![Minutes: Finance & Legal 2005-05-09 [Minutes]](display/images/gocohologo.gif)
Finance & Legal minutes: 2005-05-09
Minutes:
[[FinanceAndLegalMinutes]]Monday, May 9th, 7pm, location: CH sitting room
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Attendance: Willie, Judith, Jim G, [[Rod]] (some), Tracy (some), [[Elph]] (some), Rachel (some), Adi, Bill
Minutes by: Willie
F&L minutes, Monday, May 9th 7-9pm, CH sitting room
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Agenda
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* LTCRF check-in and proposal to hire Paul Conahan:
* Finops and Bookeeper's report
* Future meeting times
* Grounds contingency expense
* Contingency re-allocation
* Master deed changes
* Filing cabinet keys
* steering report
* future of F&L convenership
* F&L current topics
LTCRF check-in and proposal to hire Paul Conahan:
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The workforce started in Nov '04 with [[Elph]], Mary King, and Rachel. They took a break in Jan and Feb. and started working again in March. They've learned about the grey area between operating and reserves. Learned many terms, such as allowance item.
Allowance is typically a big amount that's set aside as a line item to be able to fulfill one of many large possible items. Is this allowance something that should be a budget item over a couple of years?
The reserve sets up a minimum threshold expense. Above that, we'll put that into the reserves. If you have large ticket items, put that into the reserves to stack up the money in declared intervals. Allownance can be spent at any time.
* allowance
* CH
* grounds
* homes
Set a minimum threshold expense of about $1k. We should figure out how much should go into the reserves. The reserve elements are in the minutes on the last page.
What are the useful life, and repair, replacement costs? The useful life of these items should reflect the 1.5 years that we've been living here.
They met with Paul Conahan. He brings these things to the table:
* good price, for about 1/3 the cost of his competitors
* cohousing experience
* 15 years appraisal experience
* good to have an unbiased neutral expert
* he's local, and plans to live there for the rest of his life, and intends to offer us regular updates for $400 (at 3 years).
Current reserves placeholders adds up to about $23,400 a year. This is probably within the ballpark. We have no anticipated expenses in this fund. We'll need to address this.
Sunward is putting away about $19k, but they also have an unanticipated line item of about $20k.
We would be taxed on the interest earned of the amount we've reserved, due to Michigan condo law. We need to figure out taxes, our current placeholder is about 25%.
MONKEY: F&L, do we get taxed on the interest that we each year?
What do we do from this point forward?
The payment for an appraisal would likely come from the reserve itself.
MONKEY: F&L, how do we manage short-term loans from the reserve?
MONKEY: F&L: Can we get our money back, or should we even just fill out the form that we've purchased already, and see what we get back?
We'd like to get this done quickly, and accurately. [[Elph]] would feel more comfortable using an external expert assembling the numbers in case of some sort of legal or accounting questions in the future.
Paul is working on the full certification, but he needs 3 participants, we may be the third. We would be the first as this company, he's trying to make the shift to doing this full-time. His full price is about $3500.
We would like to have this fee set before going into the next budgeting process.
Finops and Bookeeper's report
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MONKEY: Willie will call Dave Myler back to follow up with historical questions.
The emphasis so far has been on getting the taxes completed and filed. We should work on cleaning up the books in the future. Bill will arrive back in town around May 24th, but will take a little bit of time to recover.
Willie and George have spoken about how bookkeeping operates. George plans to meet with Patti on a weekend, and plans to meet near the end of the month. George is feeling like tacking a try at it on his own, and thinks that he should pass it on to her to get checked.
The chart of accounts will need to be updated for 2005, but this may not happen until we have closed the books for 2004.
The entries that have been made for 2005, have used the 2004 categories, and will need to be cleaned up. We need to schedule a bookkeeper's summit.
Future meeting times
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We should keep something consistent. Adi votes for mondays, and that the same time as membership. Bill has a standing 6:30 meeting. Judith can attend when she can. Finops and bookkeepers reports can come at the end of the meetings.
new meeting times will be on 2nd and 4th mondays, 7-9pm.
Grounds contingency expense
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We agreed that grounds would pay $240 for the garden dirt. However because of the confusion in dumping the dirt, how do we pay for the additional $195. We had allocated some from contingency.
Jillian is asking families to pay about another $10 each, or we could take a hit on one of the emergency / contingency funds. However, we might not want to dip into those for this.
Where does it come from? The first third of the grounds contingency.
Feelings are that we shouldn't feel very cautious with this. We don't owe the township, CDC does. This $240 isn't very much, and we can afford that. Should we give the rest to grounds right now? We feel uncomfortable until at least the next steering meeting.
F&L reimburses grounds for the $240 for now. The remaining money from the first third, well - we'll let steering decide what to do with that, however F&L feels that it should go to grounds.
Contingency re-allocation
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We should solicit mini proposals, and continue with our original plan.
MONKEY: Willie will send out an email reminder to the conveners, and handouts.
Master deed changes:
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MONKKEY: Willie will write up a LCE / GCE proposal
* TS wetlands easement - [[Rod]] clarifies that this is a description of how TouchStone can access the wetlands. Legally, they have a right to access the wetlands, along the road and sidewalk.
This suggestion is that we allow TS members to walk through our community to access the wetlands. We already created an agreement to work with them (it's in the book of agreements, but doesn't spell out how they can access it), and negotiate this with the TS community.
We can basically punt on this until there is a problem.
We may not need a legal requirement for this. They would only need a legal requirement to protect us from developing an agreement to block them. The idea of making this a master deed change came up when we started thinking about bundling it with the other options.
This was going to the one item that we were going to take to Susan Morrison. We're going to put this into the freezer until it needs attention.
* New member requirements
Membership wanted us to ask a lawyer what can be legally binding.
What kind of teeth should this agreement have? We had waived the technicality of not having attended a meeting for Jay and Tracy. Jim feels that we can make exceptions if we're persuaded.
What does Sunward do? We've heard that they're fairly rigid as far as attendance. There have been some complaints as far as what they do.
Perhaps we should push this over to membership, and ask them to go fishing with other communities. We need to have a specific for the lawyer.
* Garage ownership
[[Jenny]] sent out the email, and we felt that the ball is in their court to contact the people and gather the information that's needed.
MONKEY: Willie will talk with [[Jenny]] and Amy H.
Buildings will be putting numbers on the garages. There will be a document that maintains a list of owners. We need to spell out if people have purchased leases, or a specific garage.
Filing cabinet keys
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* key lock box
* F&L convener
* finops convener
* member bookkeeper
* general bookkeper
Steering report
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They discussed rotation of shifts, but nothing is really on fire. Jim is on until December.
future of F&L convenership
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Halloween will be Willie's last day, which happens to be the end of the work season. This will be over a year, we should start thinking about recruiting a new convener for the next work season.
F&L Current Topics
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bookkeeper summit: Bill not available on monday or tuesday nights
MONKEY: Bill get the manual to George
MONKEY: Judith and Jim will write something up (CIC) and send out to the committee before the next meeting.
* Workshop, the initial proposal was rejected by the township, but has been re-submitted for consideration. Willie will wait until the workshop committee needs an approval made.
Next meeting: Monday, May 23rd 7-9pm. In the sitting room.