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| December 2008 Briarcliffe Lakes Manor Homes Newsletter Treasurer's topic Hint: Click to enlarge |
I updated 9/25/2021 to add a link to three of the 2019 newsletters, warm weather tips, Newsletter template which was provided to board in October 2018, and a copy of the street map. Faulty links repaired. Links are later in this post.
Note: As a board member 2010-2018 I expanded the scope of the newsletters and viewed them as educational material for current boards and owners, and also as useful source material for future boards and owners. It was a method to pass along "expert knowledge" to future boards. In fact, it was the only method because there is no such mechanism in place at the association.
Earlier boards placed links to the newsletters on the "official" association website. The removal of the newsletters by the 2019-2020 boards thwarted my intention. In fact, the newsletters are but the tip of the iceberg.
As a consequence of the recent board action which deleted the newsletters, I uploaded copies to my cloud storage and posted links on this blog. As a result this information remains available to the public, to new owners and to board members. It is my opinion the recent board action was to the detriment of the performance of boards, and to the owners.
If you need additional information, you can email me via the link to the right.
Be aware I am no longer a board member and therefore I am not bound by any fiduciary duty to the association: "Briarcliffe Lakes Manor Homes" and "Briarcliffe Lakes Homeowners Association".
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I have posted links to earlier newsletters in this post. There were some really interesting things about the association in the earlier newsletters. The above is a clipping from the Treasurer's Report in the December 2008 newsletter. This was published by the new board, after the old lost the election. Owners had expressed concerns about the finances and the fees of the Association. The December newsletter answered some of the questions avoided by an earlier board.
During my brief, 8-year tenure on the board, certain board members did their best to prevent this type of information from being discussed in front of owners, much less be printed in the association newsletter. My attempts were rebuffed and certain board members argued that information they deemed as sensitive was "executive privilege". Today, some are inclined to run the association this way.
However, newsletters provide owners with their only reliable information about the association, other than letters mailed to all, which are infrequent. Newsletters don't replace the financials and governing documents, which also should be read and studied by all owners. However, getting a copy of the financials is not easy in this association.
Newsletters provide insights into the character, capabilities and leadership of a board. Perhaps that is why the current board stripped most of the newsletters for the period 2008-2018 from the official website before it was taken down by the 2020 board. The current board (2019-2020) also stripped the email addresses of board members from the newsletter. Such communication is not allowed.
The new "portal" for residents and owners has limited newsletters available. As of 9/23/2021 those available to owners include only:
- June 2021 Newsletter.pdf
- February 2021 Newsletter.pdf
- March 2020 Newsletter.pdf
- November 2020 Newsletter.pdf
Note: I advised management that the "Rules and Regulations" documents on the portal are incomplete. Rule changes about antennas on the buildings and the carpet/noise rule that occupied so much time during 2018 board meetings is not on the G&D Management website nor at the new "Portal". These were on the BLMH.org website prior to being taken down. Management acknowledges the portal is incomplete. No word about when it will be "complete".
I was very involved in creating the association newsletters when I was a board member. As a fiduciary I viewed communications with owners to be very important I also viewed the newsletter as a valuable tool. "Everything can be resolved in communications" is an old expression. The newsletters informed our owners, who are the shareholders of this not-for-profit corporation of what the board was doing as their representatives, presented plans, made requests and also presented some problems. I viewed this as responsible communications with our shareholders. Of course, some owners didn't like what they read in the newsletter. They could voice their opinions and vote for change when the opportunity was presented. Being on the board is merely an opportunity to perform work, and if owners don't like a board they can do things about it.
On finally achieving a position on the board in 2010 I began nudging the newsletter and those who prepared it in another direction. In December 2008 the new board did take a stab at a more factual newsletter, but that changed. The association is not a social club and but the newsletter began to look like it was, with "Owner of the Month" articles, articles about architecture in "Merry Old England" and so on.
When I achieved a board position in September 2010 I wanted to expand beyond this. Newsletter were normally four pages with a "Winter Tips" insert. The newsletter grew to as many as six pages.
Owners had been complaining "Where does our money go?" Of course, they are given annual budgets, but those don't list the actual dollar amounts in reserves and the cash in banks of the association. I made a pie chart from the budget and brought it to an Association meeting. I suggested it be included in the newsletter. The Communications Director liked it, and so it was included in May-June 2011. A copy of that chart is at the end of this post. That was a first of many steps. While I was on the board there was great resistance from some board members to running the association as a business.
Clearly, not all board members understand the need for robust communications. Boards are prohibited from creating multiple classes of owners. In other words, all owners should be communicated with equally and fairly. Not all owners attend monthly meetings. For offsite owners this may be impossible. A newsletter is a means for equal treatment of all owners. Not all board members agreed during my tenure. Today, with the arrival of ZOOM meetings, it may be easier for all owners to attend, if they have the technology available. However ZOOM also provides a shield for boards. A common refrain from the board when asked questions is "We'll get that to you". One owner (not me) is still waiting for the financial information she requested nearly two years ago. This is why I videotaped board meetings using my own equipment. This was intended to make everyone more accountable and keep people on their best behavior. Some board members did work around this by saving general discussion items for "Executive Privilege" closed door meetings. That was not proper, and he/she knew it. But it did shield discussion from owner observation, which was the purpose.
Owners need to provide ZOOM enabled communications technology at personal expense. This may not be the case for board members, who may have technology and support provided to them by management at owner expense.
For whatever reasons, it is my understanding that the annual meeting a couple of days ago via ZOOM was attended by most of the board and only a handful of owners who were not board members, or board candidates. That's indicative of the consequences of a lack of board commitment to robust communications and is also indicative of where owners lie with such tech.
Obviously, old school newsletters are superior in practical terms. They can be referred to by owners and the written word cannot easily be misconstrued or denied. One board member frequently argued that we can't make owners read the newsletters so it was a waste to provide them. My rebuttal was always "It is our duty and responsibility to provide the information with easy access. What owners do with the information provided is their choice."
The most recent association newsletters are not indicative of the lack of breadth of newsletters in 2019-2020. At one time you could open them and compare by going to the links at the official BLMH.org website. A sea change in communications occurred in September 2018 with the departure of three board members.
Perhaps I'll scan and upload the newsletters of 2019-2020.
In September a couple of weeks prior to the 2021 election the board had management take down the public BLMH.ORG website. With that, all links were removed. Newsletters prior to 2020 are no longer available online. I don't know why the board found it necessary to take away that web access for newsletters, etc., but they did. Perhaps it will be restored. Via email Management stated that the new portal is a work in progress. However, the new portal does not allow public access.
Commencing May 2011 I prepared and managed most of the newsletters until fall of 2018. I have MS-Word originals and PDF copies of these and a few others. I also have hard copies in the 7 boxes of stuff I have about this association. I also have videos of many of the meetings I attended after 2008, and all of the board meetings when I was on the board. I provided the technology, as usual.
I have uploaded the pdfs of the electronic copies that I have; I haven't scanned all of my hard copies. Here are links, arranged by year.
Links to folders with Newsletters, by year:
Guidance - Newsletter Insert - September 2018
Newsletter Template October 2018 - MS Word version given to board
Preparing the newsletter was difficult. Writing the many articles was not an easy task, with a purpose to provide information and to educate owners and future boards. I was running a business which involved an extraordinary amount of travel. I was President and Systems Engineer for a high tech Industrial Automation - Process Control firm I created. Some board members were also working full time. The newsletter were considered an imposition by some board members. That included retirees who certainly had sufficient time to do this. After all, at a bare minimum commitment, one article every 60 days, reading two management packets and attending two meetings was really not much of a duty, was it? Each month management provided the board with a packet of information. It was 60, 90, or more pages long. Finance, contracts, legal, maintenance, rules and violations etc. were within. Each and every board member could draw upon that information as well as the discussions during the open portion of meetings. I kept copious notes. It really isn't that difficult to get a lot of information as the basis for newsletter articles.
A skimpy newsletter which contains the phrase "The board is very busy." is a real contradiction.
Board members were requested during each board meeting to prepare a brief article and submit it with a "by when" date. They had 60 days to meet the publishing date. A few played their power games or perhaps they were simply lazy. I got so desperate to collect sufficient information on all aspects of the association from each board member, in their own words, that I would make multiple phone calls; emails were sometimes ignored. As a final resort I would interview board members, ghost write their articles and with their permission publish under their name. Frankly, I thought this was ridiculous. It was obviously a power trip and perhaps a sadistic game.
I would finally get sufficient text the day before the final printing day, sometimes handwritten. Then I'd have to figure out how to format the newsletter and shoehorn it all in, or expand the text to fill all of that white space. On the maintenance and architecture aspects there was absolutely no limit to the material I had available and ditto for finance. Of course, I was supposed to get "permission" from some board members to edit their text, if I ran out of room in the newsletter. Sometimes I let the spelling errors and so on go through, as well as poor formatting. I fully understood the covert FU attitude.
In general, six newsletters were prepared each year. For budget reasons they were printed in Black&White but the originals when I did them were in color. I provided a color PDF file of each newsletter to management for posting at the association website. B&W copies were posted on the bulletin boards by board members and a few owner volunteers, who walked the property and did this. It was one of many, many tasks which were done so as to keep owner fees "as low as practical". One copy was posted for each unit in each building. Management mailed copies to offsite owners. The actual printing was the easiest part as I would prepare a MS Word document, print it as a PDF file and email to the printer. A board member or myself would then pick up the printed copies. Copies to be mailed would be delivered by a board member or volunteer to the management office.
A lot of my time on the board was spent walking the property making problem lists, notes about possible improvements, managing the management, creating financial documents and spreadsheets, participating in or leading infrastructure condition surveys, and so on. On occasion another board member would assist me.
In my spare time I revised the "Winter Tips" which were discussed by the board. I even prepared a "Warm Weather Tips" which was sidelined. It was heavy on keeping rules and a lot of common sense. It was intended to provide owners with timely reminders and reduce rules violations, and address a board member complaint that "The owners don't know the rules." I provided a laptop computer to the "Welcoming Director" so she/he could update the "Welcome Packet". That effort was from 2011-2013. I stopped assisting in the preparation when it became obvious there was no interest in annual updates. I don't think there is a current copy available at the portal or on Management's website. Such communications is no longer deemed important by the board.
I always had a camera with me and so I took thousands of photos and a lot of videos to document the issues, whatever they might be. In all, about 1 TB of data. During site surveys, many conducted with management I photographed what we discussed, in addition to taking copious notes. On my own, I made stream condition videos, driveways, exterior of roofs visible from the ground, window sills, brickwork, drainage and so on. One year I even took a whiteboard, marked addresses on it and took a photo of each and every driveway, all 84 of them. This was to assist the board and management in determining which driveways to replace each year. I have a different approach to managing the managers and view them as a part of the team. I've posted some of this here, on earlier blog posts.
A lot was presented to boards during meetings and some found their way into the newsletters.
I also took general photos. I selected one for each newsletter and put it on the masthead. Not everyone appreciated my "NORMR60189" tag on those photos. I handled that by saying "Send me your photos and I'll include one on the masthead of the newsletter". There were no takers, as I recall. I gave a digital camera to a board member to use. Not one picture over the span of the year or so.
By fall of 2018 after an even more rancorous, contentious board year, worse than 2015. Some materials I prepared were ignored. The water main project which could save the association $millions and reduce future owner fees languished while the board argued about noise restriction rules and other trivia. There are limits and I had reached mine. Three board members decided they would not run for re-election and I was one of them. I'd met my goals which I set in 2008 when I first decided to run for the board. My final newsletter articles were prepared on August 16, 2018. It included a "Guidance" insert to inform owners and prepare new board members. One of the things about BLMH is the "old school" board members don't train or mentor. The association is their personal fiefdom. The first thing the new board of October 2018 did was to raise fees, even though their prepared budget dated October 2018 indicated a more than $100,000 surplus for the year 2018.
In October 2018 I prepared a MS-Word template for the newsletter and gave it to the board and management. With that task I was done. I was no longer a fiduciary and no longer required to be "nice" to the individuals who made my life difficult when I was a board member, drove off a very competent member, attacked others to drive them off, and then with the champions gone, raised fees unnecessarily in the fall of 2018. The entire board passed that fee increase, even though the numbers indicated it was not necessary. I sent a stern and very detailed email to management and asked them to forward to the board. I never got a reply from the board.
Pie Chart, May-June 2011 Newsletter
Here's the Pie Chart I prepared for a newsletter of May-June 2011, using the budget data provided to all owners. This was intended to better illustrate and communicate the issues. That was an expanded, 6-page newsletter:
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| Clicking on this image will enlarge it |
Post updated 9/25/2021
(C) 2021 Norman Retzke
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