Sky Harbor HOA members:

On Tuesday the 7^th of this month our HOA had its annual meeting.  There was a lot of turbulence between the board and members present.  It was a very long and intense meeting.

At the end of this exhausting meeting Mary Carson-Ford  motioned to reimburse a member (wishing to remain anonymous) that donated money for legal services for the website dispute, it was seconded by Carl Dimock.  The amount requesting  to be reimbursed was $2300.00. 

·         This item was not on the agenda sent out for this meeting

·         The budget had already been approved

So this should not have been voted on, but it was.  The majority of the members present voted against it, but there were proxies and so the vote went 19/11 in favor. 

Mary Carson-Ford had 3 proxies, she stated were all in favor of reimbursing.  The following day, a concerned member that was present at the meeting, followed-up with a member who gave a proxy to Mary Carson-Ford.  They did not give Mary permission to vote for reimbursing those funds.  This means Mary Carson-Ford misused this proxy; did she misrepresent the other 2?

Because of the above stated issues, members that voted against this in the meeting have called for a Special Members Meeting to be scheduled to retake this vote, giving all members a chance to weigh in, and if necessary re-approve the budget.   With that said, below  you will find information for you to consider in your vote.

·         The Profit and Loss Statement from the special members meeting dated February 22nd, stated they had spent $700.00 in legal fees (see attached).  

·         The Annual Financial Statement at this years annual meeting (2009) stated they had spent $200.00 in legal fees (see attached).

·         Reserves for unexpected expenses went from $0 spent in February to $1.402.19 in the Annual Financial Statement, of which $1.375.77 was legal expenses.

·         The web site legal dispute was resolved by February the 6^th. The financial statement is dated February 22^nd.  Where did the difference between $700.00 and 1375.77 ($675.77) come from between February 22nd and today?

·         No documentation was displayed to explain these irregularities, and little explanation was given as everyone was tired.

The board was allowed to spend $200.00 for legal counsel, per the budget.  To spend over the budgeted amount they needed to have the members approve further spending.  They did not do this and by doing so they violated Washington State Law RCW 64.38.025. 

So now after all the above money being spent, and moving funds between budget items (this requires a vote of the members, which they did not do).  They want an additional $2300.00 to be reimbursed to an anonymous donor.  If you add up the amount of money spent according to the financial statement, and the amount of money they are trying to reimburse this anonymous donor it comes to $3,875.77 for two letters and a few phone calls from the HOA's attorney.  The below table is the itemized time spent from the Ballenger's attorney, their fees were nowhere near that amount of money...  why were the HOA's?

There was no reason for legal action or the use of legal counsel , if the board had done due diligence in their communication of their demand for the HOA website.  The Board only made one attempt to demand the website before seeking legal counsel  (they demanded the website, not the domain names... the attorney letters are attached as evidence).

 After the Ballenger's attorney brought to the HOA attorney’s attention that the:

·         Website computer code was NOT the one written by Greg Lindsay before the Ballenger’s took over in 2007

·         Logo and Website was copyright computer code and the Ballenger’s would not give up their copyright unless it was purchased.

 The HOA’S attorney re-wrote the demands of the board only requesting the domains.  

Furthermore, the web site names (domain names) that were fought for are not even being used at this time.  And Greg Lindsay had begun working on a new website before the legal dispute even started; this is evident by his purchase of the domain name currently being used (skyharborhoa.com) on December 8th   So if they had plans of spinning up a new website with a new domain name, why did they start a legal dispute? 

At this annual meeting, the Board was asked what the rush was to use legal counsel if we weren’t going to use the domains.  The response by Greg Lindsay was "that is due to a few people’s pride".  So since it was a for a few peoples pride, should we all pay to reimburse this anonymous donor?  Shouldn't they show the itemized invoices, proving the amounts are legitimate, especially since we are talking about an anonymous donor? 

Were these domain names really worth $3800.00, wouldn't you rather see that money could go into many other things that we actually need it for?

Remember, this whole website dispute started after a group of HOA homeowners asked the board for an external audit that could possibly cost up to $2000.  This same group of homeowners also called for the resignation of the Treasurer, Sherri Green-Lindsay.  When the board refused to consider these two requests, the group of residents posted emails on the HOA website in an attempt to raise awareness among homeowners. They wanted homeowners to be aware of the issues the board was not addressing.  The board did not approve of the transparency and exposure that these posted emails created.  Past and present board members' actions were being scrutinized on the website.  Because of this, the board wanted the control of the website removed from Arley Ballenger and turned over to the board.  It should also be noted that the emails on the website were only visible to verified HOA members.   

So what has the board done to protect us from this happening in the future with anything that might involve peoples pride and HOA assets?  So far we see nothing. 

·         The domain names that were released by the Ballenger’s were transferred to and remain in Greg Lindsay’s account. 

·         If they are assets belonging to the HOA why are they in Greg Lindsay’s account and not the HOAs account? 

·         By having assets in members names and accounts we leave ourselves open to losing our assets.

·         This leads to more legal issues! 

·         Attached is one of the HOA Domain Name registrations, compared to Microsoft's domain registration as an example of how a business should have their registrations done.

The Board needs to run our HOA like a business, and take care to look out for the best interests of us all, not just a few.

Please look at any documentation that you have and look at the new Sky Harbor HOA web site and compare the numbers to what you have been told up to this point.  This is our money people and it clearly is being misused in unapproved actions. 

Special Meeting of the Sky Harbor HOA called by the members

05/15/2009 at 19:30 Hours

Special Meeting called to order at 19:50 Hours by Debra and Arley Ballenger, minutes by Ron Bertholf

Meeting to follow the Agenda and call for a vote on the two items listed in the agenda. Call for a vote on whether or not the person that donated monies to the HOA should be reversed, and to call a vote on whether the budget should be re-opened for a vote.

·          Members were allowed to speak limited to three minutes for each household

·         Ballots were disseminated, members voted, proxies were collected, Ballots and Proxies were counted by Debra Ballenger and Carl Dimock.

The vote on the 2,300 dollars to be reimbursed to an anonymous donor came out 50/50 (20 to 20) leaving it unchanged.

The vote to reopen the budget was 20 for and 19 against

Special Meeting of the HOA members adjourned at 20:40 hours

NOTE: After review of the proxies/votes there was a duplicate vote (both votes were exactly the same) making the results as follows:

·         Reimburse anonymous donor: 19/19

·         Reopen the budget:  19/18

At the beginning of the meeting the proxies brought in by Carl Dimock were in question, since they were the default proxies and not the ones specific for this meeting with the specific agenda items and yes/no checkmarks.  His proxies were allowed, but after Carl spoke his piece at the meeting; it was clear that his proxies had been told a different story than what was actually moved on at the annual meeting by Mary Carson-Ford to: reimburse the donor for the website legal expenses.   Carl stated in the meeting that he had told his proxies that:

"it will be a cost neutral move, the money will be paid to the lawyer, the lawyer will reimburse the donor who paid the original bill, and that person when they get reimbursed by the lawyer will hand it back to the HOA.  It will be zero out of pocket for the HOA."

The above statement is not the same thing as reimbursing an anonymous donor.  These proxies are in question.  If Carl's proxies are disqualified due to the above case, the results would be as follows: 

·         Reimburse anonymous donor: 7 for / 19 against  (19 do not want to pay the donor)

·         Reopen the budget:  20 for / 6 against                     (20 are in favor of reopening the budget)