Finance & Legal minutes: 2015-02-09

Agenda:

Monkey Review
Accounts Receivable
F&L's Stack of Things to Do Document
CH Assessment Proposals
Update on 2014 Year-End Reports
Garages

Minutes:

Present: Debbi, Keith, Becky G., Becky H., Mary, Amy

New monkeys:

Keith: Keith and Mary recently walked around the community on a site visit
with Paul Conahan. Keith will check in with Mary to see if she wants to
add anything to the notes and then will share them.

Debbi: Get in touch with office renters and households in arrears. Send
Amy updated details about the two units in arrears in preparation for
placing liens. Send Amy the two revised draft proposals for the 2/16 comty
meeting as well as the document outlining history of the CH Assessment.
Send the group the updated "large" proposal so we can review our list of
questions for Keast prior to sending them.

Becky G.: Write to CH Com about office renters in arrears. We'd like to
have clarity on whether it's F&L's or CH's responsibility to deal with
unpaid rent or whether we should work on this together. Work with Amy to
update F&L's to-do list.

Amy: Contact Keast about placing liens on two households in arrears. Work
with Becky G. to update F&L's to-do list. Check in with Syndallas about
Garages.

1. Monkey Review

Becky G.: E-mail CH committee to request that they check DTE statements at
least quarterly to make sure the amounts are correct. DONE

Keith: Keith and Mary recently walked around the community on a site visit
with Paul Conahan. Keith will check in with Mary to see if she wants to
add anything to the notes and then will share them.

2. Accounts Receivable

a. Two CH offices are in arrears on rent

Debbi has been sick hasn't been able to follow up on this. She's feeling
better now and will contact the office renters. She has a copy of the
lease. Becky will get in touch with the Common House Committee now that
Elph is back. We would like to clarify whether it's CH's or F&L's
responsibility to deal with unpaid rent or whether we should work on this
together.

b. Households in arrears

Debbi's illness has prevented her from working on this but she'll be able
to get to it now.

We talked about the two liens that need to be placed. We want to go
forward with these as soon as possible to protect the community's financial
interests. Amy will contact Keast about the liens after Debbi sends her
updated details about their arrears per his request.


3. F&L's Stack of Things to Do Document

Becky G. & Amy will work together to update the To Do document and will
bring it back for the committee's review and approval. When it is up to
date we will start publishing the link in the minutes on a routine basis.
We decided that anyone with the link can read the document, but only
current committee members can edit it. Community members who would like to
see new items added can make a request anytime by e-mailing F&L. The
committee will periodically prioritize and update the list.

4. CH Assessment Proposals

a. Proposal to allow households to pay off Common House Assessment in
full (or in varying amounts) on the comty meeting agenda for February
16. Debbi will present.

A small copy edit was suggested. Debbi will fix it and send to Amy to send
out with the agenda. Amy and Elph are facilitating. Amy will ask Elph to
facilitate the presentation of this proposal.

b. Proposal to Amend the Late Payment of Dues Policy

Debbi drafted a short new proposal that would amend the Late Payment of
Dues Policy to clarify that a household is only in arrears when they are
behind on paying amounts that have been billed to them on a monthly
statement.

c. Community meeting schedule for the cluster of proposals related to
the CH Assessments

The two small proposals will be presented for info/discussion in February,
and will come back for decision in March.

The bigger CH Assessment proposal will be introduced in April. We have to
reach consensus by the business meeting in June. To be safe, Becky G. will
ask for the May Alternative Meeting slot in the next work allocation
(DONE). If we need it, we'll use it for further discussion about the
proposal. If we don't think we'll need it, she'll do a "Reading Financial
Reports 101" session.

d. Discuss how/when we will follow up with the two foreclosed units.

We will ask Keast to verify our understanding about the foreclosed units
and the unit that was purchased in a short sale as they relate to the CH
Assessment and our reading of the Michigan Condominium Act.

We decided to break up our questions to Keast into topical chunks in
e-mails with different subject lines to make sure we can search and find
this information in the future. Debbi will send the group the updated
"large" proposal so we can review our list of questions for Keast prior to
sending them.

5. Update on 2014 Year-End Reports

Becky sent out an e-mail on 1/29/15 with five numbered points regarding
the 2014 Year-End Reports. We discussed three of them and one other
related issue.

#2 The "Workshop loan payback to reserve" item appears twice in the
report. Becky will fix this.

#4 & 5 We decided to leave the expenses from the Reserve and Savings
Accounts in the year-end Budget to Actual Report even though this means it
won't match other reports. Fixing this could result in some information
being overlooked. We agreed that it was very important to provide the
Reserve and Saving Account information. People have asked for this and
that's why it's there. Creating and sending out more reports is not only
cumbersome, but we don't think community members will want to get even more
reports if they are already getting the information in a familiar format.
If people notice the discrepancy between reports, it will be easily
explainable by the Bookkeeper.

After the meeting, Becky G continued to weigh the desire for the reports to
be more "correct" with the desire of the community to not be swamped by
emails. One change she can make, and wants to implement if the committee
agrees, is to change the name of this particular report. Instead of
calling it "Budget to Actuals" which implies only budgeted items, let's
call it what it is: "Great Oak Income & Expenses - Budgeted, Reserve &
Savings." Or something similar. That way, everyone knows when looking at
it that it is a special combination report.

We also talked about a point that Adi brought up, namely, how can it be
that our bottom line looks so healthy for 2014 when we have such large
arrears?

A: Because we are on the accrual system, and we show billed amounts as
income. Also because a lot of the arrears happened in previous years and
the households with the largest amounts due each made several payments in
2014. Finally, there are some households that have paid in advance and
have a credit. This shows up as income, even though it hasn't been billed
yet.

Adi found a website that said that you can't record income until it has
been billed. Becky talked to GO's CPA about this. Len explained that this
depends on our organization's policy. If we allow pre-payments with the
understanding that we will NOT return the $ unless the member moves out,
then we can and should count it as income when we get it. If we allow
pre-payments and WILL return the prepayment if the member asks at any time,
regardless of the reason, then no, we should not count it as income until
we bill for it.

Since we don't have a policy either way, we should create one at some point
to match what we have been doing all along - counting it as income when it
is received. This will be added to our To Do list. We decided to keep
the reports as they are until we make the policy match our practice.

6. Garages

a. Let's de-couple this from the CH Assessment work. Amy will check in
with Syndallas to see where things stand and when she can circulate draft
questions for Keast.

7. Next meeting

Monday, February 23 @ 7 pm in the CH Sitting Room