Folks, there was a reference to the Lake Pointe Community web page in another post. I went to this site and found an excellent example on how a homeowners association web page ought to look like. On this page I found the names of committees and the chairperson's name, address, phone number and email for each. I also saw that this community has seven BOD's. What really caught my attention was the BOD meeting agendas and also meeting minutes. There is no secrecy on what is being discussed and what was the outcome of the discussions and votes. What really peeked my attention was the on-line survey and results that were on this web page. This type of information would give our neighborhood a good reading on what our concerns were and how the community feels we should act on issues and problems. I know I took a survey several months ago and I don't recall seeing the results or feedback on that survey. On this web page I even saw activity on a tree planting project. It listed the type of trees, pictures and cost associated with that tree planting project.
I was really impressed with the amount of information that this web page provided to its homeowners. I'm sure that this neighborhood has its own web and information problems but it is far better than the communication and participation that the homeowners of Circle C are getting today. Take a look for yourself. I think we could all benefit from better communication.

www.lakepointehoa.org/committees.htm

Open Government

When you have no choice about being a member or not (i.e. It's an automatic condition of home ownership in the HOA), then nothing should be secret to the members. It is a public organization - and a ''tax'' that you can't even write-off on you taxes.

All of the CCHOA documents must be made available and the easiest way to do that, in my opinion, is to publish them to the CCHOA web site. However, the original records still have to be made available for inspection by any CCHOA member - NOT Copies.

All meeting notes, including committee meeting notes, are supposed to be filed, as well. Our By-Laws, however, to make mention of how soon those things have to be published. I hope that will be addresed in the new By-laws. We have a lot of loopholes to fix in those outdated documents.


M.T. You are on target with your comments.

Incidently, the results of the Wal-Mart Survey and committee notes are going to be released soon. You won't see any surprises, but the committee did take some time to verify the responders and their addresses. This is not a scientific study, but because of the high level of participation, it's very telling.

Anyway, the CCHOA newsletter that came out this week, noted that a Town Hall style meeting was being considered. You can rest assured, all the reseach will be presented and explained.

I think that one of the lessons here is that some things that affect our community come on us very quickly (the Endeavor/Wal-Mart project, in fact, was designed to hit us long after the project has been mapped out and early stages had been completed). It usually takes HOA's a long time to poll their members and act on such issues. While it's convient to have a small, tightly bound group of 3 directors act on their own, there are things like Wal-Mart that really require more participation from the members. We need ways to move quickly and the Web site is one the tools we need to embrace.

Having said that, I recognise that we will never be able to work with everyone in Circle C through computers, but we can reach so many, with so little effort, it's impoossible to ignore it.

CCHOA needs to take advantage of the technology and build the organization to embrace it. It's harder to include all the members out there, but that should be the goal! US Mail still works, but it is way too expensive and too slow for urgent matters.

7 BOD's but 2 are not Homeowners

Hi MT.

I did take a look at the web site for Lake Pointe...also know some friends that live out there. I did notice that although they have 7 members on the board, 2 of the members do not have to be homeowners. The board meeting notes for this year, 2003, were not updated- the last one being January 2003.

They also have a number of committees that they have homeowners sign up for to be on the committees as well as be head of the committees.

They are also under several MUD districts, similar to what we were under prior to annexation.

One last thing I noticed was there was no ''on-line chat'' on the web site.

Lake Pointe

Hey Snicker, that's interesting that they have 2 outsiders. I'm not sure what the pros and cons are with having folks from the outside on the board. I know corporations have folks from other corporations on their boards because they bring knowledge with them to the table.In our case, having non- homeowners could be beneficial if they don't have any conflicts of interest. My personal feeling is that our board members were probably too close to the developer, but that's my opinion. The homeowners should decide whether we want non- residents on the ballot and then of course should decide on an individual basis whether they believe this person would benefit Circle C.

I also saw that the minutes were not current. Maybe you can find out how often they update through your friends. That would be interesting to find out. My guess they just fell behind this year. I'm not sure about a chat room. What do you think?