October 22, 2018
September and October BOD Meeting Notes
This provides notes from the last two POASI board meetings.
September 15 Meeting:
Mark DeJon had posted a review of the 9-15 meeting on Facebook in the LoveSuissevale Group. You can read the comments on the Facebook Group here.
We would like to add two things that struck us. On this website we pointed out that the BOD had attempted to get a $1.2 Million Dollar Loan. (See "Can POASI Board Change By-Laws" in the blog section.) In the 9-15 meeting we learned that the BOD had spent $128,000 on test wells, and they affirmed that they had applied for the $1.2 million loan. The BOD has the power and gall to do this without asking the membership.
Tom Keddy recommended that the BOD should vote on a proposal that the docks should NOT be able to be passed down from existing dock holders to their children through a trust. He felt that this was a misuse of common property by the BOD, as it essentially kept common property tied to a house. The BOD said they would take it under consideration, but later emailed Tom to tell him that the proposal would NOT be voted on by the BOD. (Who would want to vote to deed common property to a house?)
October 20 Meeting:
In his opening comments, John Barba noted that the Town of Moultonborough Assessor was doing a review of Suissevale common property. Whoa. How is our common property assessed? Particularly, how are our docks assessed given their unusually high value? Who pays the taxes?
Things that might not be discussed in the minutes:
No recording will be allowed at meetings and the BOD is discussing types of punishment if they are secretly recorded. Some punishments sounded pretty drastic.
Hank Hardaway made a very persuasive argument that the BOD should hire a water system engineer as there were many issues between the State and Suissevale about the water system that will need to be addressed. The BOD was surprisingly resistant to this suggestion but will.
The LoveSuissevale Survey showed that the Water system was the number one issue of members for the BOD to address. The BOD is considering three options: 1. No Change 2. Wells and 3. Sell to LRW.
The Five-Year Plan was discussed. Interestingly, it did not address the water issues, which would be key to how we would address just about all the other issues given its budget importance. Water is now almost half the yearly budget and represents about half of members’ dues (charges shared evenly despite use).
Roads were addressed in this discussion. The BOD wants to move up the paving of the lower portion of Suissevale avenue to early 2019 and is also considering completing the entire road at the same time. It would cost $50,000 to do the lower portion, as it will require a complete road overall. It was estimated that the rest of the road could be repaved for $100,000 given that it was not in as bad a shape as the lower portion and the equipment was already at Suissevale. It was not clear from the conversation what reserves were allocated for what projects, or how many bids would be considered.
Many other projects were discussed, but no plan emerged.
Our Survey (See here) showed that members wanted to understand what lawsuits POASI had been involved in. We were able to get information on the lawsuit John Sullivan had initiated. You can find that in Legal Stuff.