The Last Year

It has been one year since I flew up to NH from my Florida winter residence to present my ideas for Suissevale to the Board of Directors. I had hoped to get buy-in to the idea that ALL Suissevale members should be treated equally with equal participation in the benefits that Suissevale provides.

What happened to this grand experiment is outlined in the LoveSuissevale site that I set up to communicate to other members what happened to me and to facilitate open communication in Suissevale. We found out that Suissevale is run tightly by mostly the original buyers in Suissevale (who began POASI in 1987) and for the next early wave of buyers.

The BOD’s source of power is those original or early members of Suissevale, many of whom get use of the marina well below market prices, while at the same time not allowing access to the marina common property by passing the marina docks on to their children through trusts. If this is not illegal, it is certainly not fair to the now over 366 home owners (not counting land owners) who are not dock holders and bear the cost of subsidizing the dock holders.

We ran research among over 200 Suissevale members to find out what they thought about the board and its management. Those results are here, and they pretty much confirmed what I had experienced.

A LoveSuissevale Committee was formed, including over 30 households, who could meet to discuss these issues during the late summer and fall. Here is what we found:

1. Because of the unique way Suissevale became a property owners association, the duly elected BOD has extensive latitude and power in running Suissevale. The founding documents and existing law for home associations in NH make this a lawyer’s dream as everything is quite murky. Almost any attempt to correct abuse of power through legal means would be costly and time consuming, even if the cause was just and the eventual outcome was clear. The State of NH will pretty much stay out of helping, as Suissevale in a private entity.

2. Suissevale has not had an audit in at least the last 10 years. This makes it pretty much impossible for a BOD outsider to know how Suissevale is run and what the reserves and reserve requirements are for the property owners. An unaudited “review” for Suissevale was released in 2014 and is posted on the LoveSuissevale website here.

3. A private property management company was contacted by the LoveSuissevale committee to review and discuss the operations of Suissevale, using the information that we had available via the cash flow data from 2014 and analyzing services provided by POASI. This company has extensive experience running other large home owner associations on the lake and around the state. While not definitive, we believe the expense of the operation of Suissevale could be reduced using a management company. This would need an audit of Suissevale, competitive proposals, and more study to pursue.

4. Communication of activities of the BOD to the membership is spotty and not open. Some examples are outlined on the LoveSuissevale website, but there are many others. One egregious example, the BOD had decided to borrow $1.2 million dollars to develop a water system for Suissevale, without asking members (whom would be responsible for the loan). The water system remains a continuing issue, and it is hard to know what the BOD wants to do. It remains grossly unfair that all owners of Suissevale share equally in water, when some owners irrigate, and others live in Suissevale year-round.

What can we do? We would suggest that you vote for BOD candidates who support the LoveSussevale Platform posted here.