Prohibited Plants
In January, the HOA submitted landscape proposals to the City in response to a notice of violation regarding community landscape. Being in a fire prone area I would not have approved landscape proposals to plant 620 prohibited plants in common areas. (SPP stands for species pluralis, Latin for multiple species).
I’ll post notes from the March meeting soon.
Summary of landscape proposal (left), Do not plant list from HOA Design Guidelines and CC&Rs (right)
HOA Valve Leak
This is on a Friday evening.
Two days later…still going.
Alert Homeowner
Homeowner on upper Triana Street just below the seating area, note HOA erosion on the bottom of your fence. Obviously, it will damage the fence.
Goodbye Google…Analytics
I’ve removed Google Analytics from the web site. It wasn’t useful for a non-commercial site like this. It also didn’t appear to improve the search results. In DuckDuckGo and Bing searches this site is typically the first listed. In Google searches this site is typically on page 2. Google features realty sites (advertisers?) on the first page of search results.
Google used to have a motto “Don’t be evil.” They dropped the motto and the way of doing business. They’ve canceled others, so this is one of my steps to cancel them from my technology. The first page of the site still has a Google Map. It is the most visited feature of the site so I’ll explore replacing it with something else rather than simply removing it.
Solutions to miscreants
The City recently considered a regulation in response to complaints. Some sort of parking restriction might help with the situation where miscreants go to Sky Ranch and cause trouble (e.g. trash, public sex and drugs). Permit parking or red curbs might help.
Secret Meetings Can Reduce The Length of Open Meetings.
The HOA managed to post a corrected agenda so that a legal meeting can be held. There have been no open meetings for over a year, yet other than the rubber stamp portion of the meeting, there are only 5 items for discussion. I imagine that secret meetings result in shorter open meetings. The agenda includes yet another discussion of security cameras; Architectural modification status (a place holder for these possible issues); Homeowner correspondence (which they may or may not read in the meeting), and Board and Committee lists. There is zero discussion of landscape. Remember those $40k landscape proposals? Those should have been discussed here. No discussion of City notices of violation. There is no item about the delays in approving homeowner landscape plans, nothing about the performance of FirstService, the landscape company, or the difficulties in posting agendas.
So close
The HOA posted notices for an Executive HOA meeting on Thursday March 18, but they posted notice for an Open HOA meeting on FEBRUARY 18. The passcode for the open meeting appears wrong also. It is the code for the previously canceled February meeting. The email from FirstService had a March 18 Open Meeting agenda with a different passcode. I don’t know what they are doing, but they need to repost promptly or cancel another meeting. They seem to prefer meetings without homeowners.
The Silence of the HOA Part 3
The HOA spent $4825 on a maintenance plan, which includes spending for $40,897 in plants and straw, that was understandably rejected by the City. The HOA president signed the agreement to create the plan on December 16, soon after the apparently secret December 15 meeting.
The bulk of the submission was a large document called the Landscape & Irrigation Operation and Maintenance Manual (pdf). <Note: Because this document is bloated beyond 100 MB, it will download from the Google Drive folder associated to this website.> It is 348 pages of existing documents that I could have put together in 15 minutes. After the introduction, pages 4 – 14 describe maintenance. Amazingly, the next 234 pages are simply pdf manuals of the irrigation controllers. The next 100 pages are pre-development landscape plans that the City approved for the creation of the Sky Ranch development.
The HOA submitted the document in response to a notice of violation from the City for the deplorable condition of the landscape that is now in violation of code. The notice of violation instructed the HOA to submit a plan of corrective action. Set aside the 334 pages of irrigation control manuals and the year 2006 landscape plans approved for the development. That leaves the maintenance described on pages 4 -14. Those 11 pages are from the contract between the HOA and the landscape company. Huh? Submitting a contract that you have not enforced is not a plan.
The HOA also submitted a 56 page document (pdf) that consists largely of photos of a few areas around the community accompanied by a list for plant and straw. I put the information into the table below. I use the correct spelling of straw wattle, while the HOA contractor repeatedly spells it waddle.
The City has explained to the HOA that ALL of the slopes of the development must be maintained, as well as flat areas. In this new HOA plan that has been rejected by the City, the scope of work is described, “To address areas adjacent to right-of-ways…” In previous HOA meetings, one board member said that there is no budget for the slopes. Another director said that the issue is “homeowner perception.” The HOA needs to adjust its perception.
