Thanks to those of you who were able to join us at the 2019 Annual Meeting yesterday.
Minutes
Presenters: William Verner, Marlowe Fenne, Larry Raklios
Voting lots represented: 3, 9-13, 15-16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26-29
Presentation: (See Slides)
Intro – 5 min
Talked about previous board disbanding, followed by running into Marlowe and William meeting Larry painting mailboxes, which led to the first meeting that brought the interim board together.
Marlowe Fenne - has lived in PLE for 4 years. Wife CK is real estate agent.
Larry Raklios - has lived in PLE 8 years, from Tri-Cities. Retiree, proud grandparent, likes numbers, volunteer to be the interim treasurer. Did a full financial report, has full report available upon request. Cares about the community and wants to refresh it to make it look more like it did 8 years ago.
William Verner - been acting interim president. Moved to PLE in March. Project management and technical management. Have two kids.
Vision – 20 min
Talked about past challenges: on the slides.
Lately when people have moved in they haven’t known whom to contact
Limited visibility on the budget, Larry did a huge job pulling together data, with help of past treasurers
Vision is addressing challenges together – together means the whole community
Informed – website, email, etc. - all minutes from all meetings are available, starting August 2019, when the site was set up
Involved – monument cleanup was a good example, where a group of homeowners cleaned, weeded, mulched, pruned, and added flowers. Goal is optimize dues that people pay, so “sweat equity” is a good way to maintain some things at little to no cost. Call to action: more community involvement, and street reps.
Question about community – remembering Halloween parade. This year we had something in one cul-de-sac that did not feel inclusive, would like more inclusive and neighborhood-wide activities.
Improving – listed things that have happened since August, while also thinking about keeping costs low. Gravel is 5/8 minus, homeowners should contact county when adding gravel in front of their property. Next improvements were listed in the slide.
Comment – grateful for the work on the gravel
Question about gravel – chemical was applied. Going forward, they will continue with this kind of maintenance on the common areas, approved by King County. This information will be shared.
Question about where to get 5/8 Minus. This information will be shared.
County won’t allow weed barrier
Finance – 20 min
Increase in dues of 15% is allowed without a vote, and it has been done 4 times since the HOA was associated.
Comment – one of the late-payers last year wanted to see a budget before paying.
Comment – given the increase in value of our homes, and it’s been a very long time without an increase, so the increase in dues is warranted.
Line item for periodic repair is a max amount, and we need to decide what we can spend there. Gravel addition for common area is estimated $5K (half material, half labor), so we’ll need to decide if we do this in phases or later.
Comment: electrical was busted a while back during cul-de-sac development, and we suspect that the fencing added in 2015 busted it again. We canceled the electric account and chose solar so that we can move away from the problem that could otherwise cost thousands to fix and maintain.
Question: asked for budget to be posted on the website after the meeting
In 2020 want more volunteer work and “sweat equity” to save more for contingency.
Question: thinking about how often to increase dues. If we were to not want to increase again for 5 years, for example, would we want to increase more now? The answer was that we can increase to $430 now without a vote, so we’ll move forward with that. Our goal is to keep up the annual reviews and discussions to give plenty of notice about the need to increase again, and base it off of actuals.
Elections – 20 min
14 votes were unanimous for William, Marlowe, and Larry.
Follow up action items include sharing more information with the community about gravel (how/where to get it, how deep should it be, what chemicals have been put on the common gravel) and access to the budget.
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