Pineview HOA Community
Maple Grove, Minnesota
This site is a NEWS Blog for the Pineview Home Owners Association in Maple Grove, Minnesota. As a member of Pineview HOA and a lifelong Entrepreneur, blog writer Edward G. Palmer will share his corporate management perspective and observations of the HOA along with his recommendations for improvements for the HOA Board to consider.
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NEWS - June 24, 2024: The Special Assessment Vote created by the HOA's Board Members failed by 63 NO votes to only 14 YES votes. This was an excellent win for Pineview homeowners, who came together as a community to reject what was a quick, impulsive, and thoughtless special assessment strategy. Thank you for showing up to express your NO vote against an outrageous demand to spend $18,500 per unit ($74k per Quad building) for new siding.
Below are the HOA maps of the members, and this blog site will ony serve the residents who live in the following quad buildings.
Please note that the board of directors has now put Omega Property Management in between the HOA community members and its board of directors. Therefore, there is no way to contact a board member without going through Omega Property Management. If you need to talk to a board member in person, you have no choice but to attend a board meeting. However, that assumes the board will eventually return to in-person meetings since they have prioritized Zoom meetings.
Zoom meetings eliminate an estimated 50% of the HOA community from participating in discussions. However, assuming you received a notice via email of an impending Zoom meeting, you can dial into the meeting only using your phone. Follow the Zoom instructions for phone connections on the meeting notice. At the end of the Board's Zoom meeting, they will have a homeowner forum. When you are called on, you can then discuss your issue with the board. If you do not have a computer or use email like some HOA members, you will need to contact Omega Property Management for the information on the next Zoom meeting and instructions on how to dial in and use Zoom with a phone. It’s important to know how to mute and unmute your microphone.
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HOA PROPERTIES:
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NEWS - June 27, 2024: Letter to Pineview’s HOA Board of Directors.
12 - RECOMMENDATIONS TO PINEVIEW’S BOARD:
- Stop all Zoom meetings except in the case of an emergency.
- Reestablish in-person board meetings to allow seniors to participate.
- Plan on re-siding 1-3 Quad Buildings each year until all 22 buildings are done.
- Work with a flexible local siding contractor, such as MEI, who is only 3 miles away.
- Choose to reside using regular vinyl siding instead of the most expensive.
- Only repaint quad buildings if it is essential.
- Treat each Quad building separately based on its own maintenance needs.
- Document all unspoken board of director rules and explain them to HOA members.
- Focus on present-day maintenance needs.
- Live within the means of our HOA dues as our cumulative funds allow.
- Establish a means for members to contact the board directly.
- Get to know the community you are elected to serve.
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NEWS - July 1, 2024: Letter to HOA Cummunity Members.
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NEWS - August 23, 2024: Blog Update
I attended Monday's Zoom Meeting (August 19) and have the following observations and thoughts.
There was no video for the 19 attendees except for the moderator and one HOA member. I turned mine off after realizing the Zoom video was not being used.
The lack of video makes the Zoom meeting no better than a phone conference call.
New attendees would not know who was talking except for a name. It further emphasized to this author how inadequate such a meeting is from a personal communication perspective.
Meeting minutes and financial reports were unavailable on Omega's platform from the June 24, 2024 meeting. When asked how to upload documents, the Omega moderator said it had to be done by an employee of Omega Management's Property Management. Therefore, documentation regarding the meeting minutes and current financials was not available, even though this was over two months in the past.
This means our HOA Board has little control over HOA Management issues and relies on Omega for communications, maintenance, documentation, and, I suspect, all financial communications.
From a financial perspective, HOA documents do not have a traditional Income Statement that itemizes actual monthly expenditures. Instead, there is a budget summary that does not show actual expense outlays. This means that expenses can be padded in a summary number and that the current income P&L statement lacks specificity on actual expense outlays.
The board needs a monthly income statement that itemizes all actual expenses. It also requires a monthly itemized list of maintenance items that are completed, in the process, or on hold. It needs a similar list of vendor payments identifying monthly payments made, in the process, or on hold.
From a financial perspective, the existing HOA board is going through the motions but needs more tools to properly manage the monthly funds HOA members pay.
There was the implication that the HOA board will seek a much higher dues from 2025 than the 5% max allowed in our bylaws. This is despite our HOA having dues much higher than other HOAs without amenities.
It is time for our HOA board to focus on living within the means of our monthly dues. I recommend no more than a 3% increase in dues for 2025 because the last five years saw increases exceeding inflation.
Even though three to four board members were present during this Zoom meeting, not one mentioned my letters to the board and members regarding the failed June 24 meeting. There was also no mention or discussion of the recommendations to improve our HOA life, which were included in the letters and this blog. This makes me believe that the current board of directors is not interested in change or any recommendations I've made to improve our HOA's operation.
HOA Board Management options in the cloud for less than $100 per month would allow our board to control operations and manage the HOA with much less cost and confusion.
Our Annual Meeting to elect directors is now set for October 21. The location of the meeting has yet to be made available. President Sara Heath indicated at this Zoom meeting that she would leave the board and not run again.
Blogging to improve our HOA,
Edward G. Palmer
PS - For the foreseeable future, I have decided to attend all board meetings and to blog my observations and management thoughts. I don't particularly appreciate hearing complaints from homeowners dating back three years. There were two such 3-year-old complaints. Addressing fundamental maintenance problems should be different from running an obstacle course. However, that is where Pineview HOA now finds itself.
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NEWS - October 24, 2024: Annual Meeting Blog Update
On Monday, October 21, our HOA held its Annual Meeting. Scott Huber, our interim President, was reelected to serve for a three-year term. Bob Kraus, a prior HOA president who served in that position for nine years, was also elected to serve a three-year term.
Bob Kraus, our newly elected board member, has generously offered his email for direct communication with HOA members. This initiative is a significant step towards ensuring that the board hears and addresses your concerns. You can reach Bob at bobk51 AT hotmail.com.
The HOA Board has decided to continue with virtual meetings. It has ruled out any discussion of returning to in-person meetings. While it may not be ideal for everyone, this decision aims to ensure the safety and well-being of board members. However, instead of a top-down dictat, a survey of all HOA members should be done.
The HOA Board said: If you do not use computers (like Ken), contact Omega to receive a notice of Zoom meetings by regular postal mail. You'll have to pay extra for postage and handling. However, you can use your phone to join the Zoom meetings if you know when they will occur. Alternatively, have a neighbor supply the meeting information so you can participate by phone.
HOA board directors won't put any contact information on Omega's directory resource and want all communications to go through Omega.
Omega claims they have no issues with their maintenance request process, and if you phone them, a maintenance request will be sent to the board for approval. Note: If Omega requests digital documentation, email Bob Kraus to help resolve your request if it seems unreasonable.
Bob Kraus states he wants all quad buildings re-sided at the same time. This likely means an upcoming special assessment vote and more debt for HOA community members. I have offered an alternative solution requiring us to live within our existing resources. See my letter to Bob at the link below.
Suppose you are wondering why I personally did not join our HOA board. In that case, the answer is in the four-page letter I sent to Bob and my no-debt solution to the siding issue. This solution involves using our existing annual income and reserve fund. See the letter link below for my discussion for Bob's consideration.
I intend to start a dialogue with the HOA board on behalf of the community members (like me) who voted 63 to 14 against a special assessment for new siding. The reason for this vote is centered around the economic impact of all HOA members, not just the few who can afford an $18k bill. To keep building a reserve fund or running up higher monthly dues to fund a siding project using special assessments is unreasonable.
I will blog on this website to improve communication with community members. I'm also advocating in the letter below for our HOA to live within its annual revenue resources. That means stopping special assessments to achieve objectives our annual finances and reserve funds can accomplish. Read my letter to Bob for further details.
My October 24th letter to Bob Kraus.
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While the HOA Board of Directors and Omega Management Corporation have, as of October 25, 2024, still not disclosed any siding quotes on which they based their Special Assessment vote in June 2024, below is the MEI quote I received. It comes in at 73% of what Omega provided to our board. According to some siding contractors, Omega could have added a management fee to the siding proposal the board accepted. The board's chosen project was 137% higher than most siding contractor working directly with the HOA.
Minnesota Exteriors Siding Quote in June 2024.
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NEWS - March 9, 2025: Blog Update
I missed the February Zoom Meeting as I was visiting family in Florida. However, I have the following observations and thoughts to share.
Bob, who was elected as the board’s current president, has informed me that the HOA Board has engaged a building consultant and will have a siding committee work with them to present siding options to HOA members at the annual meeting in 2025. Siding comments that come to my mind are as follows:
1. The board's actions presume to reside in all HOA buildings.
2. The board's strategy also presumes a special assessment vote in 2025.
3. According to my canvas, most HOA members are satisfied with their siding.
4. The HOA already has the funds to repair or paint any siding needing work. This would include replacing any defective composite wall with similar siding. Once painted, it would not be objectionable to view since identical boards are no longer available for replacement purposes.
5. Ken, our first president, checked out all similar and even older developments with our style of buildings. He discovered that no other development had ever replaced their siding and repaired it as needed.
6. The board should stop their residing project and return to maintenance of the existing siding, which would include replacing entire walls of composite board siding and repainting these boards to match the rest of the building.
7. Many HOA members are elderly and on social security. Their budgets do not allow for special assessment increases when social security increases are typically around 2%.
8. Therefore, HOA members on social security have their limited resources eaten up by the HOA board’s insistent on 5% annual increases in dues. If some reduction in annual increases does not occur, it will become increasingly difficult to even resell HOA units.
The following graph shows that our HOA dues will be over $600 per month in ten years if the HOA board does not adjust its budget expectations.
In contrast, if the board limited its annual increases to social security increases, it would only reach around $450 monthly.
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My professional profile is available at this link Edward G. Palmer.
You can share your thoughts by using my Author's contact form link.