Unlike Surfside, our county is open and transparent with information. A member took the time and made the effort to find out what is happening with the mitigation dealing with the wet land issues at the well field. Thank you to that member for sharing that information here with the blog followers.
 |
| Part of the well field , located in the wet lands. Carbon treatment plant nearby |
Where are we at with the Surfside wet land mitigation?
The County stated that it is still a work in progress. The County is waiting for more documents to be completed and submitted. Surfside has contacted the County and hopes to have the paper work completed by Thanksgiving. After the paper work has been turned in to the County, the next phase of the process can begin.
What will the next step be in the process?
The County will review the submitted documents and determine if additional information is needed. This will be followed by a public hearing. The County is open to anyone seeking information.
Then what?
Surfside is working with a land bank (exchange of wet lands)
At this time it is not known or determined how much land will be involved or the amount of money needed. This will be a part of the negotiations between the Land bank and Surfside. Other options are also under consideration. It appears that this issue will be resolved. At what cost? We do not know.
30 comments:
Am I missing something here? The first line sates that this thing is still a work in progress. So what exactly is the BOT not telling us? At a board meeting I attended (not the last one) this was pretty much what was said too including the land bank.
Yes, I agree.
You people need to come to the meetings.
Winegar will improve Surfside transparency.
well, lets get it done, pay for the mitigation and move on. We are going to end up with a nice looking usable piece of property.
What hasn't been talked about becomes evident when we accept that Surfside was first cited for improper permitting and building in a Wetland in June or July of 2018. The blog exposed this information at that time, and reference has been made to this numerous times in the last year and a half.
What changed was that Mr. Clancy took it upon himself to set-up a meeting with the State rep that handles this, then failed to show-up for the meeting. Larry Raymer had attended on request from Mr. Neil, so we know what the circumstances were. The State rep was so mad they put a fine of $1000 a day in place to begin immediately, which was Oct 1st, but Mr. Neil and Raymer, were able to quickly meet with the rep and give the HOA the month of Oct. to work on a resolution.
Once the sh*t hit the fan, the HOA acknowledged that negotiations were in progress on this matter, which had not been made public in the interim, more than a year. I agree that I see a different management style and attitude with Winegar as president.
But all of this "proactive" enforcement stuff has also been in the works, which has the earmarks of an intrusive and intimidating attitude toward owners, and an extension of the intensive enforcement pressure now being put on owners with trees. Trees grow constantly, and owners don't want to have this maintenance cost annually. The Tree Comm. is not able to accurately measure trees, in spite of having a $2000 Laser device to do so.
So it is likely that many owners who are being cited do not really have over-height trees, or that they are only inches over this random height. Too much enforcement zeal translates to conflict and defiance, which is being met with increased legal pressure on many owners.
It is this tendency for HOA Boards to try to micro-manage people's lives with obscure and unnecessary restrictions that leads to very unhappy places to live. Many such restrictions are maddening for owners to try and deal with, because they are not based in common sense. We see this in the recent changes on lighting standards.
I think the Board should publish the proposed standards and ask for owner input long before the January meeting set for member review of these changes and remaining standards. A handful of conflicts between neighbors over lighting does not necessarily merit changes in standards.
It's good that progress is being made on the Mitigation. I attended the last BOT meeting and asked specifically about updates on this issue. Answers were few, vague, and somewhat dismissive. Maybe more was revealed at previous meetings. I can't say.
As far as Mr. Winegar being transparent,in the 5 nearly months he has been in office, there has been no increase in information provided to the members and as long as Clancy, Williams, deLeest and Olds occupy positions on the Board, there is about as much chance of transparency as there is of Adam Shiff calling off his inquiry. Due to a kangaroo vote, we have adopted a flawed budget,(where is the money in the budget to pay fines?) and to correct all the associated wrongs. An irrational lighting covenant is being supported by Mr Winegar (as the chair he takes full responsibility) and no attempt has been made to come to a mutual resolution on the tree heights.
I couldn’t agree more with your comments. The ironic thing is with our lighting complaint, it wasn’t any of our neighbors. We had no full time neighbors at that time. So our guess is someone driving by submitted the complaint and we’re pretty sure who it was. And here we are almost 5 months since our appeal and it is, still in limbo!
Pease contact me for ideas on how to get this new lighting covenant out to the membership before late December
Joanne, Word of mouth works. You can also do as Patrick did and stand at the compactor site bothering anyone who will listen to his tale woe.
..but in this case, I wish there was a better way! I think that Mike Riley has purchased a list of names and addresses for SHOA, maybe he can assist you?
Thank you. I have been doing word of mouth and so far no one I’ve talked to was even aware of the proposed new lighting covenant. In my view it should have been read at the BOT meeting and entered into the minutes! Perhaps the vote should wait until the July meeting? Why the hurry, they can’t handle our problem that has been ongoing since July!
As usual, Mr. Cox is correct in his observations, with one exception. The meeting that Clancy called for, was with the County, and not a State representative.
Larry Raymer, as other Board members, was not aware that Clancy had made an appointment with the County for that meeting. Bill Neal was aware of the meeting and informed Larry of the meeting and asked him to attend. Bill refused to attend for a reason I will not disclose.
A County official had to re-schedule other important work to attend. Clancy was a no show, which infuriated the County officials. Following this, a thousand dollar a day was made if the required wet land information was not received.
Surfside hired a South Bend attorney who specialized in wet land mitigation. Clancy was informed to stay out of it. The new attorney was able to stall the County until the final paper work could be completed. As stated before, Surfside hopes to have that done by Thanksgiving. The recently obtained information is the topic of this posting.
On another issue, but related. Rudd Turner, Board Treasurer, made a comment to the Board and others, that they should be careful of making any large expenditures, due to the uncertainty of the results of the mitigation and the associated costs.
A previous comment questioned money in the new budget for fines. That is a good observation. Until last year, the practice has always been to set aside funds in a "contingency fund". It was usually around 30 to 60 thousand dollars. This fund is to provide the needed funding in an emergency or an expense that might happen that was not a part of the budget. This is just another budget flaw.
And why is Clancy still on the board? The BOT should have voted him off!
Per the by/laws section 5
Just remember, the new storage building was built on wetlands n promptly flooded. The new filter assy was erected on wetlands n its housing has been blocked n weather having an impact on it. The entire well field,office etc, all built on wetland. A settling pond built for purpose of filter cleaning with asbestos pipe buried under it has had to be removed at cost. Just the tip of the shoa iceburg.
Sorry, JoAnn, the buddy system will protect Clancy almost indefinitely. J Placers, you know.
As a newcomer to this discussion, I would like to know how the decision was made to build on the wetlands? Was no study, engineering plans or permits done?
When a board member acts on their own and puts the whole membership In jjeopardy, there should be consequences
No JoAnne, none of that was done. We also got dinged for no building permit from the county. You cant make this stuff up.
You can’t do anything without a permit ! I’m dumbfounded
Clancy proved that you can do something. You can get $10,000 fine that Everybody else has to pay. And now, due his favoritism for an incapable com[any, I understand the RV lot and garbage renovations are delayed by a year. Well, maybe we can find someone who can do the job at a reasonable charge. There is a lot more to that story.
I hope that at least those who follow the blog, are seeing the need for a professional management company. The present organization is not capable of management of the association assets. Volunteers should not be expected to make decisions that can only be made by professionals. We are not saving money, in fact it is costing us money.
JoAnne, according to some we aren't supposed to be angry.
I couldn’t agree more! You have to have management who knows the laws and rules and advises the BOT in coming to sensible, legal decisions!
Is there any topic where Cox doesn't bring in trees?
You have no proof that the committee has measured trees and said they were over height when they were actually under height. Given the fact they give a foot or so leeway adds to that. To say this is inflammatory in the least and what most would call just a blatant lie.
Funny, the way you say that suggests that you are on the Tree Comm., and you are aware that they can't get accurate measurements. Actually, I didn't claim that I could verify that anyone had mistakenly been sent compliance notices, just that accurate measurements are not a concern or criteria. Only someone on the Committee would know that they guess at the height as you have stated.
I haven't stated anything false, and you have verified my presumption that I base on some inside information. Yes, I think that the one thing that assures this will always be a broken community, is the insistence on perpetuation of the Tree topping policy. It sacrifices a beautiful natural landscape that could be, for a bizarrely chopped and whittled one. Nothing classy about it.
You are one interesting person there Cox.
Let me quote what you wrote @ 9:37:
"The Tree Comm. is not able to accurately measure trees, in spite of having a $2000 Laser device to do so. So it is likely that many owners who are being cited do not really have over-height trees, or that they are only inches over this random height". You know darn well what you meant by that. Then you double down by now writing "that accurate measurements are not a concern or criteria". Then you proceed to try and turn it on me that I'M saying that the Committee can't get get accurate measurements or that they guess at heights. Nice try at deflection. You don't have to be on the committee to see and understand what you are doing here. Add to it you also wrote that you can't claim that anyone had mistakenly been sent compliance notices. Then why did you need to imply otherwise?
With some of your past statements you have shown yourself to being a rumormonger. These latest comments, simply put, exposes you to be a Troll along with that. A personality trait that thankfully I don't share with you.
But I verify that I am a real person with property in Surfside, while you do not. So long as you are "anonymous", your claims of Tree Comm. integrity are empty.
The heights designated in various areas have been shown to be random and inconsistent, measurements inaccurate, and that viewing 1 foot of tree height from 3 blocks away makes that 12 inches, about an eighth of an inch in height. Trees are not interfering with views, and this whole policy is a sham.
Eliminate the current policy and allow for individual complaints to be filed, for the purpose of enforcement, the complaint would need to be signed and "owned" by the complainer, and proof that trees are interfering with the view would be required.
What owners are guaranteed in their view would be clearly deliniated. That would be an interesting process, as J Pl owners have said "just the Ocean in the distance", which for an actual "view" property is not possible to block, unless a neighbor's tree is smack in front of your picture window.
The covenants would need to be changed to state which properties are deemed "view properties" specifically by address, and it would need to be written in black and white, that "VIEWS are protected for these properties", along with the criteria established.
Sound good ? Lets make this legit folks.
So now George wants a professional management group. Can you say huge increase in dues? All the yapping about holding dues to 1.6 percent goes out the window.
What we don't know is a total of legal costs and fines incurred in the last 2 years as a result of mismanagement. The details having never been outlined by the BOT in regard to the Asbestos mishandling, and improper permitting, and aborted lawsuits in Superior Court at great expense (at least 2 rumored to total about $175,000). The Wetlands Mitigation, along with legal costs was looking to be in the $300,000 range, though the current attorney may have the cred. w/the County and State to bring this cost down.
Would a top-notch management team avoid these serious missteps ? Probably, but hard to say. Hiring highly qualified people does cost money, but is there really any substitute ? It appears that Mr. Reber is not really fully qualified to manage the Water Dept., so we are currently without a Water Dept. manager who is fully accredited for this position.
People are fallible and make mistakes. Acknowledging these mistakes is a major step in avoiding them in the future, and the Board's willingness to keep the members informed, would show respect for the positive effects of accountability. Hiding these mistakes as has become routine for the BOT, perpetuates further missteps and results in member's distrust of the HOA.
The costs of these huge mistakes and the fines incurred are being sublimated in the maze of monetary categories and are not openly documented for the members to see. This has been policy and is in no way a reflection on our current Treasurer.
Can't prove that from your previous snarky remarks. The Reverend title is also highly suspect. Sounds more like a troll or a J Placer.
Post a Comment