Ventana Lakes

 Property Owners' Association

President's Report

September 9, 2006

9:30am

I would like to begin my report by stating I have done it differently today.  Many of the things I would talk about I have listed as announcements.  I would rather talk about each of these items versus reading from a paper.
 
In my report I would like to begin by first dispelling the rumor that our buildings are full of rats and snakes.  If they were and they are not, we would close them down.  Rats have been report outside the YC building – not inside.  Our pest control company has placed black boxes around the area and in my email to residents I asked that these boxes not be picked up and tossed away as some form of trash to be discarded.  These boxes contain food that when eaten by the rat causes them to die.  We will probably always have rats behind the YC.  They live in the drainage ditch along Beardsley and there is little we can do to remove them completely from our common areas.  A recent phone call from a woman said one came from Lake 8 and ran toward her in her yard.  Again, there are rats.  Many home have holes in the yards from little pack rats.  These rats can be eliminated by the homeowner.
 
Now the other issue was snakes.  One was seen in the Rec Ctr and hopefully, once the hole was covered it will not return.  Some of you may find snakes in your yards.  Use caution to be sure it is not a rattlesnake.  Never put your hand under a shrub if you can’t see under it.
 
Next item in my report.  The Board is continually being pointed to as the “bad guys”.  One resident asked me to have the Board do some soul searching because what the Board usually does is to do things that benefit the Board members.  I though about this and wondered how many others feel the same way.  Thus, I decided to briefly point out that the Board’s major responsibility is to carefully watch our money; invest it wisely and spend it prudently.  I think this Board does this.  The budget for 2006 was a test case because it was decided last year beginning January 2006 none of the monies received from resale of homes would go into the operating budget.  This had been the practice before 2006.. Now, all money obtained from resale of homes goes into our Reserve Fund.  We have been able to significantly increase our Reserve Fund by allocating the money from resales as well as depositing money each month into our Reserve Fund.  I will let Bob talk more about this.  The budget for 2006 was planned on what we thought would be needed in each line item in the operating account without income from resale of homes. Now that we have a much better idea of how much is needed in the operating account, the Board will be able to develop a better budget for 2007.
 
The next major area of responsibility for the Board is to maintain the common areas and the facilities.  Our landscaping may not be perfect or satisfy everyone, but people who travel through our community like the way the landscaping looks.  Our landscaper is closely monitored by Don Holtzee, when he is here, and by Bill Barton, who meets with Brad every two weeks.  In the past couple of weeks Bill has been meeting almost daily with Brad to check on areas of down tree branches and trees. Trees along some of the lakes have been uprooted and fallen into the lakes.  So far no damage to the lake liners have been noted.  The lake liners on the bottom are covered with silt, so the bottom of the lake liners are somewhat protected from tree branches.  However, a tree branch may tear the side of a liner where there is no protection from silt.  If this happens, then we may have to repair the liner and this repair will be in the thousands of dollars, so lets hope we don’t see a sudden increase in the cost of water for a lake which may indicate water loss through a tear in a lake liner.
 
For maintenance of our facilities, new carpeting was installed in the Office and Exercise room. New exercise equipment was obtained to replace the outdated things we had. The inside of this building was repainted and new, covered sound boards added.  Three pool decks were re-coated, the office building and YC have been painted and the Craft Building is being painted.  These buildings look like have never been painted since they were built.   Yet to come is fence painting around the Rec Ctr and several sections of fence around Lake 8, and new ceiling lights will be installed in this building..  So the Board is maintaining out facilities.
 
The Board obtained a new pool company when residents voiced a great deal of satisfaction with the old service company.  Many of the concerns voiced by residents are taken to heart and action taken.  These things are probably never seen by most of the residents.  I believe the Board does listen, but we may not always take immediate action.  Some actions take months and thus the Board is viewed as doing nothing. Example is replacing the burned out lights that require a cherry picker to reach.  The Board can not afford to replace a single  bulb that burns out when a cherry picker is needed. Several bulbs need to burned out before replacement is done.  Enough said on this subject.
 
There is always concern as to how information is disseminated to residents.  Flyers are used for Activity and Board announcements; emails are sent;  info is placed on our website.  We now are doing the newspaper in-house because of the cost to out-source it.  Barb will talk more about the newspaper in her report. We still do not reach all of our residents.  With all that we make available,  residents will need to take some responsibility to find out what is going on in the community.
 
The Board and residents are expected to follow the CC&Rs, the Bylaws and the Community Rules.  These documents guide how decisions are to be made.  However, the CC&Rs written in 1986 are outdated and very difficult to understand.  Some areas in this document are open to various interpretations.  To improve the CC&Rs and Bylaws, a committee has worked for three years revising and clarifying some of the areas in these documents.  The documents have been at our attorney’s office for several months while everything that was revised is legal.  Soon Judy Mabie, chair of the committee who worked on the revisions, will be announcing meetings with small groups of residents to go over each article in the CC&Rs and Bylaws to explain the new documents and to obtain approval necessary to adopt the new documents. Stay tuned for these meeting dates.
 
To end this part of the agenda, I want to sound like John Kennedy.  We need volunteers. And to respond as to why you should volunteer, I say “it is not what your Association can do for you, but what you can do for the Association.”
 
     Submitted,
 
    Lois Owen