Steering minutes: 2005-07-17

Minutes:

Steering meeting
Sunday, July 17,
7-8pm

Present: Tim (grounds), Jim G (finance), Heather (membership), Adi (work), Jillian (Process), Nancy (common house, filling in for Becky), Ted (construction), [[Jenny]] (buildings)

Jillian is filling in for Becky for minutes since Becky is at the Budget meeting, next meeting's minute taker will be Jim G for Finance.

Agenda
1. Monkey Review
2. Window wells
3. Discussion/Decision of grading the play field
4. Wall of dirt - update
5. [[Committee]] Updates
6. Steering rotation
7. Next meeting


1. Monkey Review

Ted was supposed to send the window well letter to Bill Kinley and he did.
JD did email out the list of what is in the wildflower mix.


2. Window well issues

Ted sent a letter to Bill Kinley of Phoenix about the unacceptable window wells in buildings 4 and 10.

Ted sent out an email yesterday, there was major leakage over the weekend. [[Elph]] has agreed to cover the situation as Phoenix's contact while Ted is away, from Tuesday through July 30 (late). Ted will let the Phoenix/CDC players all know tomorrow what the situation is and that Ted will be out of town, and will let steering know if we need to do anything.

GO installed gutters on building 4, GO may have exacerbated a problem that was already there. The gutters should not matter, but they may have caused more water to be next to the foundation. There are some pretty good solutions for most of those problems around bldg 4 - there's a place where we need to add more dirt, it's settled (which is normal for new construction).

We had a large amount of rain yesterday, and Jim G said the flooding was worse than they had ever had (though they have had it time after time). This is a continuing flooding problem and its worse than its ever been.

It shouldn't matter that we put the gutters in but it does, so we can fix our part. The downspouts.

So while Phoenix is thinking about their end, what does Buildings need to do? Does buildings need money or labor or?

Buildings might want to hire it out because it sounds like we need this to happen fast. Change the gutter on the front of building 4 - might need to hire that out. Take the water from the high part of the roof and put it in the drains in front of the building.

Are those drains in front, dry wells or do they connect? I think they dump into the footing drains for the building and go off to the pond but I (Ted) need to ask Kirk.

We know for certain that the one behind the bldg goes to the pond.

The biggest labor is to get the water from Jim's downspout, around the back of the building, to the lawn drain.

Reorienting helen's downspout is a 10 minute job, that will help a lot, but we also have to fill in the dirt.

Has a meeting time been set with Phoenix? Not yet. Will have to be when Ted gets back into town.

In the interim those gutters should be fixed.

What do you need steering to do? If emergency money needs to be spent then we need to spend it.

MONKEY: Ted will make sure [[Elph]] and [[Jenny]] know to take action on the gutters now, not wait til he gets back.

MONKEY: [[Elph]] and [[Jenny]] should contact steering if they need any assistance in fixing the gutters (an ok for money or whatever)

Ted thinks there's enough money in the buildings budget.


3. Play field grading

I was out there yesterday and it was very boggy - standing water, but this is probably because here's no grass yet to suck it up, vegetation will eventually help loosen up the soil out there. There's more and more gravel as the soil is eroded away from the slope.

From the pre-meeting steering/grounds email exchanges, people seemed to prefer to spend the steering emergency fund to pay for it.

This worries me but I can let it go. If a real emergency did come up we would then deal with it and find funds. This is urgent from the timing point of view, to take advantage of the nearness of the equipment and create a usable play space.

In this year's budget steering and F&L both have some funds.

And there was the 2004 extra money. Willie pointed out yet that we have not yet closed the books for 2004 so we don't know yet where we came out. Steering's fund for 2005 is $2000. Has any been spent? Jim G does not think so.

I would say spend the steering emergency money and we'll see which fund gets tapped in the end. Sounds like there's money there somewhere, does not really make sense to assess members now.

Really makes sense to have this work done while the large dirt moving equipment is already on site for TS.

What should our cap be? Why don't we say $2000.

There's a certain amount of remediation Phoenix is already responsible to do out there. Tim should be careful that they only charge us for raising the grade.

We know that people really want a playfield and are unhappy with it as it stands. It really makes logical sense to do this while we can save money on the equipment, seems like we should take this risk.

AGREED: Steering ok's up to $2000 to use to correct the playfield grading.

MONKEY: Adi will announce this decision at tomorrow night's meeting since Katie is away.


4. The wall of dirt - Update?

There's a wildflower mix that will be used by Margolis. Surprising they have not sprayed it on yet though.



5. [[Committee]] Updates

Anything urgent/important that steering needs to know about?

Work - fall workday will be on Oct 15 instead of Oct 22.

Common house - had a meeting and it was good, we had 5-6 people there. Talked about a/c temperature, movie screen, game room survey, piano, computer location, magazines, etc.

Grounds met on Thurs, talked about mini proposals and a few other things.

Membership - met with Cynthia from PFC and with Nick and talked about the picnic, seemed good on the whole and will probably do it again next year. [[Jenny]] came to the meeting and we talked about getting the word out more about cohousing and trying to make everyone realize how important it is to talk about cohousing and develop a waiting list for GO.

F&L - The survey on the use of the general contingency, Willie is still hoping for more responses, and that will appear on an August meeting agenda. In terms of the garages, Tracy talked to the guy at Absolute Title, who says that one does not have [[title]] to a garage, the association owns the garages. What one has is the use of that garage and that "right to use" a garage can be sold to another. If the association has a usage list the mortgage holders should be fine with that, that the "use" of a garage can be bought and sold.

But what about the banks? Won't they care if someone sells the use of their garage? Would lower the "value" of a unit they hold the mortgage on. Don't know. Seems like a loophole. We all have part of the common house in our unit value.

Is this info going to come out to the whole group? yes,
MONKEY: Jim G will be communicating it.

And how does the book closing and monthly report situation going?

The situation is problematic still since we haven't seen the reports yet or
heard about the book closing, but it is better than it was.



6. Steering rotation

Per Steering's new rotation system Jillian's 3-4 years on Steering for Process cmtee are up, this is her last meeting, she had to miss the last process meeting so is not sure who is taking her place but will find out. (Jim G says that it's Gail.)



7. Next meeting
First Sunday in August
August 7, 7pm.
Minute taker will be F&L.