Reflection Lake Community Association Annual Meeting
Meeting was called to order at 10:08am on July 29, 2017
Board members introduced themselves: President James Powers, Vice President Glen Mumm, Treasurer Russ Bishop, Secretary Debby Geoghagan, Jim Boothby, Gary Long, Dan Loos, Richard Miller. Absent is Nan. We thanked Nan for her service.
TREASURERS REPORT – Russ Bishop: Basically, we have been spending all the money that comes in. Last year, we spent a little less than we brought in but that was because of a lien that was finally paid but it took us 5 years to collect that $2300. Approximately 20% of our property owners are slow payers, the money trickles in from them. We have gone over the budget and we originally had assumed the landscape service for the access lots would cost more than in the past year. We went from using Mike Brown to using Rick Hayes because Rick is bonded and licensed and Mike is not. Now that we have a bonded and licensed person taking care of the lawn service we had assumed that the cost would go up but it doesn’t appear to be any different, so we can lower that line item by $1000. Someone from the attendees asked: What was wrong with the previous landscaper? Because he was not licensed and bonded we could be liable if he or anyone else incurred injuries that were related to his work on our property. The only budget increase we foresee at this point would be for an insurance policy to cover the board members against liability. We could have an amendment of the lawn service amount. Why did we increase the lawn care? We thought that it would be more expensive because this past Spring there was a work party where Rick Hayes cleaned up a lot of stuff and we paid him for that but that was a one-time expense, not a monthly expense. We don’t always know what our expenses are going to be. You ran some percentages a while back as to what roads and maintenance would be over a ten year period of time, can you elaborate on that? Yes, I did go back over the last ten years and it seems like we are living year to year and just sneaking by. Are you not considering any of the money we have in assets? We have $10,000 in our checking and 40,000 in our emergency reserve fund and last year I recommended that we have a study on what is in our reserve because it was originally supposed to be one year’s HOA dues and it has grown past that amount. I really like that we have the reserves, but shouldn’t we be looking for a long term solution for the roads? Years ago, we had to spend $20k on our dam. In my opinion, our reserve fund needs to stay as a reserve fund. We could spend $4000-5000 on replacing docks and just as much or more on improving the dam. What about the sanitary restrooms, do we need those? We could look at ways to cut costs like only having one sani-can on each side of the lake or we could buy our own porta-potties and have them pumped monthly. This idea came up last year and we looked at it, but this year on 4th of July weekend we had an issue where someone had put aluminum cans in the sani-can at Eagle Beach and Gary Long, our Security volunteer, had to fish the cans out. This makes the solution not so simple when we have to consider the maintenance and who is willing to take this on voluntarily. What about the roads? This budget is for operating expenses and the roads are not part of that, we will discuss the roads later in this meeting. A motion was made to accept this budget as stands without changing the lawn care line item. Jim Powers spoke: if you look at this budget it really hasn’t changed very much over the years. The problem is that we have put a lot of maintenance issues on hold and now we need to get this maintenance done. So the motion has been made, all in favor say aye, (a majority said aye), all opposed? (none).
LAKE SECURITY – Jim Boothby: I came back onto the board in order to get the Security team back in action again. We had a problem with poaching, etc. We used to have a lot of equipment but didn’t know where it had gone and Rob Lee helped us find our equipment, fixed the golf cart. We had a successful launch of the Security team at the beginning of the fishing season. We are still operating with old equipment though, the golf cart needs new tires and the security boat needs to be painted, among other things. The day-to-day beat goes on, last Monday morning I looked out my window and saw a couple skinny dipping. Gary Long and Jeff Toffer joined the team and they have been such a tremendous help. Every day, they check the fish gates and open them to let the debris flow out. If any of you walk around the lake on a regular basis and want to help us, it’s very easy, just let us know and we can give you the combination so you can take a moment to open the gate as you walk by. We do need volunteers. We have a kick-off meeting in March, a meeting in April to plan coverage for the summer, then a meeting in September to go over what went right and how we can better serve the community in the next year. If you would like to join the Security committee, please contact Gary Long or Jeff Toffer. It’s really a great committee to be a part of, you get to know your neighbors and they are very appreciative of our service!
In the last ten years or so we have had a lot of turnover on the board and people were relatively new to the area. I felt it was important for the history to be told about certain projects and why things were done they way they were done, so I volunteered to serve another three year term. We need people who have been here for a while to interject with institutional knowledge to complete the picture for those who may not be aware of the decisions of the past and why they were made. For example, we had two vaults built for porta-potties years ago but didn’t follow through with getting the porta-potties on them and then some people thought the vaults were a hazard so they had the vaults filled in with rocks. Now we have this expense for sani-cans and if we are going to consider buying our own sani-cans it is important to know that the two vaults are there but they are filled with rocks! We need people with “Institutional Knowledge” so we will have an understanding of why things were done in the past. The Roads committee needs to have people from Sheets road on the committee and people with historical knowledge of the project or we could end up making the same mistake that was made in the past when they didn’t finish the road as they should have. The Social Committee has changed a lot in the 37 years I’ve been here. As generations are born and grow up there will be times when the Social committee will be focused on activities for kids and then there will be times when the Social committee focuses more on activities for us old folks.
DAMS, CONSERVATION & MAINTENANCE COMMITTEES – Dan Loos: Thank you to the board members, committee members and work party volunteers. Several of us cleaned up Bings Landing, removal of railroad ties at Bishops park, we removed the ties and fixed the picnic table, added a ‘no parking’ sign, and of course the time spent in committee meetings. Thank you to all who have volunteered to improve our community. I am in charge of Conservation, Maintenance and Dams. We combined those due to the fact that topics cross over and many of us were on these same three committees. I know many of you want to hear about the reason for the $25/year/lot dues increase and where that money will be spent. The main reason for the dues increase is basically the lack of volunteers. We have a lot of projects that have been tabled due to lack of funds and/or lack of help, and now they are at a point where they need to be taken care of and if we don’t have volunteers we will have to hire it out. Then there are some projects that we need to have professionally done for the safety of our community. On Eagle Beach, the Sunshade needs to be repaired and part of the problem is that the concrete has heaved up. We need to extend the beach that is right in front of the sunshade . We need to power wash the Turtle Beach dock, it has a lot of mold. We need to add railroad rock to our dam because people are fishing off it and the rocks have slid deeper into the lake. The railroad rock is brought in by a conveyor belt and it is not cheap. The Community Center needs new gutters, I’d also like to see irrigation there. The biggest project is the dock at Eagle Beach, that is going to cost a lot. I would like to have the dock be a “T” or “L” shape, hopefully that will give fishermen a better place to fish from and might deter them from fishing off the dam. That is where that $25 is going to go, to getting these projects done. We also need to prepare for increases to our operating costs, for example, the cost of fish may go up in the future. We are going to have another carp planting this August. By the way, we want to give a big “Thank You” to John Fectner for his hard work on the dams and all his research and impeccable recordkeeping. The board has approved an evacuation route plan, if anyone wants to be involved in this, please sign up.
I am also the chair of the ByLaws and Covenants committee. It’s been 10 years since they were last updated and we are taking a good look at them again. We will have a meeting this fall for all of you to vote on any and all of the changes. Many of us on the board are on a few different committees, we are busy too, but we are trying to make this a good place to live. It would be great to see more involvement in these important committees. We need more people on the ByLaws and Covenants committee, there are currently only 4 people. Our next meeting is next Tuesday, August 8 at 6:30pm at the RLCA Community Center.
ROADS – Glen Mumm: Thank you everyone for coming out to attend this and thanks to the people who are on the Roads committee. We really needed people who live on Sheets road and we have Ken Q., John Roman and Gerald Freitas from Sheets road and Dan Loos and myself from Lakeside drive on the roads committee. We have a number of private roads in our community that have problems, not just Sheets road. We really need all of you to take this thing on.
In talking this over with John Roman and Ken Q, I am now convinced that these roads are owned by the Reflection Lake Homeowners Assn and we are all responsible for them. We are in the process of revising our CC&Rs and I have submitted a paragraph to that committee changing the wording to reflect that.
Please hold your questions until the end of my presentation as many of your questions will be answered before I am done.
Sheets Road, between Lake Road and Lakeside Drive is .46 of a mile. A Washington State DOT engineer gave us a basic formula to work with, so we went down the road and counted all the lots that are being lived in. There are 30 full time residences, if we assume an average of three people per home, estimate two trips per day per person (which is way more than actual trips) = 180 trips a day. We learned that we cannot blame usage for the deterioration of the road, 180 trips is not heavy usage, it is mother nature. One good thing we learned is that since the problem is not usage, we can look at just about any kind of road surface. In evaluating our options, one of our goals was to use local vendors.
First, we had to make a decision on what kind of road it would be and we started with Toners. Toners have the capability to rip the whole road, stir it up, add gravel and pack it. Their bid came to $33,200 plus tax for ½ mile. For that surface we would need to have dust control, so then we would have to decide on what kind of dust control to use. We could say every homeowner on the road is responsible for the area of the road that runs along their property. That was bid #1.
The next bid came from Newport Equipment. Their rock is all DOT spec, very low dust, packs extremely hard. Their suggestion was to pulverize the road, then regrade it, set crown and then bring in their DOT spec granite, water, compact, etc. $28,100 plus tax.
Both of these projects would bring in some big equipment that will shake the floors in our houses, will create a traffic issue while the big machines are there. Then we have the maintenance to consider: the first person that pulls out, punches it and does a 360, leaves us with the job of regarding it, etc.
The next number we got (and remember we had such a wet Spring so it was tough to get contractors out here) was from Ron at Deer Park Paving, and this is the number that shocked us. He gave us an ‘ala carte’ concept with a few different ways to start the repair, continue the repair, remobilize for only $350? I couldn’t believe it! He would go the length of the road and gravel and seal all the potholes for $2000 per day, for five days, so $10,000 to repair the pot holes, fill and cap them. The next part is the worst part of the road, from the Community Center to Lake Road, per 100 ft, 15 ft wide we could get away this year just capping the worst part. Total bid was $19,000 plus tax.
Last but not least, is what you saw happen this spring. The road was in such bad shape we put $700 worth of gravel in the worst potholes, the gravel has a binder in it, Rick Hayes packed it down and most of them are still ok. We could budget $700 a year and just have Rick do this but that is not going to be a long term fix. The roads are important to our property value.
That brings us to “how to pay for it”. We took a look at the budget and we have an emergency fund that contains $46,000. The fund was to cover one year’s income from HOA dues. That would be $27k. We are asking to be able to use the excess in that fund to fix this road. That leaves $27,000 in the fund which was its original purpose.
Questions/Comments?
What is the argument that these people convinced you that the HOA owned the road? Glen Mumm: At face value it made sense that the roads are association property, the roads are in such disarray, the previous board didn’t handle it property. Jim Powers: We pay taxes on them every year. The CCRs say that the private road residents are responsible for the maintenance, not improvement of the road. That assessment has never been exercised and any court will ask why it was never done this way in the past.
The road is falling apart because of lack of maintenance, that’s why we need the ‘improvement’!
People living on this road were able to vote on the CC&Rs ten years ago and the line about the road was in there then.
Let each of these people pay for the footage in front of their own home.
Those 30 homes should each be responsible for the repair of the road.
The problem is not today but the next ten years or more and if the board is going to change the CCRs then we will all be paying for the maintenance in the future.
What will the maintenance be? We will be able to maintain it using whatever is budgeted. We would love to have enough money to take care of issues that are going to be an ongoing predicament. We are at the mercy of nature, the cap is 15 ft wide. This is also gonna save us a considerable amount of money in our snowplowing because the road is so bad Rick cant plow as close to the surface.
I’m not sold on the solution, nobody comes and fixes my well for me, the people should maintain the area in front of their own home. You have all these people living on this side, I don’t see anyone from Sheets Road here. And besides, It needs to be square cut out. That gives you a base so you can pave the top of it.
My reservation is that it was just 2015 that we spent $6500 for road repair. I respect Glen and Dan very much, as builders and as maintenance people they are on top of their game. My concern is #1 that a committee of six people came up with this plan. It would be nice to have had notice that this decision was being made, there are a lot of people on this side who weren’t aware of it. Rob Lee originally had a great plan and his plan was shot down, he would be doing the same thing for $2200 more.
I have property in town with an alley and if the county comes in I am assessed for road repairs there. This is inconsistent with the way roads are handled everywhere else.
Why don’t we create a Road Board similar to the Water Board?
There is not one person on this side of the lake who would come out and help when we were working on the road.
Jim Boothby: What we currently have is called chip seal. About 14 years ago, we did all that Glen is proposing. The total price was $33,000 but when it came time to complete the job by putting a third coat on, the people over here decided they didn’t want to spend the 10k to finish the job. We used to pay $2000 a year for filling holes. With the chip seal we would have had a guarantee if we had allowed the vendor to finish the job. The two people that were on this side of the lake vetoed the finishing of the road and they used the money to build the pavilion at Eagle Beach.
Glen: I am really disappointed with the turnout today. Most of the people who live on Sheets Road didn’t even show up.
Dan Loos: It was discussed that this was going to happen and they (the people on Sheets Road) were told they needed to be here, but they didn’t show up. I would like to see sending this recommendation to the Sheets road homeowners and let them know what we propose. The board is going to have to put this together as an assessment. We were hoping that this side of the neighborhood would show up.
Why not turn it over to the county? James Powers: The road isn’t wide enough. If the county came through, there would be a 50 foot easement and people could lose alot of their property.
Jim Powers: Well, it’s pretty obvious which way this is going, but let’s have a vote by show of hands, all against this proposal to use our emergency fund for the road repair, raise your hand (almost everyone raised their hand) and all who are for this proposal (one person raised a hand). This proposal to use our emergency fund for the road repair is not approved.
SOCIAL COMMITTEE – Debby Geoghagan: The Social Committee’s focus lately, besides preparing for this potluck, has been sending flowers to people who are in the hospital or whose love one has passed. We are hoping that there will be less tragedies and more fun things to focus on in the future. Richard Miller has agreed to be the chairman of the Social Committee but I will still be one buying flowers, since it is easy for me to do that online while I am babysitting my grandkids. I am also handling the website and newsletters. I want to send out a survey of sorts, asking people to share their talents and send articles that I can post on our website. I’d like to have a link that shows what water plants are beneficial and which ones are noxious and what we should do about the bad ones. I’d like to see a link to a photo album of all of our pets, so when I see a lost dog, I can just look on the website and get the dog back to its owner. I also want to have events and opportunities for all of us to get to know each other better, maybe a Bingo night or dinners for eight, stuff like that. One thing I need to do is cut down on the postage expenses so I will be asking people to sign up to receive newsletters either by email or if they want to just look for it on the website. It takes a lot of time to make all the copies, stick the address labels on and put stamps on all of them. I know we will still have some that want to receive it in the mail. It was suggested that I just put the newsletter in people’s mailboxes but that’s illegal, so I’m not going to do that. I will be sending out the survey along with the Annual Meeting minutes in a week or so.
BOARD MEMBER ELECTION: We had three people running for the position of Board Member and one write-in for Terry Zoesch. The ballots have been tallied and our new and returning board members are Debby Geoghagan, Gary Long and Jeff Toffer.
COMMUNITY SERVICE AWARD : Rob Lee was chosen to be this year’s community service award recipient. We appreciate Rob’s willingness to help. He often times takes care of things without even being asked. He is always there whenever there is work to do. Thank you, Rob.
OPEN FORUM:
Dues Increase: We used to live in a mobile home park and the HOA dues went from $125 to $475. The $25 per lot per year increase will be $4600. This could be what we need to repair the dam, replace a dock,etc. We are currently maxed out. The board was unanimous. A motion was made that the dues increase of $25 per lot per year be approved, all said aye, one said no.
How many lot owners are in arrears as far as their dues? There is roughly 40 lots/people that are late and/or owe extra fees. The Property Manager rebills once a month and the people that are late get a $5 late fee every month. We are about $4500 in arrears. There are some who have just not paid for a couple of years and then the amount they owe gets to be overwhelming. We should come up with a payment plan so we know they are making an effort.
The people who are in arrears, do they use the access lots? They don’t get a member card unless they are paid up, Russ gives Security the block and lot # so they can keep track of that.
I am up at all hours of the night due to a medical condition and when I see suspicious activity, who should I call? Call 911. But what if it’s just someone in my neighbor’s yard, could we get a directory so I can call and alert my neighbor? How about a directory with photos? Debby: I would be happy to put together a directory but we’ll have to send out something getting everyone on board and also there might be some who don’t want to be in a directory so we’d have to respect that. I will add that to my next newsletter.
Who do we talk to about the abandoned cars and trucks? We are aware of some vehicles that are abandoned or parked too close to the water. Jeff Toffer knows someone at the county and the county is going to send them a letter. The county will give them so long to take care of it and then it goes to district court. We will try to start that process by sending a letter to the property owners and go from there.
Meeting was adjourned at 12:40 pm.
After the meeting was adjourned, the board members had a brief meeting to vote for the officers of our 2017-2018 board. Beginning immediately, this is our new board:
President: Glen Mumm
Vice President: Dan Loos
Treasurer: Russ Bishop
Secretary: Debby Geoghagan
Non-officer board members: Jim Boothby, Gary Long, Richard Miller, James Powers, Jeff Toffer
Prepared by Deborah Geoghagan, Secretary