The purpose of this report is to tie in all of the separate articles on the HSVPOA 2022 November Board meeting and also to report on some additional information.
The Hot Springs Village POA Board held its meeting on Wednesday, November 1, 2022. The Board was short three members, with non-voting Corporate Secretary and General Manager Kelly Hale being absent due to illness and Board Director and Corporate Treasurer Jama Lopez also not present. In addition, former Board Member Pam Avila previously vacated a Board seat to accept employment with the POA in the position of Communications/Revenue Growth Specialist. Ken Unger, Director of Public Services sat in for Hale to present the General Manager Report. Click here to read this report.
Chairperson, Joanie Corry read an email from Keith Keck, President of HSV Veterans’ Memorial Foundation and Saline County Justice of the Peace, which thanked POA staff for their tremendous support for the HSV Veterans’ Day Ceremony. Keck explained, “With a loss of power, the POA team jumped into action to reconfigure the Woodlands portico to handle the ceremony as necessary. Fortunately, through the actions of Ken Unger [Director of HSVPOA Public Services], First Election got power back to the Woodlands in time for the ceremony. I wanted to ensure this ‘can do’ support for your HSV Veterans and their family gets publicly recognized before the POA Board.”
Click here to read the Financial Reporting by HSVPOA Controller Frank Hubbard.
Click here to read the Architectural Control Committee Report by Chair Janet Rowe.
Click here to read the Common Property, Forest, and Wildlife Committee Report by Chair Scott McCord.
2023 Fee Schedule
Board Vice-chair Gary Belair made a motion to approve the 2023 Fee Schedule. Board Director Bob McLeod seconded the motion.
Belair clarified that when the contract for the ambulance service was announced, it was said that the charge for the ambulance service would go up by fifty cents a month or a dollar bimonthly. The fee was only increased by forty-one cents per month.
The Fee Schedule also includes increases for improved and unimproved lot assessments.
Belair said, “there are administrative fees, including phone payment processing, transfer fees, and some miscellaneous fees that take up employee time, which increased slightly.”
Fees were rounded for simplicity.
Ken Unger said that they are no longer able to offer the “at-house” discount (page 18) for residential sanitation pick-up.
Director Tucker Omohundro made an amended motion, removing the “at-house” discount). Director Bob McLeod seconded the motion.
The Fee Schedule was unanimously passed as amended (removing the “at-house” discount).
Proposed budget discussion
Vice-chair Gary Belair said, “we need to discuss the 2023 budget. Chair Joanie Corry said the Board needs more time to discuss the 2023 budget, and a work session was needed.
Belair said they are not putting forth a motion on the budget at this point.
Corry stated, “the Accounting Department has been rebuilt this year. Life has not been fun in the Accounting Department this year. They have been way understaffed. For the first time this year, we have a full accounting staff. We have a new General Manager. We have a new Controller… That is why it is taking a while on the budget and the fee schedule.”
Capital Budget Discussion
The Controller, Frank Hubbard, said we have almost $11.4 M in projects listed for 2023, which is $2 M more than budgeted for 2022.
Director of Public Services Ken Unger said, “the focus this year is culverts. We got a lot accomplished. While we were doing that, we also replaced three sections of water mains this year. The shift [next year] is going to go toward water/sewer. We have to replace water mains.” Part of that is in the proposal for the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding for water and wastewater infrastructure improvements. If we do not receive the ARPA funds, we have some water mains we can do ourselves.
We also have a couple of water tanks that need to be repaired.
We also need to add some isolation valves. Unger explained, “we recently had a leak where 200 plus homes were out of service. Our goal is to find those areas where many homes are at risk and install isolation valves so that we don’t take so many homes out of service when we have a leak.”
“This year, we telescoped and cleaned various manhole lines that we believe need to be repaired. The budget next year is an indicator that we are attempting to do some of that based on the results of what we are doing right now,” stated Unger.
Clarifiers – we are studying to determine the best course of action.
Unger said, “this is part of the commitment to infrastructure – all of the numbers you are seeing here. The good news here is, some of these costs were greater this year because we are getting things back to 100%.”
Unger said we have some spillway structure issues. The state audited three dams this year, and we have done several of those audits. “We have some improvements that need to be made. We hope we can do Pineda for less than $100,000 and do some of the maintenance on the other dams, as well [ with the left-over funds]. We always have lake valve issues that seem to pop up. We spent $30,000 on one this year.”
Unger said they have done a lot of “uplifts” on buildings this year, where they painted the exteriors.
Unger stated, “One of the things we will be looking at across the Village is, ‘what type of storage requirements do we have to protect the equipment that we are buying over the next couple of years?” Unger said we need to make sure we have the right size storage for what we are storing, so we build only what we need.
Unger said in the past week, his department had a big cleanup day and decided what to auction or get rid of, etc.
The lease contract with Enterprise didn’t work out this year when they could not deliver the vehicles promised.
The new fire truck will most likely arrive in 2024, but it might possibly be delivered in December 2023.
There will be a similar focus to what happened this year on culverts. We will hopefully complete all condition 1 and 2 culverts next year that can be cementitious lined. This is about 40-plus culverts. We will do smaller culverts in-house.
Street Preservation
We plan to do some more intensive crack sealing and patch repair.
We plan to do a trial on the Maderas entrance for the full-depth reclamation to give us a long-term approach to areas where the road conditions are too poor to be overlaid due to a poor sub-base.
The fog sealing we did this year appears to be working. We are trying to make the roads last. Fog sealing costs around $40,000 a mile, but rebuilding a whole road from scratch can cost a million dollars a mile.
We don’t want to invest too much in our roads until we fix the infrastructure under the roads. We must take care of the water main problems and the water lines before we repave the roads. We don’t want to have to come in and patch after repaving.
Other Infrastructure Discussion
$500,000 is proposed for bunker renovation.
We will not do the Tennis Center hard court repairs next year.
The reason for the delay in indoor pool repairs is that the POA is waiting on parts to come in.
CONTACT INFORMATION FOR PUBLIC SERVICES DIRECTOR
Ken Unger
Director Public Services
Hot Springs Village
501-226-9609
Kunger@hsvpoa.org
Board Meeting Calendar
Gary Belair presented the motion for the 2023 Board Meeting Calendar. Tucker Omohundro seconded the motion. Board Director Bruce Caverly said there is a typo on the 2023 Calendar, which should read, ‘2024’ Budget.
Tucker Omohundro motioned to approve the 2023 Board Meeting Calendar Motion, as amended. Bob McLeod seconded the amended motion. The motion was unanimously approved as amended.
2023 Board Election Calendar and Application
Chair Joanie Corry presented the motion. Director Gary Belair seconded the motion. This motion was unanimously approved.
Key dates are as follows:
December 1, 2022 – Applications available
January 6, 2023 – Board applications must be submitted to the General Manager’s office by 4:00 PM.
February 24, 2023 – Ballots will be mailed
March 30, 2023 – Deadline for the ballots to be returned
March 31, 2023 – Election day
April 19, 2023 – New Board Members will be seated after the regular Board meeting
Tucker Omohundro suggested an earlier deadline for applications to be submitted to the GM to save applicants money. Possibly campaign money will not be necessary to spend if the number of people running is the same as the seats that need to be filled.
Corry said it is too late to change the date this time. Possibly this will be changed in the future.
Caverly said this issue should be brought up earlier next year.
McLeod said all of the dates should be moved up.
The motion passed unanimously.
SBA Cell Tower Contract Lease Agreement
This motion was presented by Director Tucker Omohundro. Director Bruce Caverly seconded the motion. This is about extending a current lease agreement with SBA Communications Corporation to lease POA-owned land for cell tower services.
The motion passed unanimously.
Click here to read about the discussion on adding a new Communications Committee.
Chapter 1, Article 15 Rules Violation, Verbal/Physical Abuse or Abuse of Property Discussion
Director Tucker Omohundro proposed a change to Chapter 1 Article 15 Rules Violation, Verbal/Physical Abuse or Abuse of Property. “We’re trying to put in a better process for this,” said Omohundro. This change (see redlined pdf below) allows for the suspension of membership privileges and denial of access for nonmembers at the General Manager level with an appeal process at the Board Director level.
This item should be on the agenda at the December Board meeting.
Click here to read the report on the discussion of additional boat slips at Balboa Marina.
Report by Cheryl Dowden
