Much of the meeting dealt with a serious issue facing the community. It was announced that the third (3) board president in a row stepped down at the beginning of 2018 due to harassment by a small numbers of owners in the community (3%).
Jesse Mitchell (Vice President) reported that harassment has been a serious problem for years and it effected board members, other volunteers, and contractors. Volunteer manpower has been seriously depleted over the years because of it.
Five of the six most active board members who have performed most of the work over the last 10 years have been systematically driven from the board.In one case, the person left the community entirely.
Jesse quoted a 2017 letter to the community from past president David Schneider warning of this impending crisis and explaining that board members and contractors were being attacked, "not for doing a bad job or doing something wrong, but to drive them out of office." Jesse further explained the many false accusations of impropriety and the personal threats. In some cases family members of board members were also harassed.
This is a serious problem as the number of people in the community with the time and skills to serve on the board is limited.
The board has bounced back year after year and performed at a very favorable levels as rated by the owners in the annual survey, but each year it has been harder. In 2018, the board was far short of manpower needed to complete all the tasks of the association and operated in crisis mode for the year.
Jesse made a plea to the community as a whole to stand up against these practices and asked for "working" volunteers - owners who can supervise work on projects like landscaping, painting, road work, and infrastructure repair to step forward and help.
The community budget vote and election will begin on April 4th. Attached is a pdf of the meeting slides.
