I've listened to the tape of the March 19th WPA board meeting. I'm not going to transcribe every word of each report. I'm reporting what I heard to the best of my ability. Please listen to the tape yourself. NOTE: If you don't listen to any other part of the tape, this portion is important, it is an exhibit, a telling of much that is wrong with this board. If you listen for logic, solid foundation, principles, etc., you won't find it. Parts of the article will be transcribed and in quotes (blue print and underlined) to the best of my ability, other portions - not, my comments will be in red. P.S.: Please don't think that I fail to understand that this is a discussion/proposal. However, this board has had snippets of discussion in the past, gone under the clock of "closed meetings", and surfaced like they did with the "accounting function" and really made all the decisions, behind our backs.
McMillin starts this segment of the meeting with the spoil site. "I want to make a quick comment first. I do believe since the spoil site is WPA owned and we pay taxes on it and a maintenance crew is in place that we do have a responsibility to make a payment and not have to go out for a second bid every time. There is already verbiage in their contract that we just used. It went very well.... I don't see any reason to change that. I think that should included in their contract description. No new contract at this time." President Walton, says "alright, move on."
If you haven't been following this saga, what McMillin is talking about is the fact that your board has moved spoil site maintenance from under the guidance of the Water Amenities Committee to the Grounds Committee. It may be a committee of one, McMillin. He doesn't get any qualified expert to determine what needs to be done, provide a scope of work, and monitor the maintenance. Your board at some past point, determines that they have enough information to make those determinations. McMillin announced previously that he didn't want to secure bids for the maintenance. He was adding it to the contract of our landscaping crew. The contract does have a clause that allows "like work" to be added to it. Forget that your broad didn't use the clause when they hired an arborist for the road study, to determine root problems. This contractor will follow the direction of the board(????), does not have the equipment to get to the spoil site, so volunteers are transporting their crew and equipment to the site. A few questions: Does the insurance company know about this liability? Where is a study, a plan, and expert over site? Why did our president allow the move of marine property to land - grounds? Why would you add this kind of water/marine work to a landscaping, lawn mowing, crew? Why did your board allow no bids in this bizarre move of assets?
Now McMillin moves to the canals. "It has been three years since the canals.....nearly all the litigation has ran its course. We've had a cooling off period....Now we are starring at each other waiting for someone to bring up the canal issue again. My thoughts on this are my own, attempting a common sense approach. I will talk in general terms, not interested in particular dollar amount. However, I'm hoping my estimates prove to be reasonably close based on theory provided by Earth Works engineering firm." When did the cooling off happen? The counter suit is still in progress and the board is in process of various legal steps to collect on some canal lot owners. Did Earth Works put this theory in writing? Doubtful.
"To begin, let's discuss who should pay what portion of the bills. It's been estimated that the north, south, and connector canals comprise 40% of the canal system. You can argue all you want that the state owns the canals, don't hold your breath waiting for them to maintain them. That will fall to us to find workable long term answers to do this, whether they offer any monetary help, or not. My suggestions are a combination of other proposals and some comments I heard. If you recall Adam had a proposal for a separate regime and that...Little response and there were objections...no 100% participation, that one evidently going any where" What other proposals? If they exist, can we review them and when were they discussed? It wasn't at the board table. As to the regime survey, it was poorly constructed and planned. There wasn't a place for residents to sign them, no return date, just a yes or no, and they weren't mailed to all people at the same time. Technically, they could still come in, because canal owners can take how ever long they want to answer it. No one ever compiled the results and shared the comments. As to what he heard, it was probably in another of your board's closed meetings. Did the state give credibility to any of this? If they did, could we see it?
"My suggestion is a combination of other proposals and I advocate that the three main canals become the responsibility of the WPA and all finger canals be funded by the property owners. "
McMillin then goes on to discuss the fact that there are 79 canal lot owners due to some lot consolidation, etc. He feels all 79 canal lot owners should pay the same amount. "The cost of the main canal dredging, the spoil site, would be shard by all owners through the assessments. In other words, the canal lot owners would fund more than the 60%. It would be somewhere between the 60 and 70% range for the total cost of the dredging. Could be as much as 70 - 30. They would pay more than 60% of the dredging.
Let's talk about the administration of responsibilities and the funds. The board would still be expected to work in unison with the Water Amenities Committee and under Article V, section 4 of our covenants and by laws where it says that you can spend assessment monies for any purposes for the general benefit of the sub division, if canals are a sub division, then we as a board still have a responsibility to administer the assessment monies. The Water Amenities Committee should be....bulk of the work for the next dredging project. The Water Amenities Chairperson would act as the liaison for the board." Why, when he took the time to tell us what the governing documents said regarding general benefit and ALL of us paying for spoil site and main canals, didn't he tell us under what portion of the governing documents, he will charge the canal lot owners MORE? Let's get specific, if you are going to do it for one segment of the billing public. He has NOTHING , unless he speaks of INDIVIDUAL ASSESSMENT, which is in the governing documents, and was used in 2009 when the vote to dredge was taken. No canal owner should pay one dime more than the rest until he states what governing language allows the billing. He can't go there, because the litigation isn't over, and your board hasn't collected on all the canal lot owners, and some of the board members sitting at that board table are still involved in litigation, and were blatant advocates of the lawsuit against the 2009 board.
Where was the Water Amenities Committee in this? This was not billed as a proposal from Water Amenities? I guess if you move the MARINE spoil site to GROUNDS, ALLOW A LANDSCAPING COMPANY TO MAINTAIN THE SPOIL SITE WITHOUT EXPERT SUPERVISION, all blessed by our president and our board, you feel you can move any mountains you decide to. I believe the WPA owned 45% of the frontage on the canal related waterways when it was calculated in 2009. He thinks he can decide to have canal lot owners pay 60 - 70%????
STAY TUNED FOR PART II OF THIS REPORT.
