Above: This graph, published in The Mountain Enterprise in 2017, shows the sharp decent into the subsidies that led homeowners to vote for a bylaw amendment to restrict such spending. CLICK ON IMAGE TO SEE FULL SIZE
Reported by Patric Hedlund and Gary Meyer, TME
In 2017, members of the Pine Mountain Club Property Owners Association used bylaw amendments placed on their annual ballot to bring checks and balances into PMCPOA governance. Last Saturday, Feb. 15, Board Chair Bill Lewis asked the board to dramatically increase the number of signatures that members need to collect on petitions before they can submit bylaw amendments for their annual elections.
Lewis asked his board to change Bylaw 5.06 from requiring 75 signatures to “10% of [PMCPOA] members.”
Board director Bryan Skelly and other directors calculated 10% to be 289, based on the current number of billable lots.
If that were correct, it would represent a 285% increase in the number of petition signatures homeowners would need to secure to put a new bylaw on the ballot.
In contrast, Chairman Lewis and John Cantley of the PMC Governing Documents committee have often warned that using a percentage of members as the criteria for making bylaw changes that board directors want is “too high a bar.”
Shifting the Burden
PMCPOA members told The Mountain Enterprise that the board’s changes to Bylaw 5.06 may make it “impossible” for members to propose reform bylaws in the future. Some said the change indicates the board has not thought the matter through.
Tug-of-War Over Debt
Underlying this change is the ongoing tug-of-war between fiscally conservative homeowners and a board that they say has been systematically clearing away obstacles to taking debt-free PMCPOA into multimillion dollar debt…. To see full stories with photos, please purchase a copy of the newspaper at many locations (click this link for a list) throughout the Mountain Communities.
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This is part of the February 21, 2020 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.
Have an opinion on this matter? We’d like to hear from you.
This is part of the February 21, 2020 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.
Have an opinion on this matter? We'd like to hear from you.
