- Video shows results from a recent petition in Pine Mountain Club.
- The petition addresses Bylaws 6.06 and 10.10 for Pine Mountain Club residents.
- The petition was successful after receiving more than 600 votes.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
It’s not uncommon for locals to band together to push for change to the POA, or Property Owners Association.
Recently, several residents in Pine Mountain Club gathered more than 600 votes to pass revisions to the bylaws.
“Our goal is to keep Pine Mountain affordable for everyone to enhance our assets that we do have and to make our assets that we do work with more self-sustaining,” said Shawn Coulter, one of the residents in Pine Mountain Club.
Randall Gates, another Pine Mountain Club resident, uses his previous job experience to notice what he wants to change.
“My background as CPA, I’ve been a CFO [of] several public companies, and I just was appalled at the quality, the presentation, and the treatment of the people asking very valid questions,” Gates said.
The first concern addressed through the petition was Bylaw 10.10, limiting what the POA could do with budget surplus.
Prior to the petition, if the POA had a surplus at the year-end, there were three options that the treasurer and general manager could decide on.
First, the surplus could be carried into the next year’s budget.
Second, the surplus could go towards the PMCPOA’s capital reserve fund.
The third option is that the surplus could be returned to the members after the yearly audit.
Todd Greisen, resident and general manager of the PMCPOA, said, “What the petitioners asked for was that the second option, which was to move the money to the reserves, was eliminated and the board agreed to that.”
The second bylaw addressed in the petition focused on term limits for board members.
Previously under Bylaw 6.06, each director could hold their position for two terms, or six years, before taking a year off if re-elected.
Mark Bailey, resident and one of the PMCPOA’s board directors said, “We had the same recycled board members year after year and things weren’t improving. In fact, I felt like they were going backwards. And I thought I could make a difference.”
Under the petition’s new revisions, directors can only hold their position for one term, or three years, before taking one year off before being re-elected.
Greisen said, “Before they can be nominated again for election to the board again, they’d have to take a year off if they chose to be nominated and come back on the board.”
And the results showed that these members were not alone.
“We as a community got together and said, we want term limits,” said Coulter. “And we were successful. It was a [really] big win for us with over 650 members that voted to approve it.”
Greisen said, “I think it’s a little bit detrimental to not have as much longevity. There’s wisdom and that comes along with experience…”
At the end of the day, the community’s voices were heard and respected by the board.
Greisen said, “...but this is what the members have chosen here, so it is what we’re gonna work with.”
Bailey said, “We wanna just maintain everything as it is and keep PMC PMC, which is a gorgeous, gorgeous jewel, this lovely hamlet in the mountains, it really is. And now I think we’ve got the wind at our back.”
Gates added, “There’s been a lot of political divisiveness, which is hard on this community because when the snow came and people were trapped, we’re all out there helping everybody do things. We function as a community.”
But both sides are hoping to have more open communication with one another.
Greisen said there’s, “...lots of ways we can communicate but I think we can do better on giving people the ability to communicate back to us too. So that’s something we’re working on.”
“We have a wonderful, eclectic community,” said Gates. “We need to consciously decide who might accidentally be thrown under the bus of progress and not ignore that diversity.”
The POA encourages people to reach out either through their email, through their CCC forms, or at their community meetings.
The next public meeting will be held on January 20 at 10 a.m.
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