BLMH - Annual Meeting 2013

Last week our association held the annual meeting. Those owners who attended were given concise and candid "state of the association" presentations by our president, treasurer, welcoming director, landscaping director, rules & regulations director and architecture & maintenance director. Management of course did a presentation. After the presentations unit owners were given the opportunity of a "question and answers" exchange with the board and management.

The meeting required less than two hours. We moved quickly through the business at hand and owners were attentive and courteous. The presentations and discussions were candid, honest and forthright.

My report as A&M and vice-president was exactly what I promised via our September newsletter. It took about 20 minutes and topics included:

• Expanded use of maintenance cycles and programmed maintenance. Why?
• What are the priorities? (and how are they determined?)
• Water main failures, a pre-emptive approach to dealing with this.
• IDNR-OWR (Illinois Department of Natural Resources) has declared Lake 4 to be a dam. “Briarcliffe Lake Dam is a Class I (high) hazard potential structure and requires a dam safety permit.” What does this mean for the association?
• Flood of April 2013 and aftermath including Wheaton's "Briarcliffe Watershed" Study.
• Lakecliffe Blvd paving failure; why, how, and financial consequences. Repaving and repair decisions.
• Status of Fireplaces and my position.
• Status of Roofing Project including drainage improvements.
• Status of Driveway Repaving Project.
• Status of Garage Floor Replacement Project. 
• Status of Financial Reserves for projects. (Very long term planning - some projects have scheduled completion dates of 2032!).
• Delinquencies, foreclosures and the negative impact on association finances.
• Status of Thames waterfall decking and paths project. 
• Status of Plymouth waterfall and pond. 
• Miscellaneous (limestone sills, sidewalk scraping, storage on the property, etc.). 
• Rules, Regulations and Maintenance (discussed by R&R director). 
• The future of the Newsletter.

The president made the statement that I had put in, by his calculations and review of my emails, etc. about 650 hours doing association business in the past year. I appreciated the acknowledgement from the entire group. I've made it no secret that this has been a very difficult year. I have found myself with competing, mutually exclusive time commitments. In fact, I've put in more time than estimated and I do have a business to run, clients with specific needs (I was in a production facility yesterday) and of course there is this blog and the research, etc. that it takes to produce it. In such a situation setting priorities becomes "difficult to impossible."

I have concluded I could work 24/7 if I chose, but I have no intention of doing so.

I also had to make a difficult decision this year to forego another volunteer position, in which I probably could have made a larger difference.

However, my current volunteer commitment at BLMH will end in September 2014. I have made no decision and no promises for the future.