Finance & Legal minutes: 2011-05-23

Minutes:

F&L Minutes 5-23-11



Present: Aaron, Becky, Mary, Amy





1. Garages



MONKEY: Amy will e-mail Rod, Carl, and Ted to make sure they are not
duplicating efforts around creating a list of garages and owners.



2. “Missing” $900 Meals money



New Meals convener Rod sent Carl/Finance a question about whether Meals has
$900 in an account somewhere. Kathy replied that this idea may be an
artifact from a time in the past when Meals still owed around $900 to GOCA
to repay the original $3000 that GOCA loaned Meals for start-up costs. Adi
thought that someone may once have entered Meals accounting info into
Quickbooks, but did not maintain it because it doesn’t belong there, leaving
a “dangling” record that might be confusing.



Mary said that Carl hasn’t gotten to this topic yet in his research into
GOCA’s financial history, and probably won’t for a while, so he wouldn’t be
able to say anything about this specific topic yet.



3. CH Loan question from Carl



Carl is researching the CH Loan history and is puzzled by some missing
documentation. He sent a message to Finance/Finops asking if anyone knew
what the history of this was but hasn’t heard back. Mary forwarded Carl’s
message to some of the folks who were very active during the construction
phase (Rod, Ted, Dale, Jenny) to see if they know anything.



Here is a snip from Carl’s message summarizing his question:



“It appears as if the Common House Construction and GOCA's ownership of 2
garages was originally deemed to cost $181K. Everyone's share of that cost
was going to be $4891.90. Eleven households paid their share up front. GOCA
procured a loan of $127,190 for the remaining 26 units.



So there was a huge pot of money, equaling $181K, from two sources. Republic
Bank = $127,190 and 11 households = $53,811.



I don't see in Quickbooks a $127,190 check from Republic being deposited
into any GOCA bank account. It's certainly possible that it was written to
another entity (CDC perhaps). However, the $53,811 in funds from the 11
households was deposited into the GOCA draft account in January 2004.



My problem is this. It's not obvious to me how all this money was spent.
Throughout late 2003 and all of 2004 there are a number of checks written to
various vendors that were posted to an expense account called "Project
Contingency: Furnish CH", and a few were posted to "Project Contingency:
Grounds". Were these checks written against the $53,811 fund from the 11
households?



4. Reserve Fund

At our last meeting, we had thought to request time on an upcoming community
meeting agenda to educate the community about the flexibility of Reserve
Fund spending, which does not need to be precisely in line with the
spreadsheet, per Paul Conahan. We also want to get community agreement
about how and when Reserve Funds can be spent. We talked about what happens
when a committee wants to spend a bit over the designated Reserve Fund
amount, or spend sooner than planned, etc. After some discussion we decided
on the following:



MONKEY: Becky will draft a proposal and bring it to the next meeting for
discussion.



5. Meeting Time

Currently we meet on first and third Mondays at 7:30. Aaron no longer needs
to meet at 7:30 – we can move to a 7 pm start. Agreed. Next meeting Mon.,
June 13.



6. Master Deed



There are three items that need updating in the Master Deed:



a) LCE/GCE – we want the existing table to be put in narrative form and
contradictions eliminated. The table was created and approved by the
community in 2005.



b) Garages – Our understanding is that garages are considered a LCE
and are allocated
to people to use, not own.


QUESTION: How does this work when people have folded their garage into
their mortgage? We don’t know, and need to ask Keast.



We know that at Sunward, when a garage changes hands, the new ownership is
recorded in the Master Deed, and the cost of making the change is borne by
either the seller or buyer, as negotiated.



QUESTION: Ask Keast how much such updates would typically cost, and
encourage community members to use Keast to do this task since he will
already be familiar with our situation.



Next step: Figure out who garages belong to now, put this in the Master
Deed, and figure out a process for putting changes in the Master Deed, and
educate the community about it.



MONKEY: need a definitive list of garages and owners (cf Amy’s monkey to

contact Rod, Ted, and Carl, above). [Subsequent to the meeting, Amy
determined that Carl has the most up to date list, and Rod is going to post
this on the WIKI.]



There is a document on the WIKI that says “How to Sell a Garage”. But we
don’t know if it is an agreement. We searched extensively in the BOA and
did not find an agreement on this.



c) Membership

We understand this item to be a wish to record in the Master Deed that to
buy into GO you must attend a business meeting and a social event (such as a
meal) and you have to be bound by the Book of Agreements. We need to make
sure that any bank that takes possession makes sure that any buyer abides by
this.



QUESTION: How to handle this in the Master Deed? Should there be language
about what banks need to do in the event of a foreclosure? We want them
to ensure that prospective buyers abide by our requirements.



We decided a good next step would be to invite Dale and Adi to the next F&L
meeting. They've both had strong memories, good information and
perspectives, and strong opinions in the past about how these issues are
handled, and we thought it would make good sense to bring them together, to
use their thinking to help us confirm our next steps in a thoughtful way,
and to avoid back-and-forth email exchanges that become hard to follow.



MONKEY: Aaron will invite Dale, Adi and others to the next F&L meeting on
June 13 at 7 pm in the Game Room.
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