Saturday September 15, 2001

The meeting was held at the residence of Bob Donaldson. It started at 9.10 am. Present were Bob Donaldson, Joe Romer, Terry Zawacki, Ann-Catrine Skoog Ehmer, and Carl Zitsmann.

Treasurer’s Report
Treasurer Bob Donaldson reported on: net worth as of 9/7/01; income and expense summary through 9/7/01; and budget status report through 9/7/01. 

The major expenses are the landscape contract and maintenance of trees and shrubs.  The budget is posted on the website.

Landscape
Terry Zawacki reported that the Landscape Committee met on Saturday, September 8, 2001. The Committee is displeased with the present company, Curb Appeal, as general work has not been done in a satisfactory way. The Committee will look into other companies. The present contract will expire at the end of December 2001.

The Board also discussed the possibilities of contracting a gardener instead of having the common ground services done by a company. 

The project of redoing the landscaping at the front entrance to Tollgate will begin in September.

Trees
The Association members were informed on September 10, 2001, by e-mail, that several trees have to be cut down and replaced because they are dead, dying or overgrown. On September 14, 2001 the homeowners received by e-mail an update regarding the tree removal and planting of new trees. This project will start in September.

Parking
Earlier this year the Board published a parking policy that was intended to enhance the number of available parking spaces and deal with some of the concerns expressed by many homeowners. That policy is available on the website: www.tollgateway.org.  

In brief, it calls for; 1) utilizing the homeowner’s own parking pad or driveway before parking in visitor parking; 2) if you must use visitor parking, (i.e. if you have three cars), then the car that is used least should be parked in your driveway or parking pad and the most active car should be in visitor parking, thereby making visitor space available when the car is in use; 3) do not use visitor parking for storage of vehicles (yours or others); 4) because Tollgate Way is such a narrow street, residents & guests should only park on the street as a last resort (i.e. no spaces are available in visitor parking.

The board would like to thank those residents who have gone to considerable inconvenience (shuffling 2 cars in a driveway) to comply with this policy; we recognize that it is not easy.  On the other hand, the Board has received a number of complaints that some homeowners are ignoring this policy and continue to routinely park or store cars in visitor parking while their own parking pads are not fully used.  The Board cannot force people to park in their own driveways.  We would encourage residents who feel their guests are being inconvenienced by these practices, to approach those homeowners directly, or feel free to instruct their guests to use the offending homeowners parking pads as public parking.

Social
Fall Picnic: A flyer has been distributed informing homeowners about the fall picnic on Sunday, October 14. Contact person is Ann-Catrine Skoog Ehmer.

Christmas Decoration: The Christmas decoration of lampposts and gazebo will take place on Saturday, December 1, 2001. The decoration will start at 9.00 am and volunteers will meet in the gazebo area. 

Annual Board Meeting: The Board is preparing for the annual meeting. This year the Annual Meeting will be on December 2, 2001 at the home of Edna Frady.  This meeting will also be considered a Special Meeting under the by-laws.

Christmas Party: Place, date, and time TBA.

Annual Meeting
A nomination Committee is being appointed by the Board for the election of new officers at the Annual meeting.

At last year’s Annual meeting there were several By-laws amendments that were discussed but could not be enacted because we did not have the required number of homeowners or proxies to enact them.  This year, to ensure that we have a quorum, the board plans to send out the proposed amendments ahead of time with proxies for those who will not attend the meeting. Then board members will follow up with each homeowner to make sure we have a proxy if they will not be attending the meeting.  

1.   Board Terms.  When reviewing the By-laws and Articles of Incorporation, we found that they are incompatible in respect to Board terms.  The Articles of Incorporation call for three-year terms and the By-laws call for one-year terms. The Bylaws need to be amended by the membership at the Annual meeting to conform with the Articles of Incorporation, so that the policy and practice of three year terms is codified in both documents. The By-laws require that proposed amendments be submitted in writing to the membership at least twenty-one (21) days before the Annual Meeting.
 The September Newsletter will inform the Association members about the proposed change.

2. Number of directors.  The Board will propose to add 1 additional director.  This increases the board majority to 4, which may sometimes be a problem, but it allows for more diversity on the board and allows for 2 new board members being elected each year.  (see next section)

3. Overlapping Terms.  With the practice of electing board members for one-year terms it is possible that the entire board could be replaced at once, and in fact, this has happened in the past.  This is a recipe for disaster as the new board will have no continuity from the previous board, will start out not knowing what has happened in the past and will waste valuable time trying to find out what they are expected to do.

The Board is proposing that the 6 board seats be staggered such that each year, 2 new board members are elected.  After three years, all 6 directors will have been replaced or reelected.  This is similar to the way the Senate operates.

4. Dues.  Dues are currently $75/mo. or $900/yr., and have not been increased for 4 years.  Landscaping continues to be a problem and we believe that to get the kind of service the community would like, we will need to spend more than in the past.  Furthermore, this year we are re-landscaping the front entrance and replacing a number of diseased or dead trees that will significantly eat into our surplus.  The board will recommend to the membership that dues be increased gradually over a 3-year period, to $100/mo. or $1200/yr.  The increase each year would be $8.33/mo. or $100/yr.  When the increase is fully implemented it will represent a 33.3% increase over the present dues.  However, when you look at the fact that they have not been increased for 4 years and it will take 3 years to implement, you need to divide the 33.3% by 7 and you get a 4.7% per year dues increase. This is slightly higher than the CPI over this period.

Looking at it another way, under the new schedule the amount that each household will contribute to maintenance of the property will be just a fraction of 1% (2/10 of 1% to be exact) of the value of each property.  The aggregate value of all the homes in Tollgate is conservatively estimated to be about $14 million.  We are currently paying about $27,000 per year for the upkeep of our property and when the new dues schedule is fully implemented our budget will increase to about $36,000.  Relative to the value of our property, that is a very modest amount for the purpose of preserving the aesthetics of our community.

Both the dues increase and the By-laws amendments will need a 2/3 vote of the membership or 20 of 29 homeowners. It is therefore imperative that every homeowner attend the annual meeting or fill out a proxy and give it to one of the board members before the meeting.

The next meeting is scheduled for Saturday, October 6, at 9 am, at Ann-Catrine Skoog Ehmer’s house.

The meeting adjourned at 10:30am.