Notes and other public things for Hawk's Crest HOA
This is mostly for Mike Butler - HOA VP but anyone is welcome to view and access these notes.
I'm debating having this as a Github Pages just because maybe that is too public? Anyway, let me know if there are issues or concerns about this repo.
| Name | Title | Phone | Linked In | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ron Simon | President | LI | ||
| Mike Butler | Vice President | (513)607-4435 | LI | |
| Brent Leung | Treasurer | ?? | ||
| Rahul Sharma | DAL 4 / Secretary | LI ? | ||
| William Rogan | DAL 5 / Documents Chair | LI | ||
| Roi Levin | DAL 6 / POA / Landscape | LI | ||
| Dharam Tayal | DAL 7 | ?? |
I feel like the previous board did an amazing job of detangling the mess that was left from Meritage. The amount of work doing the needful effort impacted the ability to establish and work on what I would call the "fun stuff".
In the next two years, I would personally like to make an effort of firmly establishing committees, gatherings and other social events to bring this community together.
Looking through all of the emails, I feel a good bit of the maintenance items could be handled "in house", meaning if we had a GC (handyman) on hand four hours a day, two days a week - a lot of the little things could be handled more efficiently and cost effective. Such things like:
- Fountains working and timing
- Tiles repaired
- Signed re-stuck and facade falling
- Basic picking up of trash
- Monitoring systems working
- Minor gate repair
- Sprinkler repair (or at least identification)
These are a lot of things being somewhat handy that I would just do myself. I'd be curious to add this to our RFP for a management company.
Solicitors. Instead of stating that Solicitors Not Welcome, can we state that Solicitors must register with the office? Then when they get to the office (not that they will go,) we can have a policy that the HOA Board must approve all solicitation. Then when someone does stop at our houses, we can just ask them to show their solicitation papers that they got from the office and point them to that direction.
Regarding Chat vs Email vs Phone vs Public Meeting: So doing some thinking, reading and whatnot if I am to understand correctly, no decisions should be made outside of a public meeting. All else we should keep a record (not sure how long) of the communications when conducting HOA Board business. For instance, if we have discussions "as a board" via email but don't make a decision, we should identify that as a part of the records for that decision when it ultimately comes to a vote at a published HOA meeting. That same principle should hold true for Chat as well as Email as well as in person. Microsoft Workplace Insights article
I'm just starting to wrap my head around "board decisions" and also what rules surround a committee. Just personal conjecture here, but I think we might be treating our HOA Board wrong. We actually need more committees (or them doing their roles.) Even if those committees are made up solely of HOA board members, as long as there are not more than 3 board members, I don't believe there are any "Open communications" rules that apply. So I believe that can mean is that it doesn't matter what form of communication it ends up being, HOA Board laws do not impact.
Kind of circling around all of this, the use of Email and who is in the thread and any decisions made would be impacted. I feel that this also would carry over to any technology tools in use (such as Trello) in that there should be a "Trello Board" for each committee. All business should be conducted as that committee. If we adopt (use) a chat tool, I would suggest that the same rule applies there. We create private "Channels" or "teams" or "spaces" for committees and no more than three board members are invited to that channel/team/space. The outcome of those discussions can then be presented to the HOA Board during the Monthly HOA Board Meeting. I personally feel that conducting this business in Committees via Chat is actually better than email because we can control who has visibility to and participating in the discussion. For instance, if the board is notified of a Safety related issue via email to all 7 members, that issue can be taken to the safety committee Chat to quickly determine a path, then present that back to the entire board and management company via email.
See below on Committees
This is based on the thoughts from the communications functions.
My proposal is to make sure that we have established committees for the types of work that need to be done and inbound inquiries get assigned to those committees to take on for discussion. We can further discuss the types of committees and ones we want to officially create (or continue) and staff (both executive (board only) and open to the community). Obviously we are close to having the Fining committee up and running (just need to find folks willing to be on it), and the landscaping committee is pretty solid, but I would like to see a "safety" committee for all "incidents" to be covered under (complaints from / to neighbors, speeding, etc.) that can liaison with law enforcement - which could also cover gate and security matters, budget committee which will handle all budgetary matters (where we might be able to bring in Natalie somewhat) including reviewing contracts excepting landscaping, a newsletter committee, strengthen the events committee and an official executive committee for all other matters.
Some useful sites:
- Cedar Management - HOA Committees
- SFPMA - Committees: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly - Specific to Florida
I do have a minor concern that unless the Landscaping committee is identified as a Statutory committee as the ARC and Fining are, they may not legally be able to approve purchases because as such might constitute "taking final action". (See SFPMA). This may differ between Condo and Home Owners rules, but it might be wise to run it passed Dan just in case. P.S. It's not that I don't want to grant that or really make that committee statutory, I just want to make sure it is by the law.