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| OHCC LIVING | SEPTEMBER 2023 | 3 President's Message By Greg Kusiak, HOA President (2023-2024) We only recently celebrated the arrival of real summer weather, but now our grandchildren are all returning to school and we are thinking about fall activities. Baseball is grinding toward its playoff extravaganza, pro football is into its exhibition season and college football is about to kickoff. Have you noticed that time speeds up with each successive birthday? A first-time new fall event is approaching. The Save the Monarch Butterfly Club is sponsoring the Butterfly Ball in Abravanel Hall on Fri., Sept. 22. It is a fundraiser for the butterfly sanctuary and features champagne, a raffle, a silent and a live auction and dancing to the Music Station's Big Band. Tickets are on sale at the Clubhouse desk. Here in Ocean Hills we have been busy talking and posting about elections, big projects and traffic safety. We have received a number of comments about the proposed camera rule change, both pro and con. Most of them have been thoughtful and helpful, but of course there have been a few others that were not. However, there are several misconceptions reflected in the discussions on this issue to date which I would like to clear up. • Cameras and radar have been in use here for more than the 11 years I have been an owner. This does not introduce either into the equation. • We already own the cameras, and they are inexpensive. • The Citation Review Committee would be happy to cancel its meetings if there were no violations to consider. They are volunteers and have many other things to do than sit indoors and talk to speeders and STOP sign runners. There is no power trip, fun or excitement in this work. Instead, it is drudgery, and we thank those who are willing to do it for the benefit of the rest of us. • Most violations result in a warning. The goal is to encourage safe behavior, not punish anyone. • The income from fines is minuscule. Fines are a deterrent, not a source of revenue. • We are in the process of reviewing all our HOA rules, but the only change currently proposed for comment and action is related to unattended devices. This will be on the first meeting agenda for the new Board. Continuing the large-scale rule review will also fall to the new Board. We received our draft audit for review only a few days before the statutory deadline for distributing it to the Members. This is the second year in a row that the audit firm has delayed our process, and the second year in a row that the draft audit has contained significant errors. We are awaiting a corrected draft and will circulate it to the Members as soon as we get an accurate final copy. (Hopefully, you will have received it by the time you read this.) We have asked Keystone for recommendations of different audit firms for consideration next year. There has been some grumbling about transparency in correspondence and social media. We take many steps to be transparent, but often we're not very clear. For example, our financial statements every month contain several pages that list each and every expenditure from the reserve and capital improvement accounts for the month and the year to date. That is as transparent as it can get. But we have not done a good job of summarizing that information and putting it into understandable context for our Members. This week we have posted on the website under "Projects" the Board's analysis of what is a reserve versus a capital expenditure for the lanai project and a summary of expenditures on the project to date. However, for the golf course renovation our spreadsheet is 15 columns by 88 rows — well over a thousand cells — and for the well and lake it is 27 columns by 113 rows — over 3,000 cells. Staff and volunteers are working to create digestible summaries that roll forward and can be displayed on the website and updated monthly. Please stay tuned! A related issue is that our website is hosted by a company that is transferring its customers to a newer platform. The site has been unstable for several years, support has been weak and we have lost significant data several times. This has made it difficult to post some items and often we have been unable to organize the site and post items where we prefer. Their new platform does not have the features we need. We are looking at options as a part of our overall analysis of our networks and software. Speaking of our network review, we have already succeeded in consolidating some of our support, resulting in an increase in our WiFi and internet capacity without an increase in costs. We are excited that our Clubhouse now has the most up to date technology for heating, ventilating and air conditioning including economizing features and air filtration. We made it through the summer nursing our old equipment along without a major and costly breakdown. While the Clubhouse was closed we undertook other maintenance tasks, including floor refinishing, so that we would minimize any future interruptions in our facilities. In the near future we will do roof repairs to address some other legacy issues. An executive session of the Board was held Aug. 14 and the following actions were taken: • Approved the Minutes of July 17 • Assessed one fine on the recommendation of the Citation Review Committee for failure to stop at a STOP sign for $75 and dismissed two other citations • Authorized contingent non-judicial foreclosure action on two accounts subsequently approved for liens by the Board (see below) • Reviewed and approved an analysis to distinguish between regular reserves and capital improvement expenditures for the duration of the lanai project • Approved a proposal from Pacific Aquascapes to construct the lake, subject to the execution of a definitive agreement, for $389,632 • Approved a proposal from Restoration Hardware to refinish the Clubhouse wood floors for an amount not to exceed $18,535 • Referred issues relative to the means of official notice from the Association to Members to legal counsel • Discussed the draft audit report for the year ended 31 March 2023. 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