Bordeaux HOA,
There has been some concern on the rental policy section of the House Rules and Regulations document sent out prior to this letter. This is a section that we are very interested in talking to the community about and we look forward to our next meeting where we can identify what you want to change or add to this document. Please read section 7.1 in the CC & R’s in regards to anyone concerned if the board has the right to create an House Rules and Regulations document. The Board wants to work with the community to get this right and we know we will not make everyone happy but our goal is to come as close to perfection as we can. Please be patient with us as we have tried to get this document out for almost a year and have gotten feedback from community members who had very constructive feedback.
Ideally we would like to see what sections of the document we would like set in stone and add to our CC & R’s. Please send your ideas to Geri Pentz. We would like to put a list together to go over at our next meeting. Right now we are planning to keep our meeting time of July 12th.
Our top complaints from homeowners are the lack of landscaping consistency, high rental percentage and number of cars parking in the street. We do have an HOA lawyer that we have been working with to help us create the House Rules and Regulations document.
Restricting the number of rentals is the hot topic issue and many of us including some board members want to eventually rent. The question we have to ask ourselves is what is best for the community. What number of rental properties should we allow? Does having a higher percentage of rentals effective the community we live in and possibly the ability to sell our home? These are the questions we want everyone to start thinking about and to bring constructive feedback. There have been situations where homeowners have called our association management company and have been very rude. We ask to please treat everyone in the community with respect and if you want to send an angry email; that is preferred over an angry phone call. She works primarily as a liaison for us and informs the board of issues so we can identify who will be working on that particular issue.
We are all busy and if you are passionate about issues we can use your enthusiasm at our annual meetings which we have had little interest in the past couple years. What we need is more involvement from our community. The board will be voting on a new board member at our next annual meeting and if you are interested in volunteering for the community we would appreciate the help. Right now the current structure for the board is the President is on a three year term, Secretary is on a two year term and the Vice President is on a one year term which will end at our next annual meeting.
I’m sure there will be many more issues to go over regarding the HR & R and we actually are glad we stirred the pot here to wake up our community. Our main goal is to get more community involvement and if that has to happen with some controversy then so be it. We all want a community that is safe, looks great and is managed appropriately and that is exactly what we are trying to accomplish. This isn’t an easy road for anyone and your HOA Board has been working tirelessly to get us to that goal.
A short list of what your Board has accomplished so far:
Setup a relationship with the City of Everett Police Department to be a part of their Block Watch program. Installed Block Watch and No Trespassing Signs in all major areas of our community to try and prevent crime and send a message that we are a connected community that will look out for one another.
Design and integrate an irrigation system into our community park and entrance sign area. We all constantly monitor and personally manage the park area to save money on the irrigation system maintenance. We have learned how to use the system and turn it on, off and change the settings ourselves instead of paying a trip charge to an irrigation specialist. We constantly pick up trash from neighbors/kids and keep the doggy pickup bags filled to minimize pet waste left on the grass.
The Board has been working with the NGPA/WA Adopt a Stream to clean up our stream that is connected to Silver Lake. Over 100 hours have been spent cleaning up the BlackBerry bushes and weeds near the stream and pond in our NGPA. We also worked with the Silver Lake Association to plant new flower beds on the sidewalk off of 19th and install a “Welcome to Silver Lake” sign.
Although the basketball lines are not perfect, we had some of the kids help with this project so they also could be involved in our community. We have in many occasions kept our community safe by educating some of the kids in our neighborhood about how to handle kids from other communities that vandalize our community or cause other problems. There have been numerous occasions where one of those kids has informed us about suspicious activity that we were able to handle without the help of police support.
The House Rules and Regulations document and many others have been done completely by the board and we have saved a significant amount of revenue by not having to outsource this.
We constantly are looking for “Best Pricing” for Landscaping, Irrigation and all other paid services and have saved a significant amount by choosing to go with another landscaper and irrigation company. Many times we have personally done manual labor and have asked the community to help which produced a low turnout. For those that did come out and help we thank you very much for your support and as an example the latest addition of the 44 arborvitaes was planted by the board and a couple gracious homeowners.
The tree security project was the final project we plan on doing for awhile as our current goal is to put enough in savings. Our lawyer is working with a reserve specialist to identify what we need to have in our reserves in case of an emergency. This data will be collected and distributed at our next annual meeting.
We started working with an HOA Lawyer to make sure we are doing the best job we can and we will continue to work with them in the future to accomplish the list of goals we have for our community. There are a lot of other things that the Board does on a daily basis that is not seen. This really is a thankless job and we would appreciate more community involvement in the future. We are looking forward to what our community will grow to and although the last few years has been tough we strongly feel that we will get back to a better place in the coming years.
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Bordeaux HOA
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