Each year before an election the Homeowners Association at Mesquite sends out a letter asking owners to forward their Proxy votes to them so that a quorum can be reached at future meetings. They also give you as an owner a 2 nd option to let the Board cast your vote if you do not plan to attend the Board Meetings. The presumption is that the Board may know best who is qualified to help assist them in running Mesquite, and how to vote on important issues.
This year we urge you to hold on to your vote , and to cast it yourself.
To assure that there is no confusion, we also suggest that you send a letter to the HOA and request them to cancel any voting rights that you may have granted them in the past. If you wish, you can also use the email link to the Board on this web site's home page. Keep a copy of your correspondence. Further, you can ask for your emailed questions to us regarding specific candidates and their qualifications to be reprinted on this web site.
Your vote this year is going to be very important . At the Annual Meeting there will be at least 2 qualified candidates challenging the 2 incumbent Board Members running for re-election. The current Board, as noted in another article on this web site, is made up of 5 members—4 of whom were either appointed or who ascended to the Board via “acclamation”. That means 80% of our current board members did not result from a competitive election!
This year you will have a choice.
There are many important issues facing Mesquite in 2004. None, however, are more important than the potential $2 million special assessment, and the very issue of the integrity of the Board itself.
Special Assessment:
The potential special assessment, mentioned in the November 12 th mailing of the 2004 Budget Packet sent to owners, would be used to re-pave roads and paint buildings in the complex. The current Replacement Fund used to pay for these projects has a projected reserve of $283,620.00. According to the Board it should be $2,126,434.00. Our question-- why is this underfunded by almost $2 million dollars in the first place? And who is responsible for that???
Many of us would rather pay an extra $300/year or $36/month then to find out that we now have a special assessment of $3000-4000 that will be due in full in a very short period of time. How could Board members for the past 5 years not have possibly known that the Reserve Fund had a deficit approaching $2 million, and that this issue needed to be addressed?
According to the Homeowners Association office the reason there may be a Special Assessment is that: “The reserves were not adequately funded over the years, which is why the funds are not available at this time for the necessary work.”
Of our current Board members, Terry Arnold has been on the Board for approximately 12 years, Gerald Carlin and Chuck Barbaglia are in their 3 rd year, and Bob Blum is completing his 2 nd year. The final member, Roger Lubin, is in his first year.
The Board of Directors has recently written a Mesquite Bill of Rights, which they call “Rights and Responsibilities for Better Communities”. It was first published in the Fall 2003 edition of the “Mosquito” newsletter. One provision states that our leaders have a responsibility to: “Exercise sound business judgment and follow established management practices.”
By any standard of management practice, allowing replacement funding to fall 80-90% under what the Board's own guidelines call for would not be deemed sound judgement.
Integrity
The other issue of major importance facing our Board is one of their own integrity and creditability.
By now you are familiar with the voting of the CC&R revision, which was passed in the Fall of 2002. Many if not most owners found out almost a year later through a letter from a fellow owner that they had unknowingly also voted on other issues that they were never told about. Over 140 owners to date have sent signed letters to the Board stating:
“I am advising you at this time that when I received the mailing regarding the Revised CC&R's last fall, I was unaware of the fact that that there were several important changes buried in that almost half-inch document… .” They then asked the Board to invalidate the results of the election on any issue other than the stated “insurance crisis”.
As you may recall, the vote on the CC&R's only passed by about 6 votes.
The issue here is not the rental ban, although that issue is very important to many members who rely on it for supplemental income. The core issue is clearly stated in the owner's letter to the Board: “An informed electorate producing a majority vote should be the goal of any representative governing body including the MCC Board. When a ‘majority' vote is produced without adequate disclosure, that vote becomes tainted and is an insult to our collective concept of representative government.” Thomas Jefferson could not have said it much better.
What really happened on this vote? Did the Board just “forget” to mention the ban on weekend rentals in the summary of the CC&R's as it initially said? We would like to believe it was that simple. However, that hypothesis becomes untenable by virtue of the fact that our Association Manager sent out a memo to all major condo rental agencies in Palm Springs within days after the CC&R's were recorded (and therefore enforceable) stating in bold type: “ All leases must be in writing and must be for a minimum of seven (7) days. It is the intent of the Association to strictly enforce this provision.”
The Board and HOA stopped using the above (oversight, forgot, etc.) explanation when confronted with the apparent contradiction of logic: Too insignificant to mention to owners, but not too insignificant to enforce the first few days it was possible to do so.
One way to determine the motive of the Board might be to review the records of the discussion(s) that preceded the decision to change the longstanding rental policy. However, when an owner recently sent a request to the Board to review all copies of minutes or notes from executive meetings in which the matter of changing the longstanding rental policy was discussed, that owner was told that no such minutes or notes existed.
This lack of accountability lead Attorney David Darrin to conclude in his letter to the Board's attorney that “it appears beyond reasonable doubt that the Amended CCRS would not have passed had the Board disclosed in its ballot materials that the minimum rental terms were to be changed in the Amended CCRS.”
This is why the elections in February are so important. Many owners feel that it is time to demand accountability from their elected officers. Many owners feel it is time that they were again treated like owners and not tenants in their own homes.
Perhaps the current Board members can offer convincing explanations for some of their recent actions. Perhaps they can explain why issues were left off the CC&R summaries, why they have refused to allow owners to review the CC&R votes to make sure they passed in the first place, and why we again have another special assessment on the agenda for this year's annual meeting.
However, if no convincing logic emerges, note that this year you will have a choice in who you wish to have serve on your Board of Directors, and to exercise influence on the course of events impacting your substantial financial investment.
And that, said Mr. Jefferson, is what Democracy is all about.
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To contact the HOA regarding your proxy vote go back to the Coverpage of this website and click on the Mesquite HOA e-mail link under the “Resources” section on the left side. Keep a copy of your correspondence.
