Impressions of Board meeting Feb 17th 2011

I will keep my observations on the last Board meeting as short as possible.

Mr. Flink has passed the task of running the meetings to Mr. Friedman.  I am unsure what else, in practice,  the President of the Board does, however there must be more, otherwise I am sure Mr. Flink would have divested himself of the Presidency.

The Board repeated that it had not appointed replacement Board members to replace those removed as the annual election occurs in May.  However, on the other hand they declare that they cannot continue with various projects and tasks as they are only three.  I thought this to be rather a case of having one’s cake and eating it.  However, there is little to be done about it even it ranks a C- on the good governance test.

The issue that will not die – I refer, of course to the speed humps or the removal of same – was again introduced by a resident complaining about the extra noise speeding cars now make on Queen’s Wreath.  The best reason the Board could offer for the removal is that emergency vehicles will not be delayed ascending Queen’s Wreath.  I had never seen them much delayed before and think this is more in the imagination of our Board than in reality.  Never has clutching at straws required such effort.

Trying to helpful and eschewing the role of armchair quarterback I asked if the Board had quantitative data to objectively prove that traffic is now slower on Queen’s Wreath.  Mr. Feldman advised that indeed they had data from before the speed humps had been removed.  At that point, Mr. Friedman decided he had heard enough and we moved along swiftly without any resolution.  So I conclude that either it is a mystery to both the residents and the Board if traffic is slower or faster on Queen’s Wreath, or, traffic is in fact faster, and the Board just doesn’t want to confront the fact as it was they who removed the speed humps. 

By my observation, the main benefit of the removal of the speed bumps is that one is no longer required to leap for one’s life from the sidewalk to avoid being mown down by fellow residents, their visitors and tradespeople who previously would drive on the sidewalk to avoid the speed bumps.  We should, I suppose, be grateful for small mercies.   And, of course, important visitors to open houses are no longer delayed in their precipitous progress.

And speaking as we were of open houses, Mr. Russell informed us that the Realtors’ lobby – which is well funded and effective – has persuaded the legislature that our community may no longer regulate “For Sale” signs.   And the same thing goes for open houses, so our community is now a seven-day-a-week open house.  Should you meet a realtor I suggest you congratulate them for their work on their behalf.

The continuing issue of the security of our community and access to open houses was raised from the floor.  I have some questions into Mr. Russell on this issue and will post his reply when I have the full story.  As you may know, I am passionately interested in maintaining the security of our community.

The crowning glory of the evening, at least in minds of the Board, I am sure, is the meeting code of conduct they introduced.  As I am reproducing it here, I will put it up as a separate post with my comments.