Finance & Legal minutes: 2017-08-29

Minutes:

Minutes of 8-29-17 Finance & Legal Committee Meeting

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

1. CH Special Assessments
a. The community approved the changes to the CH Special Assessment
Agreement on 8/21. Debbi will send the document to Yi-Miau to be entered
into the Book of Agreements.
b. Attorney Rick Delonis sent the revised cover letters and liens to the
two households who are still paying their assessments on a monthly basis.
We felt that the language was sterner than was necessary, so Becky H. will
contact the households to say so. As long as they remain current with
their association fees, we will not record the liens with the County.
Copies of the letters and liens will be filed at GO.
c. There is nothing further we need to do with this item apart from
bookkeeping transfers (see #3 below), so we had a brief moment of
celebration :).

2. Insurance questions
a. Tabled due to a death in the family.

3. Bookkeeping
a. 2016 Audit – Becky G. received responses to our questions on August
11. Some of the points made:
• We still have a solar tax credit of about $3700, plus we had made one
estimated tax payment of $1300 in 2015 but we didn’t need to use it, so we
don’t have to make any estimated payments and probably won’t owe taxes for
the next couple of years.
• Jessica sent instructions for making bookkeeping adjustments related to
accrual accounting, such as how our water bills are recorded.
• She’s making the wording changes we wanted. Once done, Becky told her
she can send us the final copies. We will schedule a time for Jessica to
come to present the audit to the community.
Becky would also like to meet with her for an hour or two to go over some
Quickbooks questions.
b. GOCA’s 2016 tax return was filed in mid-August.
c. Arrears: One household is over $1000. We will wait until Sept. 1 to
see if a payment is made, then place a lien if not. [Subsequent to the
meeting, the household made a substantial payment.]

4. Master Deed Changes
a. Patti and Elph were assigned F&L Special Project jobs. They will help
Debbi by doing a
close read of her drafts.
b. Draft Bylaws Updates and Questions.
Debbi marked up a copy of our current Bylaws, bolding sections that are new
text, crossed out sections that have to do with the developer, and
highlighting places where she has questions.

Debbi found that the copy of the Bylaws in the Book of Agreements had info
missing. It appears that someone retyped it and introduced errors and
omissions. The PDF in the important documents section on the WIKI is
accurate. The Book of Agreements needs to be fixed. Could just have a
link to the correct text.

We went through the document and discussed each item that Debbi had flagged.

Article 3, Section 2: Annual meetings. Debbi will check the Michigan Condo
Law to see what it says about Annual meetings.

Article 4, Section 1: Re: Steering Committee - we need to discuss what
“pre-selected” means. Possible alternative wording: “one assigned member
of each of the major committees.”
Check Steering Mandate: might be “conveners or their designate” and
possibly add: “for the entire work season.”

Article 4, Section 4b: Access to each unit in an emergency is required.
Pass to Buildings Com to figure out a strategy. The emergency contact info
on the WIKI has a field for this info. We could ask Tom to add a field to
Gather since the WIKI emergency contact info seems to be out of date in
many instances.

Section 8: Officers. Adjustments are needed to which committees the
officers should come from. The auditor in 2015 said: At least one of the
officers should be a check signer; usually it is the President and the
Treasurer who are check signers. This sounds like they should both be on
F&L. Suggestion: make convener of F&L the President, the Bookkeeper the
Treasurer, the Process convener the Secretary, and the Infoco position the
VP.
Formatting change: Reverse the order to start with Officer title first and
Committee title second.

Article 5 Section 3 – Levy of Assessments. Regarding the Reserve: We
planned to talk about this two years prior to the next Reserve Study, which
would be next year, 2018. Do we try to work on this issue before we submit
the changes to the MD and Bylaws to the mortgage holders, etc.? It would
be best if it were changed. Are we seriously going to look at this issue?
Right now we are not doing what the Bylaws say. We are doing a very
detailed calculation. According to Paul Conahan, most associations don’t
do as detailed a calculation as we do. How do we want to tackle this for
this Bylaws revision? We can decide what “proportional” means. Could be
by unit type. In general, simplifying is desirable.

Article 5, Section 4 – Collection of Assessments. Debbi wanted to make
sure that this is what we actually do. Becky G responded yes, either the
seller has to pay off outstanding assessments before closing, or it gets
covered by the buyer during the sale. Usually the mortgage company sends us
a check, and we don’t know which side paid for it, it just gets paid.

Article 6 – Section 1 – Taxes. Obsolete and struck out.

Article 6 – Section 2a – Insurance. Says we have to have worker
compensation insurance, also on next page. Let’s delete; we don’t have
paid workers in this way. We could replace it with the name of the special
policy we have for volunteer workers. Work Skills workers are insured by
Work Skills.

Debbi will check on insurance for sliding doors, windows; will look at
Master Deed language about this.

Article 6 – Section 2b – highlighted last two sentences: this will be
important when we have the discussions about unit modification agreements.

Article 6 – Section 2c – Insurance to protect the Association against
bad-apple officers. We have insurance to protect the officers in case
anything goes wrong with GOCA, but do we have the other way? Rod has
binder. Check this.

Article 7, Section 3e - Conflict transformation process, add something
about communication pathway.

Article 7, Section 4 –It turns out that when we make an agreement that
affects CEs and LCEs, it can’t go into effect right away. New agreements
go into effect no sooner than 10 days from the agreement. Debbi will check
to see if this is Condo Law. Also, will check about whether we really do
need to distribute copies. Can we delete this? Debbi will see if we can.

Article 7, Section 7. Landscaping. No fertilizers, pesticides, etc. Need
to make this more widely known.

Section 8 – Mortgages – 2. Notice of new insurance needs to be furnished
to any group that has a financial interest in the Association, such as our
mortgage holders. Debbi will look at the Michigan Condo Association
website to see if she can find out how we’re supposed to do this. New
mortgage holders always ask about our insurance.

Debbi will research questions we came up with, then bring it back to F&L.
Then have Patti & Elph read this before it goes to the community.

5. GO Operating Budget Process
a. Has a message gone out announcing the budget meeting schedule and
the deadline for
committees to submit their budgets? Amy will ask Mary about
this again.
b. We will discuss F&L’s budget at our first meeting in September.

6. Other Business
a. Pet issue: Amy needs to follow up on this. We would like to schedule a
meeting to explain why there is a liability issue. We need to find a time
to meet in the next 6 weeks, or else it will go to a business meeting.

b. Truck proposal on stack for an upcoming meeting.

c. Sign at entrance to Parkland Plaza – any news? No.

7. Fall F&L meeting schedule:

Weds 9/13
Weds 9/27
Weds 10/11
Weds 10/25
Tues 11/7
Weds 11/29
Tues 12/12
Weds 12/27 or possibly an F&L holiday :)



Cooler doc:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_dmnNJmHmrwwFIfnscnRbPK-_8_kmahfFsOTn_fEvTY/edit
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