By Howard Moline
HOA Board elections are traditionally pretty boring events but several issues caused the recent First Colony Community Association (FCCA) Board election to generate more than a little controversy. Creating huge interest were recent FCCA decisions to close five pools, to install a splash park in the Lakes of Edgewater neighborhood, and to substantially improve recreational amenities over the next few years. Votes cast in this election actually doubled the usual turnout for an FCCA election.
The most controversial issue was the recent FCCA decision to close five neighborhood pools. Virtually everyone I talked to about this decision from the neighborhoods involved was opposed to it, usually because they had purchased their homes believing that the pools would remain intact and be a continuing positive factor in their property values. Delving into this decision in more depth, each of the pools slated for closure is actually poorly attended and requires an estimated twenty thousand dollars per year to keep open.
Much of the voter concern about this issue came about, I think, because the FCCA has failed to offer the neighborhoods an alternative to the pools being closed. Providing more playground equipment is a poor substitute for the value of a neighborhood pool. Installation of a clubhouse is a better alternative and gives the residents something of value but requires a large investment of funds.
Splash parks are equally expensive and cater largely to younger families. The FCCA has postponed the pool closures in the hope that residents will use a newly constructed (as of early 2011) family leisure pool at the Aquatic Center site and see this as a neighborhood pool alternative. Frankly, I think the pool closures are a tough sell to current homeowners who are accustomed to walking to conveniently located neighborhood pools. Moreover, the closure decision is based on relatively small dollar savings (the FCCA’s annual budget is about $9 million) and thus isn’t worth the widespread homeowner discontent it caused.
A platform tenet for several candidates was objection to the FCCA’s proposed amenity construction plan, largely because they felt it was too expensive. I totally disagree. I’ve looked at the FCCA’s finances and they are solid. They contribute over a million dollars a year to various contingency and asset replacement funds (based on a low assessment rate compared to other associations) and now have accumulated over $13 million in these funds.
The FCCA has done this through budgetary restraint and good management and the FCCA’s proposed recreational amenity plans benefit all of us. The family pool to be built soon at the Aquatic Center promises to give our youth a much needed recreational opportunity with a large slide, lazy river floating area, and big splash park. Other construction and renewal projects are also appropriate and are needed. This isn’t a situation where the FCCA is borrowing money to finance new amenities. The FCCA is funding the new construction through accumulated savings and all of our neighborhoods will benefit.
The FCCA has been a huge positive factor for Sugar Land and Missouri City neighborhoods and has certainly helped many of its neighborhoods to maintain upward trends in home values. Other neighborhoods in Missouri City and Sugar Land where homeowner associations haven’t been as proactive as FCCA, have suffered neighborhood decline. Without question, the FCCA has helped to attract many prospective homebuyers to the area.
Having said all this, the Board of Directors of the FCCA Board needs to actually perform and be what it’s supposed to be, a link between residents and FCCA management, and Missouri City residents, in particular, need to have a voice on the Board. I appreciate the support given to my candidacy in this election and will continue to support the FCCA Board and management in many of its decisions.
The simple truth about the Pool issue
*There are 10 First Colony neighborhoods with swimming pools.
*The developers built those pools 25+ years ago, and for the sole purpose of selling homes.
*There are 60 neighborhoods who have to pay for the upkeep on those 10 pools.
*The neighborhoods with pools want to keep them.
*The neighborhoods without pools are tired of paying a hefty portion of their annual dues toward pools that are not in their neighborhood and of little benefit to them. They have complained for years about it.
*The association wants to replace the 5 least used, most damaged pools with one large centrally located pool that has amenities beyond what the smaller pools are able to have.
Simple.
I don’t want to pay to rebuild someone else’s swimming pool
The City of Sugar Land should be providing water recreation facilities to the residents of Sugar Land. But the City Council has no interest in providing pools or water parks to the residents of Sugar Land.
Ask your city council members these questions. Each one of them want to build a $30 Million baseball park instead of providing more parks and pools for the residents. How are the youth of Sugar Land going to be able to use this stadium?
Ask yourself why we pay taxes for the Sugar Land Parks and Recreation Department, but yet the Parks and Rec department is silent on the pool issue.
Where is the Sugar Land Parks and Recreation Dept on this issue – are they making any recommendations to the city council?
“Each of the pools slated for closure is actually poorly attended…” Mr. Moline needs to check his facts one more time. “Poorly attended” is a subjective invention of the FCCA Board of Directors to justify their decision to close AND DEMOLISH the pools. If the FCCA BoD gets their way, those pools will be gone forever !!!!! We purchased our homes in neighborhoods with pools because they are a great amenity, and no one wants to see these pools destroyed.
It is sheer idiocy on the part of the FCCA BoD to think that anyone living near a neighborhood pool is going to drop what they’re doing, drive to the Aquatic Center, drop off their children, then do the same in reverse a couple of hours later when they can give their children pools tags and let them walk to the neighborhood pool. In addition, the neighborhoods pools still have lifeguards unlike the Aquatic Center’s now “Swim at your own risk” pools. (Thanks FCCA BoD – no lifeguards – at an Aquatic Center ?????) The FCCA should spend the money they’ve allotted for the pool demolition on solar screens for the pools in question and watch the attendance go up. – Oh and put the lifeguards back at the Aquatic Center.
No one opposed to the pool closures and splash park has been opposed to legitimate amenities improvements, however the FCCA BoD has been totally out of control on these issues. Case in point – Obscured by the pools/parks issues, the FCCA BoD also wants to spend our dues money on license plate reader cameras, which are redundant with the license plate readers that the SLPD already has, and paid for by our tax dollars. Whom does FCCA need to track with that data and WHY?
The fact that the FCCA has $9,000,000 of our reserve money to spend in the middle of a deep recession means that our dues have been too high for too long. This needs to stop, and hopefully the incoming new members of the BoD can bring some common sense to that body. If the FCCA BoD wants to do something useful with our money, send the FCCA members a dues rebate check and leave our pools and parks alone.
I agree mjurenko. Could you imagine HOA or city budgets that actually operated on the premise of not expanding and using the “reserve” funds? Or if they actually refunded the over-charges from excessive taxes and bond debt. Too bad these people aren’t programmed to think like this.
What or where is the Ft. Bend T.E.A party, have too say about FCCA public issues(tax dollar) spending, on this community pool being planned? Or mishandling of HOA leadership an voiceless TEA party.
The residents of First Colony have won. The question is WHY did doing the right thing take 1 survey, 5 board meetings, 2 petitions, legal counsel, 3 television stations, 2 local newspapers, endless walks through the neighborhoods, meetings with Sugar Land officials, household meetings, park meetings, editorials, banned yard signs, and write-in proxies? As Mr. Molina says, “Virtually everyone I talked to about this decision from the neighborhoods involved was opposed to [the pool closures.]”
The drum started beating all the way back in May 2009 when the FCCA Board funded a resident survey to guide the Master Amenities Plan. The survey was conducted by Creative Consumer Research, a company whose Executive Vice President (Joyce Walter) was sitting on the Board until the recent election.
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/joyce-walter/8/725/a91
The 500+ residents who responded to the May 2009 Survey ranked “Replacing some community swimming pools with a different amenity” last out of 10 choices of “Most Important Issues to Address.” Please see page 17 of the summary which used to be available on the FCCA website. On page 24 of the survey, the residents expressed the same disapproval in a different way. 40% of the Residents ranked “Replace the little used pools with a spray park, instead of refurbishing the pool” in the “bottom box.” That means (according to page 14) the residents gave it a 1, 2, or 3 on a scale of 1 – 10.
http://www.fccsa.org/announcementpage.php?article=33
With the help of an expert review, the survey should have alerted the Board that this eleciton was on the way if it went ahead with the pool closures. Nevertheless, in May 2010, residents of the Lakes of Edgewater (i.e., Phase IA of the Master Amenities Plan) realized that, despite the survey’s findings, LOE would receive a splashpark in place of its playground/park to replace one of the closed pools. As Phase IA, the LOE resident became the front line. They did what is natural. They gathered signatures from 85% of the households surrounding Edgewater Park (234 of 275 houses) to “Stop! Implementation of Splash/Spray Park in Lakes of Edgewater.” Then, together with residents from many neighborhoods with pools slated for demolition, they started attending Board meetings, sometimes filling up all the chairs, the hallway, and sitting on the floor.
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/lakesofedgewater/
When the LOE residents perceived that they were being marginalized as a “vocal minority” dissenting from a plan approved by the majority’s representatives (i.e., the Board), the growing group of concerned residents started (on 4th of July Weekend) gathering more than 1,300+ signatures from all over First Colony on the Common Petition to amend the First Colony Declaration (a/k/a the Declaration of Independence). The Common Petition would require the Board to give notice and voting rights to residents before a change of $10,000 or more could be undertaken in a neighborhood common area.
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/firstcolonysaveourpoolsandparks/
How did the Board react? In the fall, the Board voted 6-0 (at two separate Board meetings) to spend $650,000+ on the Edgewater Splash Park. That is when the residents assembled a “Reform” ballot for the Election. Two of the three Reform candidates (Myatt Hancock and Howard Paul) were not included on the ballot leaving five (5) choices for three (3) positions. Then the FCCA Staff said – twice in writing – that residents who put a yard sign regarding the election in their yard might be fined. Is that the kind of “Administration” that has cost residents more than $1,000,000 each of the past two years?
http://www.firstcolony.org/userfiles/file/budget%20for%20website.pdf
Are you mad yet? Do you believe that the newly elected Board members need your continued attention and support? You bet. For sure. Keep a close eye in the coming months. Make sure your victory at the polls becomes victory in the Board room.
Elections(FCCA )board; Its all about the publics money! For what, where and who is going recieve your money(taxes) to publics benefits if so, after these elections take place? These board members will drive our public tax dollars tobe spent at their will, if the public don’t get involve to say so.
And this one:
http://fbindependent.com/candidate-rebuts-jones-column-p3144-89.htm
HOA abuse must stop and until all homeowners have an equal voice, this isn’t the case. Why should commercial property owners have more votes on a project or election that those that live in the subdivision? 1 owner should be 1 vote. Nothing democratic about the HOA/ULI/CAI industry.
Not sure why some refer to doing the right thing, reform, when in fact this misnomer connotes radicalism. In reading your article, it is clear that doing the right thing maybe wrong to some.
As for the nomination committee selecting or culling candidates…this process suggests FCCA is secret society and profiles potential candidates who they believe can bestrepresent residents…if that is the case, why should a proxy be required? Leaves a lot to ponder…
In all fairness the other side should be heard in this:
http://sites.google.com/site/fccareform/
Not all arguments or deceptive practices by this HOA board and management company were exposed in this piece.
Normally I would say Mr. Molines arguments sound rational except I know too much about the board and management companies dealings on this SL city parks bailout plan. Spending this kind of money during a down cycle when non-members will have access to the amenities doesn’t pass the smell test. Why shouldn’t the city carry more than half these costs since, according to Mr. Moline, the city will benefit via unsupported claims of saving property values (no data was ever presented at any meeting to support this claim other than making it). For more background, see:
http://fbindependent.com/candidate-rebuts-jones-column-p3144-89.htm
http://www.fortbendstar.com/Columns/burner.htm
sites.google.com/site/fccareform/
Dipping this deeply into reserves that are this large also sends another message. That homeowners may be paying too much in annual dues. Further board members should not have a direct vested interest in the outcomes of elections and projects like these.
FCCA, much like Missouri City, lets only those ideas pass that benefits their way of thinking.
Howard Moline articulates great points in this article and speaks volume about the FCCA’s fiscal responsibility and transparency. There are tough decisions to make in our vacillating economy but with leaders ready to grab the helm and engage the crew (constituents)…the journey may not be as bad as some may think.
I hope they continue to seek input for those directly and indirectly impacted because this level of engagement is not a privilege but rather required.