Vote NO on Proposed Bylaws!

Recently, all property owners of the Heritage Farm community should have received the new proposed bylaws from our acting board. Upon initial inspection of these bylaws, you're left with the feeling this may have been written by your credit card's legal department or politicians in Washington DC. Unlike our covenant, which was written in plain English by a local real estate firm, these bylaws are thick with legalese. Our first impression after reading a few pages of this document was to have our eyes glaze over and to realize reading it is an unnecessarily difficult task. After forcing ourselves to read the entire document, we are of the opinion it is designed to confuse. Now, if our covenant was written like this, and you were a prospective buyer of property in Heritage Farms, you may feel as though you need a lawyer to explain exactly what it means. A buyer might lose interest in purchasing your property and go on to the next one for consideration. We therefore conclude the proposed bylaws will neither do property owners any good as worded nor find its content to be acceptable.

In these bylaws there is mention of special assessments, however, they are not defined in Article I of the document along with other pertinent terms. Our covenant mentions annual dues but nothing of special assessments. What are these special assessments potentially? Well, current and former board members have openly discussed with members of the community their wish to resurface our roads, install a security gate at the entrance of our community, and have a security patrol. All of these ideas are costly, unnecessary, and poorly conceived.

First, our streets are twelve years old and may need a pothole filled in here or there, maybe a little hot tar in a few cracks. Our community is half "built out" so there will be a lot of heavy equipment coming in and out during the next decade. It is not prudent at this time to resurface our roads until we are close to 100% built out, otherwise, we will have to pay for it again when it is further damaged. Secondly, the ideas of a security gate and security patrol are completely unfounded in reality. According the Delaware State Police, we live in an area with the lowest crime rate in Sussex County (and perhaps the state). The kinds of crimes occurring here are mostly construction site theft, domestic disputes, and petty offenses, not murders, rapes, home invasion, armed robbery, etc.

Besides the "special assessment" issue, there is the issue of transparency. Secret votes are called for in these bylaws. Secret votes are unaccountable and potentially a source of unneccesary dispute. The results of elections and all voting must be verified to all members satisfaction. Remember what former President Reagan said, "trust but verify". That's always good advice. So let's implement that. Additionally, we are a community of fifty-nine buildable lots. That is a very managable number. There is no need for all the committees mentioned in these bylaws. These are just a few of the problems we have found involving the proposed bylaws; please read the document and see for yourself.

Unfortunately, our board has been decimated by resignations for various reasons. On June 18th, 2014 our acting president began filling in for our former acting president (of five weeks), Dave Boffa, who was initially elected vice president under our original elected president, Tony Bridges. Our current acting vice president, Harry Morrissy, was appointed to complete the vacated VP term of Dave Boffa, which would have expired on December 31st, 2014. This June 18th meeting was attended by only 7 homeowners and the remaining 2 board members. We feel attendance was extremely low because the board scheduled the meeting at 6:30 PM on a Wednesday instead of the usual Saturday meetings we'd always had in the past. This supressed attendance. The current board also decided to fore-go our usual October meeting this year, and in future years, but did not even bring this to a vote. Our new acting president as of June 18th, Phyllis Taylor, had been our long-standing secretary. In order to cover her vacancy as secretary, that office was merged with the treasurers office, which is held by Wendy Sheetz. Wendy was elected by the membership in the last election as treasurer, but now is also wearing the hat of acting secretary.

To recap, we have a board of two fill-ins, an elected board member, and we are short one board member as elected in the fall of 2013. In retrospect, a board composed such as this shouldn't be proposing bylaws. Any bylaws would best be proposed by a complete and properly elected board by the full membership. There is no need to rush in this matter of bylaws considering the actual situation of the current HOA Board.

In addition to suggesting our members vote no on these proposed bylaws, we feel it is necessary at this time to call for a new election for all officers of the board as soon as possible. This is a reasonable request.

So in closing, we kindly ask you to please vote NO on the proposed bylaws. Votes must be received by December 31, 2014.

Thank you,

Sincerely,

The editors and contributors to the Heritage Farms Guardian

#bylaws #vote