Dear Mesquite Owners:

By now you should have received your copy of the November "Mosquito." You really can't miss it. It is printed on hot pink paper, which I am told actually glows in the dark! It also highlights "The MCHOA Annual Accomplishments" as seen through the eyes of President Roger Lubin. This recitation takes up most of the issue.

We applaud the Board for indeed making some progress this year on issues of great importance at Mesquite. Those issues included facing up to the fact that prior Boards -- many of whom were made up of the same Board Members as the current Board -- neglected to fund the Reserves. A more accurate description would be that they "drained" the funds, with little or no regard to the consequences.

Another sign of progress is that the Board is being brought, abet kicking and screaming, into the sunshine. They are not there yet, and they have been claiming credit for many things that you may have seen suggested in other places, but things are better than they have been in the recent past. We can compliment the Board on this as well.

That said, there were also many troubling aspects of the Board's actions this year:

1. Why were we the last to know as owners that the Board had decided to paint one of the phases at Mesquite? And that the Board was preparing to paint the rest of the units, at a reoccurring paint cycle cost of about $100,000 a year-- all with little or no discussion until you as owners stepped in to stop them?

2. Why were we as owners also not told of the special assessment that was being prepared to be sent to us last Winter for the painting and road work? Remember that one? While our Reserve Funds were neglected and continued to decline, the Board's focus was to assess us to pay for extremely large capital improvement projects, again with little or no imput from owners.

3. When we finally had a vote on a special assessment --and we as owners voted it down --the Board turned around and decided that they would then just shut down HALF of our pools and increase the HOA Fees to within 1% of the maximum allowed by law WITHOUT a vote by owners. That reminded most of us of the OLD BOARDS of the past. And it seemed a little too heavy handed to have been anything but a message from this Board to owners.

4. The Board still meets too often and discusses too many issues in Executive Session. The guidelines that provide for a Board to meet in Executive Session are clear, and to many owners it appears that our Board is still misusing that provision by discussing matters in secret that can just as easily be discussed and debated in public. We look forward to an end of this practice in the future.

5. The open sore that was the CC&R vote of a couple of years ago has never been addressed by this Board, and because of that we are not sure that something like it will not happen again. For those of you who are not familiar with this infamous act, nearly 1/3 of the owners who voted to approved the revised CC&R's, which passed we are told by a handful of votes, ended up sending a letter to the Board stating essentially that they believed that they were mislead if not deceived into voting for this revision. Although this Board was not the Board of record on that vote, the majority of members of this Board were responsible for that misinformation. Including, I believe, the 3 Board Members that are running for reelection.

We are thankful for small blessings this time of year,and that includes the hard work of many members of the Board.

We are told in this "Mosquito" that the 3 members of the Board who's terms expire wish to run again --which may be one of the reasons why their accomplishments on the front page of the this month's newsletter.

There is also a new group of owners who are preparing to run this year stating that they have clear ideas about how Mesquite can be improved.

One thing is certain. This year it looks like we will have a real choice in how we want to see our complex run.

We are looking forward to a real election. Let the best candidates win.

Cordially,

Tim Gaffney
http://www.mesquiteowners.com