Contents
1. Road Reconstruction Project
2. Long Range Plan
3. Artists Guild Studio Tour – Gate Security Issue
4. Executive Sessions – New Protocol
5. New Ad-hoc Sidewalk Committee

Items covered in this summary will be combined from these two meetings.

1.  Road Project

Everybody has received e-mails indicating that a contract has been signed and that there is a shortfall of $800,000 that needs to be covered either with assessments, loans or a combination of the two.

Everybody has also received an e-mail announcing a vote to choose between an immediate $800 assessment or, alternatively, an immediate $300 assessment with the balance of $500 to be assessed after January 2014. The message from the Board left it completely open as to how and when that $500 would be assessed. We are supposed to receive a ballot with accompanying information within the next week or so. I assume it will include the expected cost of obtaining a short term loan; and I believe that will be the most important information. I suspect that the costs of obtaining a short term loan are significant enough that it might not make economic sense.

The Board members decided that their discussions regarding the financing of this project needed to be held in Executive Session. Therefore, I can only guess why this vote is taking place. In terms of what follows here, please note that I am speculating; not editorializing.

The starting point is the fact that the Board feels an $800 assessment is necessary to complete the upcoming road project. According to the message announcing the vote, it is clear that the assessment will be levied. The only question is the timing. If the entire $800 is assessed this year, no loan will be needed. If the entire amount is not assessed this year, we will need to borrow money to complete the project; and those borrowings will be paid off with assessments done at a future date.

Except for emergency assessments, the Board can levy assessments one of two ways. It can be done either through the Annual General Assessment (which many refer to as our annual dues) or a Special Assessment which, if over $300 per lot, requires resident approval through a vote. Last November, I wrote a one page brief on this subject, and you might find it useful to review this information. That summary can be found here:  Spending Limitations Paper

Unfortunately, the language in the covenants is not particularly clear-cut. I can’t speculate on all the “what-if” scenarios or offer a legal opinion on its meaning. But, in my view, the intent of the covenant language is open to several interpretations.

There are two possible reasons why the Board has decided to put this issue to a vote. The first is that the Board feels this is the right thing to do; which is the reason implied in the message announcing the vote. Alternatively, the Board has determined that, contrary to what was said at the annual meeting, the only correct way to do this is through a Special Assessment. And those require a vote when totaling more than $300. I can’t say which of these two reasons is correct.

The information on the vote should be distributed soon. If I can offer any additional information at that time, I will post it separately.

The road project Q&A page is constantly being updated. Updates to older questions are in blue type, so be sure not to miss those sections. If you have any questions about the mechanics of the project, check this page first:  Road Q&A Page

2.  Long Range Plan

The Infrastructure Committee is still reviewing the Rest of Roads Survey to determine which projects should be included in the long range plan along with the respective estimated costs. According to the Splinters e-mail, the Long Range Plan Committee now expects to “present its final report during the fourth quarter of this year”. That last bit of information is potentially significant. But to understand why, a little background is needed.

This committee created a draft plan last September. You may recall from previous summaries that the draft was supposed to be made available to the community so that residents had the opportunity to offer comments to the Board before it gave final approval to the plan. But this draft was effectively shelved because it had apparently not fully accounted for the cost of future road replacements and any other major infrastructure work over the next five years. Then a decision was made to wait for the bids on the current road project; since that would provide a good benchmark for the cost of future road work. Then it was decided to engage an engineer to do a “Rest of Roads Survey” which would prioritize work on future road replacements and also include estimated costs. That information, in turn, is to be included in the long range plan.

That is where we stand today. But the Splinters e-mail refers only to the “final report” being available. It did not mention any draft. Hopefully, residents will still be allowed to review the draft and offer comments before final approval by the Board.

3.  Chatham Artists Guild Studio Tour

I last wrote about this in the 3/19/13 Meeting Summary (scroll down to item # 8). You might find it helpful to click on the link and quickly re-read that section before going further.

At that time, I thought that the Board had agreed to allow the five resident guild members to participate in this public tour subject to the security procedures recommended by the Safety Committee. However, as I noted then, there seemed to be some confusion over what the Board actually approved. I asked for clarification but never received a response. Details in the approved minutes of the 3/19/13 meeting are different from those in the Splinters column; which leads me to believe that there was, over the past month, some private Board discussion and compromise on this issue. Based on the differences between my observations at the March meeting, the Splinters summary and the official minutes, it now appears to me that Kelley Hunter and possibly some other Board members were, in fact, intent on revisiting this issue; because they were not in favor of accepting the recommendations of the Safety Committee.

Consequently, issue of gate procedures for the Studio Tour came up again in the April 16th meeting. Keep in mind that participation in the tour was approved in March. The only question was what, if any, gate procedures would be implemented (as opposed to what was done last year, which was to simply open the gates for two weekends to anybody who wanted to enter).

So that you understand why this issue exists, the Studio Tour is unique in that it allows the general public to visit the home studios of guild members to view and purchase their artwork. It is heavily advertised and promoted throughout Chatham, Durham and Orange counties and encourages participation from the general public. Consequently, nobody will know who or how many people will want to visit the studios of these five artists during the two weekends this event takes place. With every other activity that currently takes place within the gates (which are primarily private events held at the country club), there is no advertising to the general public, and the names of those entering the community are known.

What follows is a brief summary of the two sides of this issue.

Because of the unique public nature of this event, the Safety Committee proposed the following procedures for any member of the public wishing access to any of the five home studios: obtaining the name of the driver, examining the driver’s license of the driver to confirm the name (but not recording any information), noting the number of passengers, recording the license plate of the car and having sign-up sheets at the five home studios to cross check whether those entering actually visited the artists. The Safety Committee felt that these were reasonable procedures and consistent with the fact that we are a gated community that does not allow unmonitored access to the general public.

The five artists initially felt that no procedures were necessary. In other words, anybody approaching the gates should simply be let in without recording any information. At the meeting, however, they presented a revised position that agreed with all of the recommendations of the Safety Committee except for the requirement to show a driver’s license. They felt that requiring the driver to show a license would be “irritating, annoying and insulting” to the visitors.

The respective recommendations of the Safety Committee and the five artists can be found on pages 20 through 24 of this pdf file on the POA web site:  Studio Tour Papers

Several of the artists were invited to speak during the regular Board meeting to present their case. However, nobody from the Safety Committee and nobody supporting the Safety Committee’s recommendations were invited to attend and speak. I cannot offer any explanation as to why the Board felt it appropriate to hear from only one side on the issue. Two community members spoke in support of the Committee’s recommendations during the public comment period, but this was not at the Board’s invitation, nor did the Board have prior knowledge that this would occur.

After some discussion, the Board voted in favor of following the recommendations of the Safety Committee. The only director to vote against this was Kelley Hunter.

Interestingly, there was an unexpected positive outcome from this entire discussion. It seems that the wholesale changeover of personnel at the POA office along with personnel changes at the country club recently resulted in lapses in gate security procedures for private events held at the club. Before these personnel changes took place, there were relatively tight procedures giving our gate attendants the names of those entering for private events; which, in turn, allowed them to ensure that there was no general public access. Somehow, those procedures were relaxed without the knowledge of anybody on the Safety Committee or the POA staff.  I have been told that those procedures have now been re-instituted after being reviewed with all necessary parties.

There is more to this situation than outlined here. I am doing a separate write-up that deals with the following items: the nature of this tour, how participation in this tour was approved for the first time last year, whether this community’s participation in the tour was thoroughly and objectively considered and whether it is in the best interests of the community to allow public access events. I believe this additional information is important because it leads to a more significant issue; that being the desire of a number of Board members to actively pursue and allow public access events within the community. Once that write-up in complete, I will post it separately to this site.

4.  Executive Sessions

In the March meeting summary, I noted my concerns that the Board was not following its own protocol regarding Executive Sessions. That protocol was contained in Resolution # 3 adopted last May.

At the April 10th meeting, the Board rescinded Resolution # 3 and approved a revised Resolution # 7. In effect, this new resolution gives the Board unlimited ability to discuss and transact community business in closed sessions without giving any reasons.

The vote was unanimous; except that Mark Ferraro was absent and did not vote. There was no extended discussion of the resolution. It was simply presented and voted upon. Therefore, any Board discussion of this resolution must have been done either in Executive Session or outside of regular Board meetings. As a result, nobody has any insight as to why the change was made or how the Board intends to act as a result of the change. The Board received legal advice on this new resolution from its counsel, Hope Carmichael.

The revised resolution contains two very significant items. First, the Board’s legal advice says that, according to our Covenants and the Planned Community Act, open meetings are not legally required. Therefore, residents can attend and listen to meetings only with the Board’s consent; which consent can be revoked at any time. In other words, the Board believes it has the power to close all meetings at all times if it so wishes.

The second item follows from the first. Since the Board is now maintaining that open Board meetings are not legally required, it has formally created something called a “Closed Session” which effectively allows it to go into a closed meeting at any time for any reason. This “Closed Session” is separate and distinct from Executive Sessions. That is somewhat confusing in that Executive Sessions are usually referred to as closed sessions. That aside, the net effect is that this resolution has removed all limitations on the Board’s ability to discuss and transact community business behind closed doors.

Based on some on-line research, I believe that this newly defined “Closed Session” and its mechanics might be unique to our POA; as I could find no reference to anything similar in any other organization.

I have added a more detailed explanation as an update to my previous write-up on this issue. If you have any interest in this subject at all, I urge you to read this additional information. The Splinters e-mail referred in passing to the passage of this resolution as something of a non-event. But it is very significant in terms of the powers that it gives the Board to conduct its deliberations in private. To read the summary, click on the following link and scroll down to the added information:  Resolution # 7

5.  Ad Hoc Sidewalk Committee

As far as I know, there was no discussion of this new committee in any open Board meeting. I first learned of this by reading the recent Splinters e-mail summary of the last two meetings. However, that e-mail said only that the committee was being formed to “study the need for sidewalks in various locations in the community”.

It appears that the discussion regarding the formation of this committee was held in Executive Session or otherwise outside of the open Board meetings. The Splinters summary gave no indication as to why the Board felt it necessary to form the committee or why the current sidewalk plan was inadequate. Nor was there any indication of what additional sidewalks the Board wanted to build.

Perhaps the Board still intends to pursue the sidewalk from Governors Square out to Mt. Carmel Church Road. But it is impossible to determine anything in the absence of any explanations or knowledge of any Board discussions.

Hopefully, the Board will be comfortable discussing sidewalks in a free and open manner in an open meeting; in which case residents will be able learn what is expected of this new committee.