Sean,
Jay Jump is attempting to play the community. He is a very cleaver person, who has had schooling and working experience manipulating words and getting others to rally in his causes favor. The trick is to first get everyone's attention by implying that they are going to be personally affected by something ("hold on to your pocketbooks", "follow the money", etc.). One that I particularly like is talking about Jed demanding more money and I guess they saw fit to give it to him. The truth was Jed asked, if we could not provide the insurance, to pay him what we would have had to pay for the insurance and we agreed. As it turns out, we could insure him so it was a moot point anyway. The thing that I find so funny is that Jay Jump wants to hire someone with all of the bells and whistles to the tune of $80,000 a year, or not less than $60,000 as the maintenance manager and wants a full-time Office Manager to the tune of at least $40,000 a year. Then, of course, we still need our second maintenance staff. Now we would have to pay all of the payroll taxes and insurance on top of all of that. Look at the minutes from the last board and you will see that in a meeting before the election they offered the then Office Manager $40,000 a year. I could go on, but I think you get the picture.
As far as the Board meetings go, we set a meeting for a Friday and Jay said he could not attend and wanted the 15th (a Saturday) as he had weekend plans. He knows that Saturdays are out of the question for us and asking the Joe Brinkman to work more on the weekends than he already does is not right. George changed it to Monday thinking he and hopefully Margot could participate via telephone (as we purchased equipment to do this to accommodate our out-of-town Board members). This was not an option for Margot or Jay. On the 4th I sent the following message to Morgot in particular, but it was distributed to all of the Board members:
Margot,
I can talk to George. He is the one scheduling the meeting. The only response that we got from the original meeting notice was that the 15th would be better for both you and Jay. That is a Saturday and we had already let everyone know that Saturdays are not an option for us and it isn't fair to ask the maintenance staff to work any more weekend time than necessary.
After talking to George with Rick, he changed the meeting to Monday hoping you could both attend at least by telephone. I ask Rick to talk to George with me and see if we can change the meeting again.
I sense your frustration and I feel bad that you feel that way. I don't believe that George is trying to be difficult. He is trying to get things done and time is passing. We need to figure out an easier way to schedule meetings in a timely manner without so much effort. The solution might be to have a particular night that we meet and people attend or not.
Now, why did Jay indicate to everyone that the meeting was set in stone, because it keeps everyone thinking that we are waging some kind of conspiracy.
In truth, we are trying to get as much accomplished as we can with the least amount of expenditures. We are new at this and have entered the game with everything against us.
I hope that at least we can agree that despite the controversy this board has been effective at getting a lot of problems solved for the community in the short time we have been in office, despite the obstacles put in our way (the blog). We've hired the staff we need, we've organized the office and run it without paid staff to save the association a lot of money, we've fought hard to allow a solution to the problem of the road above the Bennett property, we've solved the issue of the Simpson property (twice as it turns out since we both replicated the agreement and found the original) that the previous board was not able to take action on for almost a year, we've advanced toward being almost ready to begin the phase 2 water project, we've gotten closer to being able to present figures and options to our road problem, we've gotten the books back in order and reconciled the accounts which were all wrong, we've come up with a filing system that has until now consisted of stacks and unassorted boxes, right or wrong we've taken action on what to do about the pool, we've granted 2 necessary variances, we're dealing with many building requests and property issues.
In my opinion, the blog is a negative thing that has served to create disruption in the community and slow down the progress we are striving for. There have been many days that I could not function because I could not sleep, as a result, the office is not nearly to the point I would like it to be. I want to make procedures and desk manuals so that no one will ever have to go into an office and face the challenge that we had to face.
I'm not sure how much I will be able to respond on here. It takes too much precious time and I need to focus on constructive progress.
Thank you for reading and considering my thoughts on this subject.
Jay, where have you been screaming for a common meeting time? Your only communication on the issue was that you wanted saturday the 15th, then you accused us of having no integrity (again) because George had asked for the 7th. This issue was worked out between the board and we followed Margot's suggestion of an alternative meeting date. By way of saying "power to the people" you are simply trying to take credit for this by saying your emailings to the community had some affect on the decision. It was Margot's willingness to compromise on a meeting date that led to the date being changed, not your PR campaign.
Linda Schindler
Board Member
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