Monday’s board meeting provided a mix of good news and bad.
First, the good:
We’ve had two board meetings so far in 2026. (No actual business was done at the January Annual Meeting and the March board meeting was canceled.) These two meetings have been characterized by a much improved process over the 2025 meetings, largely driven by new board member Laura Park, in which:
- Important items are placed on the public agenda.
- The agenda is actually followed during the meeting.
- At least one board member has read the meeting package sent to them by the management company ahead of time.
- Decisions are made through proper votes by the board.
- Authorizations that the management company needs to have in order to proceed with work on the building are given to them in a timely manner.
Another piece of good news that involves some bad news is that the board voted 3-2 (or maybe 3-1) to replace the fire pump that delivers water to our sprinkler system, at a cost of roughly $170k that will properly come out of the reserve fund.
FSR, our new management company, reported that when the fire department tested the fire pump during this year’s inspection, it failed completely. They managed to get it working again, but not well enough to pass inspection. And apparently it did not pass inspection last year, either.
So, for the past year, it’s very possible that, had we had a fire and the pump needed to go into action, it would have failed. (Like it did the moment it had to do any real work when tested this year.) So it’s definitely good news that we’re fixing it ASAP.
The bad news is that:
- A fire pump that did not pass inspection went unaddressed for a year.
- At least one member of the board, Ray Aguirre and possibly Jo Drain as well, voted against authorizing the work.
- Ray’s position was that we first needed to determine if Interstate, the company that runs the parking ramp with whom we basically share the fire alarm system, will pay half the cost, arguing that if we paid for it all now, that would make it less likely they’d agree to pay.
The board ended up deciding to go ahead with the replacement, with Laura Park, David Radcliff, and Kari Aaeng casting the decisive votes, but to also authorize FSR to consult a lawyer to find out what our contract with Interstate says about sharing the costs for the fire pump. These seem to me to be the right choices, make in the right order.
- What will affect whether Interstate pays or not is not gamesmanship that involves not replacing the pump ASAP (as if we were two families in a neighboring feuding over an overgrown yard) but whatever the legal arrangement actually is between us.
- Meanwhile, it is essential that we get the fire pump working as soon as possible. Every day it’s not is a day we risk disaster.
- So it was right for sure to check the contract to see who should pay, but not at the expense of delaying replacement.
Finally, there were some additional concerning aspects of the meeting:
- The board voted, early in the meeting, along its usual 3-2 lines (that thankfully did not obtain in the case of the fire pump — many thanks to Kari Aaeng for voting Yes on that!) to cancel the Owner Concerns segment of the meeting, that had been listed on the agenda. Their reasons where that:
- We’d already had a session “recently” — but two months ago is “recent”?
- There was an executive session scheduled for later. (True enough, and the regular meeting did run long.)
- My concern, though, is that canceling Owner Concerns fits a long-running pattern of secrecy, unresponsiveness, and even hostility to owner concerns by the current board majority. (Another recent example is that we tried to post notices on the bulletin boards advertising Owner Conversations with the Board, but the current board majority voted to remove and prohibit them.)
- Laura Park, our Treasurer and Secretary, reported that we’re over budget so far this year by about $100k. She stressed that this was not an end-of-the-world emergency, but said that she was looking into it, particularly at listed revenue streams that seemed to be coming short, and at the issue of overdue HOA fees.
- There was a oddly charged debate about spending $4500 to have our outer walls examined for possible future water leak issues. From what I understood, every board member was okay with performing the check, and the only obstacle was Ray insisting that we get three bids, despite his belief that the company bidding to do the work was a very good one. I agree in general with the importance of getting multiple bids for work, but in this case, given the small cost, the trustworthiness of the company, and the importance of the work, it was odd for it to become such a big battle. How much better would a competing company need to be, or how much cheaper would it have to do the work, for us to decide to use them instead?
- Finally, there was a confusing discussion about committees. A question arose in February about whether the president of the board had sole power to form and disband committees, and the answer came back, based on our governing documents, that they do. That was clear enough, but then there was this long discussion where it was really, really hard to determine exactly what Ray was saying he was doing with that power. In the end, I think:
- The existing Social Committee (though it may or may not be that all committees have now been “sunsetted”) will go on doing everything it does.
- There may be be more attention given to board oversight over approving specific expenses within the Social Committee budget.
- There may or may not be additional individuals who will plan events and make use of the Social Committee budget, and then it will be important to make sure there’s coordination so the budget doesn’t accidentally get exceeded by one hand not knowing what the other is doing.
- Ray will take charge of the gardening, utilizing volunteers who have contacted him directly, but they will NOT be called a “committee.”
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