Finance & Legal minutes: 2010-11-22

Minutes:

Minutes of F&L Meeting

11-22-10





Present: Carl, Peter, Amy


1. Organizing Community Documents Project



Gail will come to our next meeting to report and discuss.



2. Sprinkler issues



Steve Bredernitz, the builder who led the Home Maintenance workshop at the
Skills & Thrills weekend, recommended a plumber to talk with about our hard
water issues and our fire suppression problems. He sent the following to
Peter: “Dan [Kofahl] of Olde Town Plumbing (665-0088) is willing to review
the water issue at the tap, but for sprinkler issues he recommends talking
with the installation company.”



Buildings Com asked F&L to advise on turning off Building 10’s FS system
until a solution can be found. Following the repair to the recent leak in
#10 (Mac & Amy), #7 has a new leak (Debbi).



MONKEY: Amy will tell Buildings that F&L can’t endorse turning off the
system unless the whole community agrees to this. Our understanding is that
we would be of risk of insurance non-coverage in the event of a fire.


Next steps – Amy works on historical record of FS problems. Then we try
calling Phoenix and Royal Homes.


3. Insurance



Amy and Elph met with one insurance company on 11/19 and Amy, Elph, and
Peter met with a second company on 11/22. Our next move is to meet with
Barb Young of State Farm to ask her to compare those bids with her coverage.



We learned that our Master Deed/Bylaws define the extent of coverage. We
need to review and understand this.



This morning’s insurance agent told us that it is our responsibility to
supply a “cost to rebuild” figure. This can be done simply by multiplying
square footage by a dollar amount per square foot, or we could hire a
builder to give us a detailed recommendation. We need to be sure we have
not underestimated this amount. This morning’s agent thinks we may be
undervaluing the cost to rebuild. The insurer can contest the value in the
event of a claim. We want to have a good leg to stand on.


[Note: Subsequent to this meeting, Elph and Amy met with Barb Young of
State Farm. She disagreed with the above concern, saying that State Farm
estimators have been out to GO twice over the years to measure square
footage and other features, to calculate replacement costs. She thinks we
are well covered.]



4. Rebates



Carl has been looking at the four different line items that we bill people
for:



- Operating budget

- reserve

- water & sewer

- CH loan for some households



OPERATING BUDGET

Appears that our last operating budget rebate was for FY 2007, paid in early
2008.



MONKEY: Carl will verify this with Kathy.



Over the next couple of months he will look more deeply into this to better
understand the situation and make recommendations. Recommendations
around rollover
funds will be part of this.



RESERVE

As we know from the last meeting, the monthly charge for the Reserve Fund
will go up in 2011 and every year thereafter, by about $10/mo each year.


CH LOAN

(The following applies to a subset of households. Some have already paid
off their CH loan amount.)



We refinanced our CH Loan 1-1/2 years ago when we paid off a loan with
Citizens Bank using funds from three lenders (2 households and the Reserve
Fund). Carl discovered that the amount we were collecting from each
household stayed the same even though the amount owed went down. So we have
been overbilling. These people will get rebated about $93.35 in overpaid
loan fees for the past three years. Carl has already taken care of this and
people will see the rebate on their December statements.


WATER & SEWER

Water & Sewer bills are direct money in, money out. We’ve paid our last
quarterly bill for 2010. Over the last three years (2008-10), we’ve paid
$63,600 for all buildings EXCEPT the CH, which pays for water and sewer via
the Operating Budget. After we have billed for the December 2010 fee, we
will have billed households $9,394.55 too much over three years. So every
household will get a $254 rebate for those three years for water.



>From 2008-2009, households paid $57/mo for water & sewer. Scio Township had
a rate increase at the beginning of 2009. But even though the rate went
up, our usage went down. So in 2010, we dropped our water & sewer charges
to $50/mo. Based on our past usage, we should be assessing even
less. However,
Scio’s rates may go up again. They have not raised them for two years. So
Carl recommends that we lower our assessment to something between $44 and
$47.



Shouldn’t our water usage be visible for all to look at? Adi may have been
doing this. And Carl could do it as he has the bills.



MONKEY: Add to Stack document: Review water bill annually, including
water usage records, and share information with the community.



Didn’t we hear something about Scio doing a minimum billing? Carl: They
charge in increments of 10 units. Has never seen a charge below 20
units. Don’t
know what a unit is. So maybe if a building only uses 5 units, they still
get charged for 20. We just don’t know. Some buildings go up to 70. We
use water for the community garden, and some bldgs have more units in them,
or more people, so usage will vary.



Carl verified that CH ‘s 2011 budget proposal for water & sewer is in line
with recent past usage.



MONKEY: Carl would like about 20 minutes on the Dec. 1 agenda to explain
the CH Loan and Water & Sewer rebates. Amy will talk with Rod and Patti
about this.



5. Bookkeeper’s report on late Association dues



Next meeting. Carl hasn’t had time to look at this.



6. Stack document



Amy organized the stack document by grouping like items. We reviewed the
document and further grouped and prioritized.



MONKEY: Amy will rework the document for further discussion next time.



When we are satisfied with the document, we will share it with the community
to ask for additional input.





7. Point people to keep stack items moving



We thought it made sense to assign each of us to one or two areas to focus
on, to keep things moving. We’ll still need to discuss as a full group, and
some of the items overlap, but this seems like a good way to keep moving
forward. Tentatively, we discussed:



Reserve follow-up – Aaron

Bookkeeping clean-up and recommendations – Carl

Insurance and Fire Suppression – Amy

F&L Mandate – Peter

Master Deed – Mary



Again, note that many of these are intertwined but each of us can keep
pushing forward on our parts.


8. Next meeting


Carl and Mary will be out of town on Dec. 13 so we'll meet on Dec. 15 at
7:30 at Carl and Mary's house.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://gocoho.org/pipermail/finance-minutes_gocoho.org/attachments/20101212/30b941f7/attachment.html>