPOA would take it because SAPOA is a tax-exempt organization and doesn’t have to pay property taxes and DPAA isn’t tax-exempt and we would have had to pay property taxes. There’s a lot of history here… Kathleen DeStefano questioned whether or not DPAA is or is not tax exempt. Ernie said they are not a tax-exempt organization. Ernie Hansen continued: Again, I guess my reason for even trying to give a brief disbursement of DPAA’s concerns and history is that I feel like some of the correspondences that the whole membership has received kind of paints us in a bad light as being the bad guys about the sale of Lot 28. We still have serious concerns. It’s off the table right now, but it might be right back on the table with the next board. I would hope that we can work together in the future to try to build some consensus instead of the majority opinion. The majority opinion still pits 91 ‘no’ votes against 157 ‘yes’ votes. It’s not a good consensus for the community to be operating under. Everett Stauffer: It wasn’t donated. We bought it. We paid the back taxes on it. It was a buy, by majority vote, not a 2/3’s vote. Ernie Hansen: It was donated by the developer with the condition that the back taxes would have to be paid in the sum of about $200. The developer received zero.
Dave Taney: Most of the issues we’re talking about this afternoon will not be resolved here this afternoon. The purpose is to let you know what issues are out there for the new board to take over and resolve or act upon. There’s nothing going to be solved here today. It’s mostly an awareness issue of letting people know what there is out there.
Kathy Williamson asked who recreates down there. I never see anybody and I wouldn’t have my kids playing down there if there were planes going over top. She said that she had checked and the taxes were $1.00 and something. Everett Stauffer said that it’s $1.00 to us because we’re exempt. It wouldn’t be $1.00 to them.
Dave Taney: I have down here the Washington Department of Ecology. There’s a debate going on regarding the parking lot drainage ditches as to how much dirty water is going into the Sound. The Inspector from Washington Department of Ecology came out about a week ago, took a look at it. No decision’s been made; nothing has come out of it at this point. Sometime in the near future we’ll get a written report from the Washington Department of Ecology that says you have a problem which you have to correct, you have no problem, or whatever. It’s totally up in the air. That’s another issue that’s going to be dealt with by those people who replace us.
The annual meeting, scheduled for July, is already booked for July 22 at 6:30 in the evening. That can either be left as is or changed by the new board. The reservations have been made and prepaid so if it’s cancelled, someone needs to get the money back for the rental of the hall that night.
I have down here Architectural Representative. When the Sunshine Acres plat was originally started, there were 8 different plats. Seven of the plats have a 3-person architectural committee: the lot owner, an architectural representative elected from the members of the plat, and originally it was the developer, a representative from the developer, who was the third party. But when the developer sold all their properties and no longer had any interest in SAPOA, then SAPOA put a representative in place. That’s been Everett over the last 2 years. Once Everett departs, there’ll need to be an architectural rep from the SAPOA group to take his place to enter that third party opinion. Woody Hill has the 6th and 7th plats, and I’ve got them on the list here. One of the things that is different about Plats 6 and 7 from the others is they have a requirement of height issues; it’s at 16’ for homes. What has been coming up very frequently in the last few months has to do with the height of trees that are in that plat. There’s a lot of natural growth that started by a bird dropping a seed somewhere and it became a tree and the tree is now 20’ tall. There’s other homes that have planted trees a few years ago that are now 16 and 20’ tall. So the issue is do the trees need to be topped or trimmed to maintain the 16’ elevation. SAPOA, in the past, has always taken a stance that they were not the police to enforce the covenants. They just had the responsibility to notify any violators of the covenants; that the violation was there and our opinion was there. It’s becoming more and more clear as we get into the development of Sunshine Acres, that there is some fiduciary responsibility on the part of SAPOA to pursue those issues. Whoever takes over, you’re going to have to deal with the tree issues in Plats 6 and 7 as to whether you cut down the trees once they get over 16’, you don’t allow any plantings over 16’. Virginia Hector stated that the covenants say 4’ unless it’s a natural tree. Dave Taney: That’s why I pointed out that it’s an issue that needs to be resolved. Everett Stauffer: The covenants say ‘plantings’. Dave Taney: That is an issue that needs to be resolved jointly between SAPOA and Plats 6 and 7. As an example, it doesn’t affect plantings in Plat 5, because they don’t have that requirement.
Bill Andrew: Since we’re on the (subject of the) architectural committee, how many plats do not have an architectural committee member that they voted in? Dave Taney replied Plat 1 and the Industrial. Bill Andrew: That’s always been a problem because the covenants specify how those people are elected, not SAPOA. Everett Stauffer: The Industrial District has to have 5 members. Two from at-large, one from them. Bill Andrew: But Plat 1 needs 3, the homeowner or his representative, one representing the developer, which I believe is you (Everett Stauffer), and one elected at-large. We don’t have one that’s been elected at-large so we’re hanging in limbo there. And any other plat that hasn’t had one elected at-large is also in the same position. Catherine Woodahl expressed that she would like to be involved and would be happy to work together with anyone in an attempt to get the tree issue resolved. Dave Taney: The problem is it’s just never been resolved. What is kind of behind the issue is the responsibility of SAPOA in resolving those issues. That has never been exactly clear to this Board or to other boards.
The Barth legal issue. This goes back to the parking lot area. We received a letter from Dorothy Barth that said we were encroaching on their property down in the parking lot; that we had crossed over into what is actually their lot instead of the parking lot, and is asking for a survey to be done at SAPOA’s expense. Nothing’s been resolved; nothing’s been done with that. It just arrived about a week ago. Bill Andrew said that years back she had that surveyed. Her corner was established and it was down at the south toe of the slope, which may have changed. Dave Taney: What Dorothy’s asking for is not so much based on what we have done, but if we do any more, she wants a survey. Bill Barth stated that if SAPOA does any more work, he wants to be assured that they don’t infringe on their property.
Dave Taney: The next thing I have is the 2006-2007 budget. Prior to the annual meeting in July, the Board needs to put together a budget for the following year, which runs from September 1, 2006 to August 31, 2007. If that is not completed and approved by the property owners and the Board, you revert back to the previous budget. In other words, you would fall back to the 2005-2006 budget, and go by those numbers until a budget is passed. There’s a summer newsletter to be gotten out, announcing the date of whenever the annual meeting is going to be, whether it be July 22 or some other date. We talked about the beach road. There are keys available for the beach road. There’s currently 150 keys that have been issued for the beach road out of 404 property owners. If anybody else needs or wants a key, and there’s been more interest in it lately now that the road is drivable, they’ll need to contact somebody to get that key, whoever that somebody is. Kathleen DeStefano: Does that mean the other lock has been taken off? Dave Taney: Yes. The gate has been opened and anybody with a key could go through since April 1. It’s been getting some usage. It seems to be standing up pretty well. A couple of people have stopped half way up and maybe spun their tires a little bit and dug a little bit of a hole, but nothing major.
The detention pond, which is in Plats 6 and 7, requires annual maintenance; trees that need to be trimmed and weeds that need to be dug and pulled this summer, particularly when it’s dry and the pond dries out completely. Everett Stauffer: I have the information on that plus inside one of the cabinets is an electrical drawing for the system. Dave Taney: And prior to freezing weather in the winter, the pumps need to be maintained and serviced every fall.
My wife has maintained the website for since its beginning. She’s no longer going to do that. She has volunteered to work with somebody new to take that over. Since its beginning, we’ve had about 14,000 hits on that website, so it is used. Another thing is the data base for SAPOA. We currently maintain a dual data base. Irma maintains one that is primarily for the Treasurer’s records and Vicki maintains another one that is primarily to keep track of who owns what property for mailings and information that comes from real estate offices and whatever. Kim is now doing that. You’d be amazed, recently, how many pieces of property change hands in a month’s time and how hard it is to keep track of who owns what, where they came from and their phone numbers and addresses to keep a mailing list going.
Everett Stauffer: I’ve covered the detention pond and the architect rep things. I will continue to do that with the Board until they can get someone to replace me. Also, immediately, somebody needs to take over these sets of keys. One other issue: Leslie Farrell is in the back. She’s got some refrigerator magnets for CERT’s emergency response team. Leslie led off a big fund drive and collected enough money to buy an electronic defibrillator, and there are instructions about how you can contact us in case you need help. 911 has to come all the way from town. We can get there quicker than they can. If you want one of those magnets, she’s back there. Just put your name and address so we don’t try to get to you to try to give you another one because they’re a little bit pricey.
Leslie Farrell: I want to thank everyone on the SAPOA Board from all of Greater Diamond Point for sharing the SAPOA message board and website and for Dave’s insight into unifying all of us out here on the Point. I want to thank Everett for ordering the defibrillator magnets and providing them to us here at the meeting. All of the different homeowner’s tracts want to live in peace and harmony with Sunshine Acres.
(Applause)
MaryDee Countryman: The defibrillator is a backup for the one that’s already on our aid car. Since our fire station is totally volunteer, there may not be a volunteer available to go out to your cardiac arrest within the first 5 minutes. If there were an emergency and no volunteers are coming from the Diamond Point station, if you don’t hear the siren within 5 minutes, you can call the number and a CPR defibrillator trained person can bring the defibrillator to your house, it’s done through a mobile phone that’s dedicated to the station. Dave Taney asked how many volunteers there were. MaryDee said there are 5 people at the station now. MaryDee talked about the Diamond Point Fire House Siren test: The decibels run about 96 so people who complain they can’t hear it, it’s as good as it’s going to get except it will run for maybe a minute or two and maybe get a little louder. The stipulation is we will only run it 3 cycles. And that’s just a test the first Tuesday of each month at 9:00 am and right now the ARES people do their checking every Tuesday. They run it for us. That’s mainly for a tsunami and wildfire. Those are the two designations. Remember when we had a wildfire where evacuations were recommended, we can’t mandate it, our siren will go off, and also for a tsunami. There has been a federal grant for the AHAB, All Hazards Alert Broadcast, to be installed at various points in our County. The first one coming into our fire district is going to Dungeness because there seems to be the biggest amount of risk and then the second one will come to Diamond Point. But it may be several years before we can upgrade our siren.
Vicki Taney reminded Dave about the potluck supplies. Dave Taney: What Vicki is alluding to and what I haven’t touched on is as Board members we have in our possession a number of things and a lot of records and a lot of miscellaneous stuff. We have a storage unit up here at the Diamond Point storage place that’s full and overflowing. We have a couple boxes at home of paper plates, cups, silverware, napkins, things like that, we use for potlucks. We have a microphone, speakers system, a remote wireless mike, we have lots of records, and we need people to transfer that to. Irma is keeping all of the Treasurer’s records and Kim will keep all the secretarial information and reports. As soon as we have somebody to transfer all of the other records and stuff to, we’ll take care of that. Everett Stauffer: Beach Road has 4 bales of hay and about 10 tons of grass seed too.
Gary Getch: If you get any volunteers today, do they have to volunteer for a specific position? Dave Taney: No. The Board themselves elect their officers. So once you have 7 board members, those 7 people elect a President, a Vice-President, a Secretary, Treasurer, and 3 at-large. Gary Getch: Now that there’s only 2 members left, can they do any expenditure of funds for bills that come in? Dave Taney: Only things that are already budgeted. Gary Getch: Are they both signers? Dave Taney replied, “No.” Kim Jacobs said, “We will be.”
Catherine Woodahl asked if the Board of Directors of SAPOA or any individual on the Board had been sued. Dave Taney said that keeps being threatened but it hasn’t come to pass. Catherine asked if any of these issues have been reported to the insurance agency? Dave Taney: Yes. It’s been reported to the insurance carrier. Catherine asked if the Director’s liability insurance is in jeopardy. Dave Taney replied that he is reasonably sure it isn’t. Catherine Woodahl: I would just recommend that anyone who volunteers to be an officer that you inform your homeowner’s insurance that you, as an individual, are serving on a non-profit Board. If the Director’s liability insurance does not somehow get renewed, then you’re going to be laid open for a lawsuit.
Barry Olson turned in his resignation on the Beach Road Advisory Board. Dave Taney said he had Bob Eberhardt’s too.
Lani Low asked if anyone has checked into a management company taking over. Dave Taney said he believed our By-Laws prohibit that.
Dave Taney: It doesn’t look like we have any volunteers, so with that, I’ll entertain a motion we adjourn. Lew Morello seconded the motion, it carried unanimously and the meeting was adjourned at approximately 2:10pm
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