Contents
1. Long Range Plan
2. Speed Humps
3. Committee Policy
4. Purchasing Policy
5. Financials
6. Executive Sessions
7. Safety – Gate Operations

Within this summary are comments and information that may relate to the March 18th meeting.

1.  Long Range Plan

The Long Range Plan was approved at the March meeting and is posted on the POA web site here: Long Range Plan. The sidewalk priority list was removed from the final, approved version. Other minor changes were made, but I don’t think they would be considered significant. The new chair of the Long Range Plan Committee is Bill Colton.

2.  Speed Humps

In March, the Board postponed a decision on replacing the two speed humps that were removed during the road reconstruction project. One was located just before the bar code entry gate, and the other was located on Governors Drive near Graham. At this meeting, they unanimously voted to authorize re-installing both speed humps.

3.  Policy on Committees

In March, the Board approved a new policy for committees which is now available for review.  It can be found here:  Committee Policy

To my knowledge, this is the first time a written policy has been created for committees. Therefore, you may find it worth a look. It includes the following points.

• Every year, The POA President appoints the committee chairs, members and board liaisons; which are then approved by the entire Board.
• Committee members should commit to a three year term, but terms are “subject to the Board’s discretion”.
• The Board has the responsibility to, at any time, add and remove committee members and chairs as it sees fit.

(Editorial Comment: Since there has never been a written policy on committees, it is difficult to say whether this changes anything. When this discussion began several months ago, I had the impression it was prompted by the desire to limit terms of service and/or to remove certain people. Since the Board always approved members on an annual basis, that power more or less already existed; but it would now appear to be codified in this policy.

There was initially some discussion of limiting committee chairs to one three year term, but that does not appear in this final version. Instead, there is the rather broad power of the Board to remove people as it sees fit.

One item may have changed, but it is not totally clear. In the past, I believe committee chairs were responsible for recruiting members and thus had primary say over who would be on their committee. This new policy states that the President appoints both the chair and the committee members. But, at the same time, it says that the chairs “have a responsibility to identify and recruit the best qualified candidates”. It is unclear to me whether this new policy means that the President intends to become more involved in choosing committee members, wants to preserve a veto power or intends to simply approve the choices made by the chairs.)

4.  Purchasing Policy

A purchasing policy has been proposed and is currently being reviewed by the Board. For those interested, it can be found on page 20 (referring to the handwritten numbers in the lower right hand corner of each page) in the Board packet here:  April Board Packet

5.  Financials

It appears that the only overage worth noting relates to storm maintenance. We are already $6,000 over budget, and this should rise to $10,000 with the replenishment of our road salt. And this overage would increase if we incur expenses related to summer storms or snowfalls prior to year end. To the extent there are other overages, they appear to be timing related.  Final road reconstruction costs still look as if they will be in the range of $2.3 to $2.4 million.

The annual audit has been completed. A copy of the audited statement is available at the POA office for anybody that wants to review it. The Board discussed posting this on the web site, but no final decision was made.

6.  Executive Sessions

The Board met in Executive Session for two hours during the March meeting to discuss infrastructure projects and delinquencies; and in April for two hours to take legal advice.

7.  Safety – Gate Operations

This will summarize what happened at both meetings; in between which the two robberies took place. And, as you know from the survey request you received, the discussion at the most recent meeting dealt with the concept of capturing every visitor’s driver’s license information. However, not fully outlined in the survey request was a prior proposal for a different type of scanner to record different information. A full explanation and comparison is needed so as to understand how we got where we are today.

(Editorial Note: Please bear with me on this explanation. Some misconceptions exist regarding the gate entry procedures. I can’t cover all aspects of the system here, but I will try to cover those portions that have to do with the two most recent proposals. If you wish to understand why the Board asked for your opinion on the license reader, it will help to read this all the way through. Sorry, but this can’t be done in a tweet.)

Prior to the March meeting, the Safety Committee recommended purchasing hand-held bar code “pass scanners”; the reasons for which had to do with “multi-day passes”. To understand why requires reviewing our current entry procedures.

Every visitor is registered in advance within the Capsure system. Upon entering, they receive either a “one-time pass” (which expires that day) or a “multi-day pass” (which expires in anywhere from 2 to 14 days). Multi-day passes exist for the convenience of residents. For example, if you have a visitor staying more than one day, a multi-day pass eliminates your having to log on and register them every day. Instead, your visitor shows the pass to the gate attendant to gain entry.  The same is true of a contractor that will be visiting your house over a period of several days.

So, with the “one-time pass”, we know the name of the visitor, who authorized the entry, the actual time of entry, where they are going and that the pass expires that day. Coupled with the video cameras at each gate, we have pretty complete information on these visitors.

But, a “multi-day pass” does not expire in one day. We have a record of the initial entry, but there is no mechanism to allow us to record subsequent entries. All the attendants can do on subsequent days is visually check the expiration date on the pass and then let the visitor in. But, on any given day, we will not have a record of which valid, multi-day passes are used to gain entrance to the community.

However, a pass scanner allows the attendant to quickly scan the bar code on the multi-day pass itself; which automatically checks its validity and registers the entry in the Capsure system. These scanners would allow us to have a complete computerized record of who entered the community on any given day; including those entering on multi-day passes. In addition to providing useful information, it was felt that the use of the pass scanners would heighten the perception of security at the gates. For these reasons, the Safety Committee recommended the purchase of these scanners for around $2,000.

The Board turned down this recommendation at its March meeting.

At its April meeting, the Safety Committee decided to re-recommend the purchase of the pass scanners to the Board. However, several days prior to the Board meeting, one or more directors proposed an alternative solution; namely the use of optical driver’s license readers to record license information for every visitor; both on “one-time passes” and “multi-day passes”.

It is important to understand the distinction between these two options. The hand-held pass scanner operates similar to a supermarket checkout scanner. It will read the bar code printed on the pass itself, check the validity of the pass and record the entry into the system; all in the space of several seconds.

The license reader is an optical reader. It does not scan the bar codes on the back of the license. Rather, it “takes a picture” of the front of the license, including the photo, reads the characters and stores the information. Once the license is in hand, the “reading” process itself takes several seconds.  But, unlike the pass scanner, that information is not automatically linked to the multi-day pass being shown to the guard. (I’ll return to this point a little later.)

At the April meeting, both alternatives were discussed at length. My impression was that the majority of Board members favored the use of license readers. Two were against the idea; two reasons being the intrusive nature of asking for a license and privacy concerns related to recording information off the licenses. It was noted, however, that the optical reader could be programmed to record only limited information; for example, only the last four digits of the license number.

It appeared to me that the Board was reaching agreement on using the license readers, but everyone appeared to recognize that it might not be wise to institute such a radical change without getting some reading from the community at large. Therefore, they decided to do a poll; which you received last week.

And that is pretty much where it stands right now.

(Editorial Comments: I believe several items are worth noting; because this is both a complicated and potentially emotional issue.

Contrary to what was written in the survey request, the Safety Committee did not propose using license readers. Rather, that proposal came from the Board. As to judging which alternative would be better; pass scanners vs. license readers; the committee did not have enough information or time to make a firm determination.

As seen in the information above, the issue of recording entries was being addressed before the recent robberies, because it was understood that there was a gap with the “multi-day passes” in terms of capturing entry information. The pass scanners addressed that gap by linking entry data to the bar code on the multi-day pass. These scanners would cause no disruption to our current procedures and mesh seamlessly with our current systems. In fact, they would possibly speed up the current entry process.

What is not clear is whether the license reader can link captured information to the multi-day pass itself. Or, in the event the information can be linked, whether the necessary procedures will cause undue delays.  And, if the information cannot be linked, is it useful to have license data which may not be linked to a pass?

Either option would increase the perception of security at the gates. However, no matter what we do, there will always be a “what-if” situation somebody can propose that supposedly exposes a gap in the system. No system will be absolutely perfect.

What makes sense is to weigh the additional work and aggravation caused by each method against the potential benefits. Using one example, with all “one-time pass” visitors, we have the name of the person who authorized entry, the name of the visitor, the window of entry, the time of entry and the location where the visitor was headed. One can then ask, “What is benefit of scanning that visitor’s license”? And what additional useful security information would come from scanning that license? Once those questions are answered, weigh that against the aggravation caused by requiring that person to produce a license.

It should be noted that the police have not provided any meaningful information on the two robberies; which is understandable in as much as their investigation is still ongoing. At this point, we really do not know how it happened. And it is possible that the vehicle(s) involved in these incidents did not gain access through our two main gates. It might not make sense to rush into possibly expensive or disruptive “solutions” until we know those solutions are plugging the gap which allowed these robberies to take place.

Lastly, it seems clear that additional security measures are and will continue to be discussed and examined by the Board. Among these are license plate cameras and exit gates. Some cost numbers have been discussed, but the numbers are just rough estimates and, at this point, not reliable.  I suspect we will be hearing more about this in the near future.)