In regards to the various committees, Kelly has informed me that the Maintenance Committee will be meeting at the Cottage Grove Library at 6pm on July 15. He and I will be contacting those individuals who expressed an interest in working on this group. Lee also noted that he is working on getting a date set for the Architectural Committee to hold a meeting. As far as the Social Committee goes, I do not believe that anything is planned as of yet�and we did not get any volunteers to be on this group. Anyone interested? We can always use more involvement, so for those that want to work �first hand� to help make improvements to our neighborhood, I am asking that you please step forward to help. Not only will your help bring new ideas; it will also make our neighborhood a better and more pleasant place to live. If you are interested in getting involved, please contact me and we can get you started.
The �official� minutes from the 2008 Annual Meeting are now available at the Gassen website, as well as here, in the �links� page. Though these are �official� minutes, they are not approved, as that does not happen until members do so at the 2009 Annual Meeting. A lot of the notes from my own minutes have been incorporated into the final version. I have received a copy of the agenda for the upcoming board member meeting as well. It looks likes we have a lot of things to discuss and I am quite pleased with the items on the agenda. I anticipate a good, productive meeting.
I continue to receive feedback from homeowners with suggestions and items of concern and am looking into solutions for some of them (along with voicing those items to other �board� members and asking for feedback/suggestions). I appreciate your willingness to openly communicate with me, and though I may not be able to solve each problem, I will make it known to the appropriate people so that some sort of resolution may be achieved. Some items, though important, are not always of the same urgency level, and I will bring those up when the �board� next meets.
In regards to items of concern, I recently received the �board� management report from Gassen, which includes a list of the homes with some type of �problem.� I must say, after reviewing that list, I was a little surprised at what �problems� were listed. The most notable concern listed was in regards to satellite dishes being located on the wrong side of the house. Though there are rules regarding where satellite dishes are located, I don't find this to be a major issue. In addition, I did a little investigating into FCC rules, and as far as I can tell, our association rules do not always coincide with federal requirements and as such, I will be pushing for a modification to our requirements. I have enclosed the FCC rules on the �links� page if you wish to review. I am not sure how you feel, but the things I notice on a daily basis are homes with unkempt yards, not satellite dishes. Though there are no �rules� regarding lawn maintenance, when it violates city code, then it is an item of concern. I would like to know what are areas are of concern for you.
As always, I fully intend to keep communication open with everyone and hope that my website here is helping with that. I think all of us need to know what is going on within our association and not just �board� members. There should be no secrets. You should have the opportunity to express your opinion (without fear of retaliation or being �outed� because of it). You should have the opportunity to be involved as much or as little as you like and still have a say. Though it may not be �politically correct,� if you have an issue with anything, or just a general question, I would prefer that you contact me directly so that I am aware of the problem firsthand (which will also help to avoid the old �telephone game� problem, where the story has a tendency to change the more it is passed along). And if you prefer, you are still free to contact Gassen with issues as well, but I am making myself available if you would rather not go directly to the management company. I do not believe that other �board� members have an �open door� policy and wish to be contacted directly with any questions or concerns, so please do not do so. I will bring ALL concerns received to the attention of the other �board� members for discussion and/or resolution.
I wanted to make everyone aware that the communication efforts amongst our association are poised to take a giant leap forward. Our management company (Gassen) has agreed to start sending communications via e-mail rather than standard mail (thus eliminating some of the costs of printing, postage, etc.) which means you should receive information more timely. At present, this will be just for the �newsletters� but we will be looking into utilizing e-mail communication for other purposes as well. An exact date of when this new method of communication is to begin has yet to be determined, but we have a good start anyway! In order to get started with e-mail only correspondence (just for �newsletters� at present), you need to do one of two things: 1) Go to the www.gassen.com (register if you have not already done so) and login. Once you are logged in, on the left side of the screen, choose �directory.� Once in the �directory� section, find your name, and click on it. From there you can update phone numbers, e-mail, etc. Enter your e-mail, and click �preferred� method of communication (if that is the method you prefer!) Note that this will also make the information you input available for all homeowners in our association to view, which can be useful for helping neighbors get to know one another better. But, if you are not comfortable with everyone being able to see your info, you can instead� 2) Call Gassen and give them your e-mail address and indicate that it is your preferred method of communication. Again, this is just a start to improving overall access to communication. Let me know if you have any questions.
I hope to keep as many people informed of what is going on (via e-mail) as possible, and being able to get e-mail addresses from the Gassen website helps me to do that. For those that do not have e-mail listed on the Gassen site, as time allows, I plan on visiting those homes to see if I can get that information in order that I can help foster better communication.
Another thing I will be working on in the near future is �survey� regarding our association. I will be asking for your input on how you think things are going, items of concern, what needs to change, etc. I believe that this will help us (the �board�) to better understand where we currently are and in what direction we need to move.
-Lewis Stein
This is an "unofficial" Pine Summit Homeowners Association website
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