TUESDAY, JUNE 23, 2009 WILL BE A REGULAR MEETING. THERE WILL BE AN ELECTION UPDATE/ EXPLANATION AND AN OPPORTUNITY FOR THE CURRENT CANDIDATES TO SPEAK. THE GENERAL MEETING STARTS AT 7:00PM AND WILL BE HELD AT THE SORRENTO POOL.
Due to some homeowner complaints of alleged voting improprieties and their challenges to the election process, the Board of Directors held a special meeting that determined it was proper to cancel the Election Meeting originally scheduled for Tuesday June 23, 2009. The rescheduled Election Meeting will be held on Tuesday July 28, 2009. We regret any inconvenience this may cause you, but feel that this action is necessary to support a fair election process.
In order to comply with the requirement to provide a voting period of at least 30 days, a new secret ballot is enclosed with this letter. Please prepare and return your ballot by the indicated date using the included voting instructions.
DO NOT COMPLETE YOUR BALLOT IN THE PRESENCE OF ANY CANDIDATE OR BOARD MEMBER.
DO NOT RETURN YOUR BALLOT TO ANY CANDIDATE OR BOARD MEMBER.
Sincerely,
Sorrento Election Committee
View the Candidates
Rules for the Election and Removal of Directors
Voting Rules
By Pat Pope
I would like to clear up a few mysteries and misconceptions about our dues. The first thing you need to know is that the entire Board of Directors agonized about raising the dues again this year, we did not take this decision lightly. The simple facts are that despite our collection efforts, a significant portion of our residents are not paying their dues. For example, As of April 30, 2009, 45 of 629 homes were behind in their dues by more than two months. Of those 45 homes 31 of them owed your Association more than $1,000.
What does that mean to you? Everybody else has to share the burden of paying for those who don’t. The Finance Committee and the Board knew that the economy would be tough this year so we built in a loss contingency into the budget. We also knew that we are in a severe drought, so we prepared for higher water bills. Our Reserve Study was completed after the 2009 budget was completed, but it showed that if we did not increase our contribution to the Reserves we would all be hit with Special Assessments in five or six years as much of our infrastructure nears being 15 years old. If we maintain our streets, pools, gates and buildings they will last much longer.
I believe we have been prudent and reasonable. The Board knows that we will get some of the delinquencies paid back to us when people sell their homes. At the very least, when a new resident buys a foreclosed property, the new resident will start paying the dues. This latest boost to the reserves will help build them to a reasonable level. We cut back everywhere we could this year. We are turning this Newsletter into a profit center.
The drought presents significant challenges to us all both as individual homeowners and as an Association. We all may have to find less water intensive ways to keep our property beautiful.
I have taken a dues survey of several of the other HOAs in Porter Ranch, we are trying to get even more information, which we will post on our website. It turns out that the other Associations are facing the exact same issues with delinquencies, Reserves, Security, and Utilities. To be clear, each Association has some unique challenges and their Boards have reacted slightly differently, but just by looking at the chart you can see that the Sorrento HOA dues increases are consistent with other HOAs in Porter Ranch. All of the HOAs have independent Boards of Directors.
 Renaissance, for example, has no common pools, and one guardhouse and their dues have gone up faster then ours. Their Association believes in keeping the common areas looking nice, and their reserves strong. Just across Sesnon from Renaissance is Villagio. The have no guarded gates and they have the lowest dues increase in our survey. Their main gate takes 30 seconds to close. On June 2, 2009 a resident of Villagio was the victim of a home invasion robbery and ended up in the hospital.
My point is not to raise dues again. Right now, I think we are fine without an increase in 2010, especially if all of us pay the dues. We will keep our community safe.
By Melissa Centeno, Newsletter Chair
Perhaps you have already noticed some changes to this month’s newsletter. The newsletter will now be published by your HOA! We are happy to announce we will now offer the opportunity for anyone in the Sorrento/ Meadows Community to advertise in the newsletter.
The HOA Board and the community would like to say THANK YOU to Coldwell Banker for creating past newsletters and printing the newsletter for the community for over 6 years. Your contribution was truly generous and will always be remembered.
If you have a business and would like to advertise in the newsletter and reach about 622 homes in the community monthly please contact Mary Cooley-Lopez for prices and information. Her email is marycooleylopez@socal.rr.com.
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