Finance & Legal minutes: 2015-09-09

Minutes:

Great Oak Cohousing

Minutes of Finance & Legal Committee

9-9-15

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

1. Meeting with candidate attorney, Richard Delonis, of Szura &
Delonis, P.L.C., of Plymouth

We have checked out 3 attorneys: Veronique Liem, Meisner Law Group, and
Rick Delonis. Liem is not a specialist in condo law. She is just interested
in cohousing, and willing to learn more about condo law. Meisner
specializes in condo law, but is expensive; he wants $325 for an initial
consultation. Delonis is a specialist in condo and real estate law. His
rates are lower than Keast, Meisner, and Liem; he has flat fees for many
typical services. He does not require a retainer. We liked his answers to
our questions. We would like to work with him.

Becky H. will ask him to send us the document he asks his clients to sign
acknowledging his fee structure. We’ll provide him with our foundational
legal documents to review. Meanwhile, we’ll start a list of questions for
him.

We’ll keep our retainer with Keast until we’re sure we like Delonis, and in
case we have any final questions with him.

2. Arrears

• CH Office Arrears

Two of the CH offices are in arrears. CH Committee convener Elph has talked
with Matthew Cooke, who has signed an agreement to pay up by the end of the
year. Matthew owes more than $2300. Becky H. will ask Kelly Clark to sign
a payment plan in which late fees will be waived only if the current
month’s rent is paid and a payment is made toward the balance. Kelly owes
$991.

Elph reported that there was a recent inquiry about renting a GO office,
and last week he sent out a call to find out if there are others who would
be interested in getting on a wait list. It makes obvious sense to rent
only to parties who will pay regularly.

We talked about proposing a community agreement that eviction would be a
consequence of not paying office rent when arrears cross a certain
threshold. Since office rents are ~$200/mo, we talked about $500 as a
threshold, triggering action in the third month of arrears. We talked about
including this information in office leases and in payment plans, to
document that renters understand that eviction could occur. We still need
to research the legal aspects of this.

There is an existing Common House Office Policy from 2003. Perhaps this
could be amended to clarify committee responsibilities as well as how we
will handle arrears. We were not able to find a CH Committee Mandate in
the Book of Agreements.

We think it makes sense to review CH rentals annually during the budget
process. Each office renter should sign a new lease each fall for the
coming New Year.

The idea of a lower rate of rent for GO owner-occupied offices was
suggested, because GO owners pay toward the general upkeep and maintenance
of the CH as part of their household association fees.

• Household arrears

During the meeting, Becky G. e-mailed an owner who is in arrears over
$1000, and received an immediate response saying they would send a check
soon, and plan to catch up by the end of October.

Another household in arrears is in frequent, proactive contact with Becky
G. about their situation. We appreciate the proactive communication and are
fine with working with them during a difficult time.

One of the two households most seriously in arrears has a debt of close to
$5000. Assuming we go forward with the community’s decision to refund
Reserve funds that had been saved for decks, this household will receive a
credit, which will knock down the debt somewhat.

We have an agreement ready for the other household to sign. A signing
meeting is scheduled with them for Sunday evening.

Now that we anticipate having a new attorney, we plan to discuss arrears
with him and get his advice on how best to move forward with them.

We talked about Jillian’s recent request that we present a report to the
community about the status of arrears, and will return to this at our next
meeting.

3. 2015 Reserve Study

Decks

Keith, Becky, and Dale have put in many hours studying the history of
savings for decks in the Reserve fund, with the goal of figuring out how
much households would be refunded. [Subsequent to the meeting, Debbi
reviewed the logic and thought it was sound. Adi questioned whether we had
been saving enough all along, and is not comfortable refunding money until
he understands this. Becky G. will contact Paul Conahan to follow up on
Adi’s question. Keith, Becky, and Dale’s work focused on tracking how much
has actually been saved, vs. how much should have been saved.]

We talked about publishing the deck refund calculations to the community,
and giving people time to review and respond. The calculations were based
on doing the credits in December, based on a full year of payments in 2015.

We decided to ask our new attorney Rick Delonis to advise us on whether
refunds should go to current owners only or also to past owners. Amy will
follow up.

3. Operating Budget Process

Mary and Dale sent out an e-mail about this with the following schedule:

- Wednesday 10/7/15 - Draft budget
- Wednesday 11/4/15 - Revised budget
- Monday 11/16/15 - Final budget approval
- Wednesday 12/2/15 - Alternate final budget approval - if we can't come
to consensus on 11/16

4. F&L workload

We have so much work on our plates that we decided to meet again on
Saturday, September 12 at 4 pm.

We need to clarify roles with the CH Com around office rentals, and with
Grounds around the truck insurance.

5. Audit Update - tabled

6. Bookkeepers’ Updates – tabled until Saturday. Becky would like to
talk about

the year-end balance calculation. Len suggested a simple approach, but
Becky realized that this overlooked some important considerations.

7. Next meeting: Saturday, 9-12-15

Next regular meeting, 9-23-15 – we’ll need to talk about the F&L Budget for
2016 at this meeting.
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