Washington’s Headquarters Homeowners Association
Annual Meeting, September 18, 2007 at 8:00 p.m.
Doubledays, Dobbs Ferry
Attending: Bernice Gottlieb, Dale Greenwald, Jana Kos-Greenwald, David Schoen, Toni Schoen, Ray Fattorini, Anne Tannenbaum, Herbert Donovan, Mary Donovan, Martha Parke, Rob Parke, Anne Winston, Stan Winston, Cheryl Leban, Gary Giscombe, Bernice Giscombe, Lauralynn O’Halloran, Donna Zimmerman, Gary Zimmerman, Eli Cohn, Elly Cohn, Ellen Meyer, Sabin Meyer, Peter Louca
Sharon Hart – Bay Management
Tobias Guggenheimer – Tobias Guggenheimer Architects P.C.
Proxy Statements: None.
Board President: Mary Donovan, Vice President presided until Lauralynn O’Halloran arrived at 8.30pm.
Minutes: The minutes for the 2006 Annual Meeting had been circulated to homeowners previously. There was no discussion.
Annual Report
No discussion.
Swimming Pool
Tobais Guggenheimer, the architect hired by the Board to develop potential concepts for the pool building, pool house and surrounding environs outlined possibilities for the pool area. These ranged from minimal improvements (repairs, improved access to aqueduct and front entry, treating the glass to reduce glare and improvements in the changing facilities) to making the pool building a facility that could be open all year.
Homeowners were provided with copies of the drawings made by Tobias. Laminated copies will also be left in the changing room. Lauralynn said before doing anything further with the pool it was important to get a consensus from homeowners on the future direction they wanted the Board to take with respect to this important common element. Homeowners were provided with a questionnaire to solicit input on the current use and desirable changes to the current facilities. Homeowners were asked to return the questionnaires to Lauralynn by September 24th. The Board will review this input and report back to homeowners.
There was lively discussion among homeowners on the possibilities with the swimming pool and environs. David Schoen, in particular, expressed a concern that it was difficult to consider these concepts without estimates of costs and was concerned about the costs of some of the concepts presented.
Financial Report
Homeowners discussed the financial reports handed out by Eli. Homeowners also discussed the recent 5% increase in common charges. While some homeowners were concerned that common charges may look expensive compared to other developments, Sharon Hart said that they were comparable considering the facilities that we had on the property and small number of houses. Rob Parke said that it was unreasonable not to expect common charges to increase on an annual basis – this year in particular most of the Condominium’s expenses (labor and utilities) had increased significantly and that if common charges did not increase by a reasonable amount each year it would not be possible to cover ongoing expenses and larger maintenance items without having assessments.
There was a discussion about the need for increasing the reserve fund. Eli said that he would like a bigger reserve fund. Rob said that he had done some “back of the envelope†calculations that suggested that at current levels, common charges were adequate to cover ongoing expenses and an estimated annual depreciation amount for all common elements. While this did not guarantee anything because large unexpected expenses are always possible, this suggested to him (beyond the swimming pool which we’d been discussing for some time), that without unexpected events there was unlikely to be the need for large assessments to cover repairs in the near future. This of course needed to be monitored and common charges increased on a regular basis to cover ongoing expenses.
Eli discussed a recent request to the Board from Unit 4 for the Condominium to pay for drainage repairs around the unit and he was uncertain as to whether it was the Condominium’s responsibility. David Schoen reiterated this concern and said that the by-laws were unclear in many cases as to the responsibility of the condominium versus individual homeowners. This made it difficult to ensure consistent treatment of expenses and that individual insurance coverage was appropriate.
Homeowners voted to authorize the Board to hire an attorney to review the Condominium’s bylaws and get an opinion of the respective responsibility of the Condominium versus individual homeowners and recommend changes. The Board will then appoint a committee to recommend changes in bylaws for homeowners to vote on. Homeowners agreed that once we had this clarity it would be appropriate to review the Condominium’s insurance coverage.
Elections
Rob Parke and Eli Cohn were re-elected by acclamation.
Respectfully submitted,
Robert N Parke