Notice of Public Hearing
I’m not sure if you’ve received a green letter in the mail about a notice of public hearing or not, but if you have let me tell you what it’s all about.
The lot adjacent to our building is 800 N. Orange; Ustler Development purchased the lot over a year ago. We involved lawyers and got them to reduce the size of the building by 66% from the original plans. Initially, they wanted to set the building back 3 ft from people’s patios. The purpose of this hearing is because Ustler Development wants to set the building back 46ft. (This is 46ft from the 3ft originally planned- great work by our outstanding lawyer, Karen Wonsetler + team) Since the city of Orlando only allows for a 25ft set back- they require a public hearing for the 46ft set back. Please leave a comment if you have any questions about this hearing. All of you are welcomed to attend the hearing. From our perspective, this 46ft is the best scenario we could have hoped for.
Notes on Your Door
I’m sure all of you have started receiving the notes on the door from an owner. I have personally communicated with this owner and asked him to attend our Board meetings. I have also asked him to fill out our survey. I am asking everyone to fill out the same survey to review everyone’s feedback in a central location- this ensures everyone is heard. We want all of our residents to share their opinion on what they think needs to be changed and updated at Park North. The Board is impartial. We need to look out for everyone’s interests and not only of those who scream the loudest [Survey link]
After communicating with this owner, I’m still not clear on what his objective is. We all want the same thing to make Park North a great place to live and to increase our property values. I have asked him to put the survey link on his website and he has refused. I have asked him to attend our meetings to discuss everything in an open forum and he also refused. I tried to communicate on this website, but he became hostile. I also tried communicating with him in email and I received the same hostility. I created this blog to open the lines of communication. I heard some owners say that they were not being communicated with, so I volunteered to write this blog to help with the communication issue. I want all of us to work together. I implore all of you to get involved and attend our HOA meetings and/or post your comments on this blog for all residents to read if you are unable to attend our HOA meetings. [Meetings are the last Thursday of every month. Meetings start at 7:30pm in the great room]
As far as the most recent note on the door, it says that associations are collapsing in this tough market. You have absolutely nothing to worry about with Park North’s association. As many of you noticed, we prioritize repairs and spending on big items. Currently, we have a percentage of owners who are past due or have foreclosed. Since these owners have not paid their dues, we do not have this money to spend on certain repairs. We run our associations primarily as a cash business. If we do not receive the HOA dues from some residents then we are not able to spend that money. Certain maintenance projects need to be put on hold until we can afford to make those enhancements. We manage the cash flow and budgets very carefully. We do not want to be that association which gets in financial trouble. Imagine if we didn’t have the money to pay our vendors- then our vendors would stop providing services such as landscaping, cleaning services, etc. We manage the budgets closely so we have the funds to pay our vendors.
Managing budgets
We make sure we meet our reserves each month. I know some owners are upset that we still have certain repairs that need to be made. I completely agree. Now, we need your help prioritizing those repairs. We can’t do everything at once. Last month, we received an engineering report. We paid an engineering company to come out to Park North and inspect every nook and cranny. He came back with a set of recommendations from high priority to low priority. Some of the cosmetic changes some owners/renters are requesting might be a low priority compared with the other items that need to get done such as a roof repair or the garage door encasing. We are still committed to getting the cosmetic repairs made; however, when people do not pay their HOA dues then we have to cut the spending on something and generally cosmetic enhancements are cut. By taking the survey, you are telling us what is important to you. This will help us know what we can and cannot cut or if we have to increase our dues to meet your cosmetic expectations, etc. The reality is- we are paying for people who foreclose/declare bankruptcy. We might not be paying for it by paying more dues, but we are paying for it when it comes to budget cuts and maintenance projects. Our lawyer, Karen, is doing everything she can to collect these dues from those who are not paying. You can read more about this in the last post.
Small Changes lead to big things
We are replacing our bulbs in the hallways with energy saving bulbs, but only when a bulb burns out. [I'm a green advocate so expect to see more posts about how Park North can go green in the weeks to come]. Our building spends a ton of money on water and waste water. A decent percentage of our fees go to these two bills. Any suggestions on how to lower them? We also spend a lot of our Park North staff’s resources cleaning up each trash shoot. If you have trash, furniture or a box that will not fit down the shoot then please walk over to the dumpsture on each floor to dispose of it. Each floor has it’s own dumpster for this exact reason. Imagine how many trash shoots our building has. Each morning, our groundskeeper has to go from room to room and floor to floor cleaning them. He spends 4 hours a day handling our trash that we did not properly dispose of. If we properly disposed of our trash then he could spend that time fixing something around the property instead. Also, please, please, throw your trash away and do not leave it outside your door or in the stairwell. This is rude to do to your neighbors. Also, do not throw your trash on the street. Our staff has to spend the time to clean the street which is actually city property. Park North cleans it to make it look nicer, but it’s actually the City of Orlando’s job to clean the street. If we left it up to the city, it could take a few days to clean up. If you see someone doing this or if it’s your neighbor, please tell the front office. We need to put a stop to this.
To all Residents: My reply to this long post can also be read at ParkNorthIssues.com; I have it up my site’s blog under: Notes from blog Admin, also in a .PDF and .DOC formats. I know we can all get side tracked; this will enable you to print or save to disk and read at your leisure.
Renee, say it the way it is; who is the one that initiated private communication with you? NOT YOU!
Who was the one to extend an “Olive Branch”? NOT YOU!
All the communications we had was always about you, you, you. Never once you addressed any of my questions. I asked you to meet with me and your reply to me; NOTHING! Your reply again was about you, you, and you!
The following is the first email sent by me to Renee after her final post on my site, dated: Sat Aug 02, 2008 1:47 pm.
“I will not be reading this blog moving forward so if you post your issues on it then they may not be addressed.”
My email to Renee on Aug 3, 2008 at 9:40 am:
Hi Renee,
This is Grant, the menace of ParkNorthIssues.com.
First I want to apologize for the inappropriate remark I made to you.
It was never my intention to create a site that would result in a negative reflection about OUR Complex; I want you to know I am very serious about my statement of wanting to make Park North “The Premier Place to Live” in Orlando, Period. And, that no other community in our vicinity will be able to even compare to us, in the near future.
Thus, having said that, I have captured a new domain name “OurParkNorth.com”, here is where we can bury the hatchet and move forward on my plan (hopefully soon to be “Our Plan”), I would like to meet with you and discuss this plan I have in mind.
I hope we can work together and move fast forward to make Park North the envy of every complex in town!
Thank you,
Grant,
Unit [deleted] by Admin
Email: [deleted] by Admin
Phone: [deleted] by Admin
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Her reply to me Aug 3, 2008 at 11:26 am:
Grant,
I really appreciate that! I want Park North to be a place we are all proudof and I agree we do have issues that need to be address. I am working on creating a website for Park North. The new website is going to have forums for open discussion that will be behind lock and key so that only residents can see the forums and not potential owners/renters (this allows us to be candid). Would you like to work together to create this website? My preference is to create one website versus segmenting the traffic between two. Do you agree?
I found this website that is made for HOA’s. http://www.hoa-sites.com/websitefeatures.php Ignore what their website looks like. I love the backend functionality. We can always change the edifice/CSS of the site. I am trying to get approval from the other two board members to move forward with this company. Plus, we need to find the dollars in the budget. The budget is really what prioritizes our decisions.
With your help, we can get this new website up and running. I wrote all the copy for our new website and organized the information architecture because I was the one working on the old site with the web developer. I think this new site will go up quickly.
I would recommend that you and everyone else completes the survey. It hasn’t been promoted b/c I wrote it on Thur night after the board meeting. I was going to help promote it next week, but then got your flier so I didn’t want to make it seems as if this website was created to combat you. The wordpress blog has been up for a while and I have been emailing a list of emails that
Bridgette gave me.
We used to have fliers up, but people keep ripping them down. In last Thursday’s meeting, we decided to put notes on everyone’s door about it, but then I got your note and was thinking about what to do next. That’s why I wrote the link to the survey so many times in your website. I figured people would go to your site b/c of the note in the door and could still get to the survey without them competing with each other. I want people to fill out the survey so that we can figure out what everyone wants and prioritize their requests. I thought I was doing a good thing
Let me know what you would to help with the new site.
-Renee
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1) I’m sure all of you have started receiving the notes on the door from an owner. I have personally communicated with this owner and asked him to attend our Board meetings. I have also asked him to fill out our survey.
My reply to point 1) I have completed your survey but of course you would NOT know because it can be submitted without any personal information.
2) “After communicating with this owner, I’m still not clear on what his objective is.”
My reply to point 2) how more clearly can I be? We the owners must work for a common objective, to achieve the rating of “The Premiere Place to Live in Orlando” for “Our Park North”.
3) “I have asked him to put the survey link on his website and he has refused.”
My reply to point 3) you did NOT ask, you assumed that writing a post with several links to your so called “Official site” would be OK, it’s NOT. You did not ask, if you would have asked I would have allowed link for link, it is only fair to reciprocate and that would have been my reply to you if only you would have asked!
4) “I have asked him to attend our meetings to discuss everything in an open forum and he also refused.”
My reply to point 4) Again you never asked and since you are writing less than the truth I will post all our communications for everyone to read. NEVER once you asked me to attend; I advised you that a 48 hour notice is NOT adequate for me to be able to attend due to my tight schedule.
5) “I also tried communicating with him in email and I received the same hostility.”
My reply to point 5) hostile? Every email exchange we had, you never addressed my questions, and it was all about you, you, and you.
END OF POST
Grant, our meetings are the last Thursday of every month. If you have a question about something then please call the front office. We all can’t abdicate and blame everyone for not knowing something. You could proactively ask. I invite you, and all of our residents to attend our meetings. Grant, I invited you to attend the HOA meeting on your blog. I also invited you to attend in the first email reply I wrote to you. Let’s not twist my words.
I don’t get what you are trying to do. Do you want to fire the board? Do you want to be on the board? Do you want the management team to be fired? What is it that you want? What are you trying to get accomplished?
I’m completely unclear of what you are trying to do. I don’t appreciate your tone and your hostility toward me. I am not sure why you are trying to extend an olive branch to me. I’ve never met you. I’ve never done anything to piss you off or to cause you to be so hostile towards me. You make volunteering for this board a very unpleasant experience. I tried to get everyone to fill out a survey so we can get everyone’s feedback in one place which is about improving the building. I think you keep confusing residents by putting these notes in the door. We can work together to create one communication strategy versus confusing it by having different websites and fliers in the door. I would like more of our residents to get involved.
What do you hope to gain from this? Things get done by working together. If you want to be heard then attend a meeting. I want to see if you are as hostile in person as you are in email and online. I am assuming you’re probably a nice guy that gets carried away in email. Remember we all live in the same building- let’s work together.
Do you want the management team to be fired?
Yes
In order to better understand why you would like to replace the management team, please provide some texture. What is it that you do not like about the current management company? What would you like to see happen that hasn’t happened? What would you like the new company to do differently? It’s hard to make decisions when some people like the company and others do not. However, if we have tangible examples please provide them. This will greatly help the evaluation process.