Board election candidacy

You will know that I have stated in previous posts that while I have been seriously considering offering myself for election to our HOA Board, I had not absolutely decided.  Reason being that, while on the one hand I plan on being a very long-term resident of Cimarron Hills and care deeply about our community, I am also under no illusion about what the commitment entails. I've done it before. I received a letter today from  part-time CH residents Jerome and Linda Carlson which made up my mind.  I will be a candidate for our Board in the forthcoming election.
The Carlsons, apparently, take umbrage at a section from my Manifesto for Cimarron Hills, which I am reproducing below:

Maintenance of the quality of life and security of our community should be the primary concern of the Board consistent with conservative and sensible financial and operating practices.  This does not strike me as being that hard to grasp, but apparently it is for some.

In our most recent Board meeting I watched a resident who, from what I heard, was rightly quite angry and despairing about the unwillingness of the Board to enforce our CC&Rs.  What I heard about were not minor infractions, so, if I can grasp that enforcing our important CC&Rs (we are not talking about a bin left out overnight here) is essential to maintaining our quality of life, how is it that our Board does not?  I asked Mr. Friedman very directly if he had consulted our HOA attorney on legal remedies.  I did not receive a reply.

Other residents have complained about excessive speed in our community since the Board removed the speed humps.  I asked Mr. Friedman a direct question about measured speeds in our community at the February Board meeting and did not receive a reply.  If we do not know if traffic is faster or slower now, how might we even begin to address the issue of road safety in our community?

I believe I am correct to question the quality of the judgment that is, and has been displayed by our Board members on these and other issues.  If you agree with me, I will appreciate your support in the upcoming Board election.

Expansion of McDowell Sonoran Preserve.

Being lucky enough to live, as we do, on the border of the beautiful McDowell Sonoran Preserve, you may be interested to read that Scottsdale is working to purchase another large chunk of land to add to the preserve:
http://bit.ly/eOPGco
While I may not always appreciate some of the  machinations that went on in the process to bring us the Preserve, I am always glad when I am in it.  It is a great asset to our community.

Board meeting notes of March 18th.

Following is a summary of my notes from last night's Board meeting.  Please feel free to contact me directly with questions or comments, or post them yourself to the comments section.

The meeting opened with Mr. Friedman in the chair.

Mr. Flink read a prepared statement in which he spoke of his high regard for the two Board members removed by ballot earlier this year, his qualifications and experience to hold the office of President and certain health challenges that he has been forced to confront.  He concluded by resigning from the Presidency of CH HOA and nominated Mr. Friedman for the post.  Mr. Friedman was duly elected.

One homeowner complained about lack of HOA action on homes next to hers where the owners are in serious breach of the CC&Rs.  Mr. Russell explained that HOAs are being progressively restrained by legislation and the Courts in terms of enforcement actions they may take.  One suggestion from the floor (Mr. Meyer) was that the community should cancel the electronic gate passes of scofflaw homeowners.  I asked the chair if the Board had asked Scott Carpenter if these cases could be settled by direct litigation.  I did not get a direct reply but I believe enforcement of CC&Rs by litigation is an option open to the Board.
OPINION: I understand that our HOA's rights to enforce its CC&Rs may have been reduced.  Nevertheless, even if there is a cost attached to our HOA enforcing the CC&Rs in a Court, I think they should do so if all other options have been exhausted.  This is a quality of life issue, and one that, if not dealt with, could quickly become unmanageable.

An attempt was made by the Board to establish that no vote had ever been taken to expand the fitness facility.  (To my mind, the issue of whether there was a vote or not is entirely moot.  What enraged the community was the Board's insistence on plowing on like the Battleship Bismark in the face of a torrent of objections from residents.)  This led to several points from the floor and Board responses about the necessity for the Board to obtain community approval for expenditures.  On December 18th 2010 I wrote:

"In terms of the management of our HOA, Bill (Fuchs, the then HOA Prseident) is correct in his assertion that the Board is mandated to run the HOA as it sees fit as an elected Board. Having served on the Board with Bill I must also agree that with him that HOA governance by referendum has the potential to be troublesome unless it is clearly defined. ..... There are ways to solicit homeowner input on an annual basis to assist the Board in getting some feedback from homeowners. An annual survey, printed, or online would be easy to distribute and collate and could give the Board valuable feedback on the desires of its homeowners. This is exactly what the HOA at my Tahoe home does and it works very well – as the Board pays attention to the feedback (and discusses it at the AGM), even if they don’t always agree or act on it."

OPINION: This does not need to be a black and white issue. There is a way for the Board to solicit and consider opinions even if they do not feel bound to agree with them.

A homeowner (Mr. Meyer) raised the issue of danger to the community by fire and asked the Board to consider a Fire Protection Plan.  Mr. Feldman responded that Safeguard Security had reviewed this, and that we had received a visit from Scottsdale Fire which had led to thinning and trimming of underbrush to provide defensible space. 

"Meet the candidates" night  will be on April 11th, I believe at the McDowell Center.

To my mind the highlight of the evening was a discussion pertaining to the replacement of exercise equipment.  Mr. Russell presented his recommendations and bids which fell foul of Mr. Feldman, much to the irritation, I observed, of one homeowner in particular who pointed out that this matter had been going on for some time (months).  Eventually the Board kicked the can down the road, as it were, in a desperate attempt to demonstrate fiscal responsibility.  All would have been well, I believe, had Mr. Feldman not pointed out that (I am paraphrasing) the Board was only three as two other members had been removed, they were only volunteers and they (he in particular) had a great deal of work to do.  Mr. Meyer pointed out from the floor  that the Board had had every opportunity to fill the vacant Board seats either by appointment or special election (I believe Mr. Meyer is correct). This then provoked a rambling and amplified diatribe (I am sorry to call it thus, but that is what it was) from Mr. Feldman that veered off into various topics.  Eventually Mr. Friedman was able to close the meeting and we all went on our merry way, but only after the issue of replacement of the exercises equipment had been deferred for a month, principally, it seems, because Mr. Feldman does not like to mix brands.
OPINION: Agreeing as I do with Mr. Meyer on the Board's opportunity to promptly appoint or elect replacement Board members, which they declined to do, I find Mr. Feldman's protestations of overwork because the Board is short-handed to be the ultimate in chutzpah.  I will also say that, having countenanced the possible spending of significant chunks of our money on gym expansions, monuments, etc.I find it somewhat amusing that now being faced with a fast approaching election some members of the Board are desperately attempting to wrap themselves in the mantle of parsimony.

There was also a discussion on legislative initiatives, which I have excluded from these notes as I wish to deal with them as a longer and separate post.

City of Scottsdale curfew law.

This post was stimulated by an article I read about curfew laws in Phoenix entitled: "Do you know where your child is?"    With Spring break upon us, and the nights lengthening, it's a good question, isn't it?
 For those who may not know, Scottsdale does have a curfew law.  Scottsdale PD will enforce the curfew law in Cimarron Hills in response to a complaint.
The curfew law is:

Scottsdale Curfew Law (7 days a week)
	15 years and under - 10:00pm
	16 and 17 years - 12:00 am
Exceptions: Accompanied by parent or legal guardian; necessary for work, including going to or returning from work (prior permission by parent or guardian); any reasonable, legitimate and specific business or activity, with permission by parent or guardian.

Please note that the exceptions do not mean that parents can tell their children it's OK to be out after curfew. Noting from the crime map below that vandalism is one of the more frequently reported crimes in CH (even then it's pretty low), and not recently having seen a senior citizen charged for it, it struck me that this might be a timely reminder.

Board election nominations available

You should have received a Request for Candidates form from our management company, Rossmar & Graham.  This is basically your application form to place yourself on the ballot for the Cimarron Hills HOA Board of Directors.  If you did not receive this form, and would like place yourself on the list of candidates standing for election, please e-mail me and I will e-mail or fax a form to you.  After what happened with the mailing of our special election ballots, I am assuming nothing at this stage.
I have not yet completely decided  to run for office in the election, although I am certainly leaning to doing it.  I thought I was done with my Board service at CH HOA, but maybe not.  The most telling question on the Request for Candidates is: "Why do you want to serve on the Cimarron Hills Board of Directors?".
Indeed, that is a very good question.  In my case, this time around I will run because I believe we need a turnaround in how our HOA is run.  My choice of the word "turnaround" should not indicate to you that we are in financial straits; we are not.  Not should it indicate that our management is in a shambles; it isn't, although there are some things I would change.  However it is my observation that the culture of our Board needs significant change.  Our Board needs not to Major in minor things, but to focus on a few, important, common sense issues.  As I have said previously, this should not be hard. But apparently it is.  Or at least for our recent Boards.
If I had to sum it up, our Board should concern itself primarily with quality of CH life, financial and physical security.  That's it.
I hope we have many candidates.  I do not care if they are young, old, men, women, employed or retired.  All I would tell prospective candidates is that while it is a privilege to serve it is also a job.  The Board is not the place to regain the ego satisfaction that you previously obtained elsewhere, nor is it the place to further your own business interests.
The manifesto that now has its own tab at the top of this blog lists in greater detail what I think is important for our Board, and the qualifications and disqualifications to service.

From the police blotter (aka Crimes)

If you would like to see how our community stacks up against others in Scottsdale you may do so from an interactive map provided by Scottsdale police department here: CRIME MAP. This how the crime map for our community and the surroundings look for the last twelve months (if you click on the image you can see it full-size):

The map is powered by Google maps so you can zoom, drag, view satellite and so on.  The map is interactive, you may add or remove crimes, change the date range (careful, that doesn't stick too well).  The map above is for the last twelve months.  Inside our gate we have had the following crimes:
Simple Assault - 3 (all at night and quite late, my guess is domestic)
Trespassing- 1  (I'm guessing this is domestic-related too)
Vandalism - 3 (yes, we have teenagers)
Residential burglary -1
Theft, other - 1
Not too bad given my assumptions on the nature of the crimes. It is essential that we make sure that our gate guards only admit those they are authorized to admit and no others to keep us low on the property crime statistics.  All these crimes occurred in 2010, we appear to have been a well-behaved bunch in 2011.
FYI, this is DC Ranch.  They seem to suffer more residential burglaries than we do behind some of their gates.  A lot of the other crimes there are from construction sites. 

Local home price and sales update

I am able to offer some updated news on home sales and prices.  The data is from The Cromford Report for Greater Phoenix, however our ZIP code, 85255, was one of the most active ZIP codes in the three price categories mentioned:
$200-$400,000.  Supply dropped 3.3% in the last month and is down 10.4% in the last three months.  Foreclosures and short sales are falling too. Demand is also up.  Sales rose 11.4% in the last month.  inventory has falen to 156 days.  Cromford says: "the sector remains stable and the short term outlook has turned slightly positive".  Price per Sq. Ft. down 2.2% (3mo)
$400-$800,000.  Supply is down and demand up. Supply is at 8.4 months compared to 10.2 months on January 26th. Foreclosures took 15% of sales; Short Sales 23%.  However, "normal" sales now make up 76.4% of active listings which is encouraging.  Short term outlook is positive, Cromford describes this sector as in"..long slow recovery mode". Price per Sq.Ft. up 0.6% (3mo).
>$800,000.  Supply down, but demand still week.  Distressed property prices per Sq.Ft. the lowest in ten years.Actual sales prices are 71% of list, demonstrating unreasonable expectations on the part of sellers. Which may be why average days on market is 284 days.  Things are more likely to improve than get worse but low demand still a concern.

Bobcat Alert!

I came a little early from work today to find that I had disturbed a small female Bobcat who had been asleep on one of our back patios.  That patio gets the sun in the afternoon, so I imagine it's a comfortable place to crash out.  I was pretty quiet, and the Bobcat moved around to our other patio, sat down and scratched its ear.  This is not the first time I've seen a Bobcat around the yard, in fact it's almost Bobcat highway.  At least I know now where the rabbits have gone.  Got a very poor picture with my Blackberry which didn't work well through the sun screen.

I delight in the wildlife that also makes Cimarron Hills their home.  Chasing javelina from the front yard to prevent them eating my wife's plants has been a sometime pastime of mine.  (Contrary to popular belief javelina are not fierce unless you force them to be so.  The poor souls are blind as bats, don't have the best hearing and rely a lot on their noses).

About the only things I find very hard to love -- in fact I really don't like them -- are bark scorpions.  I do feel sorry though, for the giant desert hairy and striped tailed scorpions that get stomped, squished and sprayed after being mistaken for their more nasty brethren.  By the way, if, if you want to teach your children how to recognise a bark scorpion, tell them: "Big claws, small sting.  Small claws, big sting".

I care far more about preserving our community in a way that will allow us to continue to enjoy our wild neighbors and desert scenery than I ever will about renaming our recreation center a "Club" or building a monument at our entry so that those without navigation skills may locate our community.