Finance & Legal minutes: 2015-10-28

Agenda:

Jobs and Hours for Winter Season
F & L Operating Budget Request
Arrears
2015 Reserve Study
Property Management Firm
Ongoing

Minutes:

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



1. Jobs and Hours for Winter Season

a. Bookkeeper jobs: same as Fall

b. Counted members: increase to 4 hours each to symbolically recognize
that we spend far more than the current 3 hours/month we are currently
allotted.

c. We will assign Debbi 2 hrs/month as a Special Project Coordinator
to work on Master Deed Changes. Amy will ask Becky G. if she would like us
to assign her a Special Project Coordinator job for the Audit work, and
Syndallas if she has time to continue working on reviewing GOCA's
association and truck insurance policies as a Special Project.

d. We talked about the idea of designating certain F&L members as
specialists for certain areas (e.g. Becky H. already focuses on Arrears).
These would not be jobs in the work system.



2. F&L: 2016 Operating Budget Request; all set



3. Arrears

a. One of the households seriously in arrears has announced a plan to
pay back their debt in full and then set up monthly auto-payments going
forward. They requested that we forgive some or all of their accrued late
fees. We decided to credit them for 6 months of late fees, but not until
they have paid the arrears in full and we have received two months of
regular fees via auto-payment. At that point we'll credit the account and
the funds will be held as a surplus in their account to cover small
overages.



Our greatest concern with this household is the lack of communication about
their situation over a long period of time. We want to work with people
who are having a hard time but don't want to have to track them down.
We're not happy about crediting the late fees because it feels like
rewarding behavior that is not what we ask of community members. On the
other hand, Great Oak is a supportive community and we want to reflect our
values around helping our neighbors when they are struggling.



b. We need to have a larger conversation about arrears. We were
surprised to discover a several-years old community agreement that
apparently had not been uploaded into the Book of Agreements. This
agreement gives us the authority to take more stringent legal steps when
debt crosses the $2000 threshold. A refreshing policy moment would be
useful to remind everyone about this.



c. We talked about the current arrears report. We hope people will pay
by the end of the month. Becky H. will call one household to check in.



d. Attorney Rick Delonis's advice about arrears. We spent some time
discussing parts of his message but did not get through it all.



4. 2015 Reserve Study

a. Deck reimbursement discussion.



Attorney Rick Delonis said that we are not legally obliged to pay back the
deck contributions, but if we want to, we can. But if we do, he
recommended that we pay back just what current owners paid in, because
there's a chance that previous owners would want to claim the funds that
they paid in. Although there are some community members who feel that
current owners should receive the full amount ever paid in for decks for a
unit, we decided to go with our attorney's recommendation.



The decks are in the Master Deed and will need to taken out when we make
the MD changes. We had already decided to continue to collect at the
current rate through 2015 for decks, then stop collecting as of January
2016. Hold onto funds until Master Deed is changed, then credit households.



A spreadsheet that indicates who's responsible for what was the basis of
the Reserve, for specifying Association responsibility. Decks, patios, and
stoops are all in it as Association responsibilities, even though they are
described as LCEs in the Master Deed.



Keith will draft the Deck Reimbursement Proposal to bring forward to for a
future community meeting.





b. Reserve Spreadsheet discussion



For the 2015 Reserve Study, new large expenses (painting and siding
replacement) have come within the 25-year replacement horizon. Because of
the way we calculate Reserve payments, using a detailed spreadsheet, units
with more exterior surface area will see their Reserve payments go up more
than units with less. Right now this appears as a big jump in year 1, then
after that, all units' Reserve contributions will have a 4% increase per
year.



There are about 14 units whose Reserve payments would go up significantly.
These are end units. We talked at length about the fact that it was the
architects who made the decision of where to put each unit type. These
owners are already paying more for extra windows (and extra heat). The
fact that the way we do the Reserve fund payments is different than the way
that every other condo does it is very frustrating to some. We're very
inconsistent about how we define fair: e.g. we aggregate building water
usage irrespective of how many people live in a unit, but siding on a
building is calculated down the the square inch.



Before the meeting, Becky G. suggested that we have already put a lot of
work into the Reserve study and that maybe we should just allow the big
bump to happen to these units this one time, especially since the Operating
Budget cost per unit will be lower in 2016.



But we also have a precedent from 2010 in which we spread out a sharp
increase over 5 years to soften the blow. We could do that again now, and
then provide the bookkeeper with this information on a unit-by-unit basis
for the next 5 years.



Mary and Debbi agreed to spend an hour playing around with a copy of the
spreadsheet to see what solutions they could come up with.



Syndallas commented via e-mail that we can't change method of calculating
the Reserve Study without the approval of all mortgage holders. We would
need to check with our attorney to be sure we manage the Reserve Fund
within the bounds of the law.


5. Property Management Firm

Syndallas recently suggested that we consider hiring a property management
firm to do some or much of what F&L does. Their expertise could save a lot
of time.

Becky G. pointed out that Great Oak has so many quirky ways of doing things
because of our community-centered values that it's not a simple matter to
hire out the work. This has most definitely been the case with the CPA.




6. Ongoing

a. Bookkeepers' updates - none

b. Audit firm search: no news

c. Insurance: Syndallas reviewed our current insurance documents, and
identified several questions to pursue with our insurance agent. She also
wants to run our current policy by another agent to see if we are getting
the best deal. Grounds wrote to F&L with questions about the Truck
policy. All of these issues could be folded into a Special Projects job.
Amy will talk with Syndallas about this.

d. CH Assessment Liens

i. Amy will ask Rick Delonis to review Keast's CH Assessment Lien
template.

e. Getting clarity and documenting CH Office rental oversight
responsibility; still pending. Right now our community agreement says it
is the CH Committee's responsibility.


7. Next meeting: Wednesday, November 11 @ 7 pm