BALLYMEADE

2016 Meeting Minutes

 

 

TRANSPARENCY.  We have it in Ballymeade.  All residents can be fully informed on all matters pertaining to this great community we call home.  Below are the 2016 meeting minutes for you to read, more meeting minutes will be added as the year progresses.  Please also check out the minutes all the way back to 2005.  These are available from the main Documents and Links page by scrolling down further - you'll see all the years listed all together. 

 

Currently there are three minute documents below (each set of minutes will be a different color).  Please scroll down.

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Ballymeade Board Meeting

October 6^th, 2016

Minutes

 

Attendees: Michael Petrucci, Jim Bagnell, Ram Jayanthi, Peter Haggerty, Ron White

Location: Jim’s home 7:00PM to 9:00PM

517 E. Boxborough Drive

 

Minutes recorded by Ram Jayanthi, Secretary

 

Jim provided finance updates. Here are the highlights.

• Reserve funds are in good standing and all expressed confidence in meeting any capital expenses to be paid by reserve funds.

• $450 have to be collected from one of the houses sold recently.

• Jim suggested that a quote be requested for playground repairs and Peter agreed to follow up with a NJ company.
  
  Ron provided updates and concerns from Ballymeade Maintenance Corporation.

• From assessment collections, 143 Shrewsbury drive household still owes money (relates to the same item raised by Jim).

• Eights households still owe annual assessment fees of which four are new,

• Four houses still owe money from last year and prior.  

• Jim and Peter suggested that the process of collections be sorted out with our lawyer.  Some old issues have to be resolved with his office.

• Participation to share email information from residents was lukewarm. Board wants to encourage more people registering their emails.

• Residents’ car registration was discussed as the team came across some challenges when paving public parking lots in the development.

Mike went over architecture updates that he had worked on since the board met from last time.

• The color used for front door for 511 E. Boxborough dr. was discussed and board agreed that since there is no clear guidelines, it would let go of this issue.

• Concrete driveways – there are already some in the development and there is a debate about allowing them for town homes or not.

• Most of the ARC requests approved were routine and none needed any special attention so far.

• List of all ARC requests approved are requested for tracking and archival.

• There was a flag pole and lot of work was going on at a home on Ballymeade Dr. and Mike spoke to the home owner to remove the flag pole (not allowed per deed restrictions).

Peter covered updates from lawmakers and contractors he was dealing with.

• No additional money was required for watering the trees on common property as it is already covered by the existing contract.

• Control of Japanese beetles and trimming trees on sidewalks was well taken care of during summer by Forever Green.

• Dead trees were replaced in common areas.

• Sean Matthews did a fine job with water logging issue on Shrewsbury drive and other issues pertaining to our development.

• Slow down signs have been installed by delDOT and no commercial trucks are allowed to be parked in development overnight.

Next annual meeting of board and residents will be in Brandywine Town Center.

Ideas are solicited on how to engage more residents.

 

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Annual Ballymeade Community Meeting

February 22nd, 2016

Minutes

 

Board attendees: Michael Petrucci, Jim Bagnell, Ram Jayanthi, Peter Haggerty, Eugene Zheng plus Ron White

 

 

Community: 18 homeowners attended, including the board members.  Another 20 homeowners provided voting proxies in advance of the meeting.  The requied quorum of 24 homeowners (10%) was fully satisfied for voting on issues.    

 

Location: Brandywine Town Center

Time: 7:00PM to 9:00PM

 

Minutes recorded by Ram Jayanthi, Secretary

           

1.  The Ballymeade Board of Directors President (Peter) started the meeting with opening remarks, introduced the board members and went over the agenda.  Note: The handout for the meeting is on the website (under Pages and Links).
2.  Peter then presented a summary of the accomplishments of the past 12 months – including the upgraded community services achieved by switching property management companies (BC Communities to PENCO).  He stated how much the community appreciated the great work Ron did for the community during his first year as our Property Manager!
3.  Peter talked about the community’s new Email distribution and how effective this has been this past year to communicate with homeowners and renters.  All critical information has to be sent by US Mail, but the Email is effective in keeping info flowing at no cost.  If you want to get on the Email distribution send and Email to: rwhite@pencomanagement.com
4.  Also mentioned, the community web site is very active with over 4,000 pages viewed each month over the past six months.
5.  Peter touched upon the engineering reserve study conducted and reserve fund revenue collected.  An overview of why an increase in home owners’ fees by $10 was proposed.  The reserve study shows we are just slightly underfunded – more in the financial report below.
6.  Landscape activity was summarized.  Both Forever Green Landscaping and Davey Tree Company are doing a fantastic job taking care of our commonly owned lands and trees. 
7.  He talked about our responsibility towards wetlands and how to report on encroachment.
8.  Some of the other topics he covered were snow removal (salt application), keeping trash cans out of sight and cleaning after dogs.
9.  Mike went over the Architectural Review Committee (ARC) slides in the presentation. He explained the responsibility of ARC committee on enforcing deed restrictions and managing the approval process for the homeowner.  Mike reported that the volume of ARC requests was not as high as in prior years.  ARC request forms can be found on the community website.
10.  Mike and Gene (the two ARC members) did a great job early in the year to streamline the process of approval and they updated the ARC request form making it easier to understand and they put it on the website so homeowners didn’t have to call PENCO to get a copy.  A link to the form on the website under “Pages and Links”.
11.  Mike went over common deed violations and how they are addressed.
12.  Jim, our Treasurer, went over the community’s finances.  Highlights of his presentation were:

• 98% Home Owners paid dues (total 243 households).
• Unpaid assessments from prior years written off – about $1000, due to bankruptcy.
• Jim summarized the findings of the “Reserve Study” and explained why it was needed and what our reactions to the study must be.  Copies were available to all who wanted one.  Briefly, a Reserve Study is performed by an engineering firm who reviews the community’s assets (tennis court, playground, fence on Naamans, etc.) and determines when those assets will need to be fully replaced.  It tells the community leaders how to fund via reserve accounts for this.  The whole idea is to avoid a large unexpected expense that would have to be funded by a large onetime assessment to all homeowners.
• An full safety engineering will be ordered for playground this spring (certification)
• The tennis court will be repainted and re-stripped this spring (18 years old).
• Similarly storm water basins to be inspected as well.
• County does not own the fence on Naamans side.
• Budgets for 2015 and 2016 were reviewed in detail.
• 2016 budget along with other changes (like increase of $10 in home owner dues) were put up for voting and all proposed changes were approved by all in attendance.
• Jim spoke about how the money in our reserve accounts are invested at WSFS - money market and CDs.  He will be moving funds to newer CDs to get the maximum amount of interest.
• Jim also reviewed the results of a cost comparison that he did regarding trash carriers.  He pointed out that Waste Management is much more expensive than all the others.  This study was done with the hope that only one or two trash companies would be used in Ballymeade - instead of the 5 or 6 that now come through at all hours eacy morning.  The idea is to reduce noise pollution and to cut down on the number of massive trucks traveling on our roads and wearing them down.  The cost study will be mailed to all residents.
  
  

13.    Peter asked the audience to read the long list of the services that PENCO provides in their handouts.

• Ron is the point of contact for any questions related to our community.

• PENCO sends out all letters regarding deed restriction violations.
  
  

14.   Peter, Jim, Gene and Mike talked about board activities.

• Jim’s and Gene's positions are open.

• Gene did not want to go for re-election.

• Jim nominated himself for another two year term and was unanimously elected.

• The above left on board member position open.  We’ll post this on the web site and mention it in the spring newsletter in the hope that someone will volunteer for this position.
  
  

15.     Questions from the community were answered accordingly:

• What can we do about standing water not clearing out on Shrewsbury Dr and is it treated for mosquitoes?

• Shoveling sidewalks when snowed - what is the best time to do it?

• Who is responsible for clearing snow at fire hydrants and mail boxes?

• How to report on noisy neighbors, parties and fights in the development?

• What do we do about (people) leaving dogs on the deck in winter cold?

• How do we get 75% of the community approval for solar panel installation?

• Is there a way to build another entrance which may be required for emergencies?

• How do we advise people to not to park in the wrong direction on our streets (safety issue)

• How do we know when we met the 60% of the people opted for a certain Trash Carrier to get the best discount offered by the vendor?
  
  

 16.    Jim adjourned the meeting at 8:40PM. 

 

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Ballymeade Board Meeting

February 9th, 2016

Minutes

 

Attendees: Michael Petrucci, Jim Bagnell, Ram Jayanthi, Peter Haggerty, Eugene Zheng, Ron White

Location: Peter’s home, 7:00PM to 9:00PM

 

Minutes recorded by Ram Jayanthi, Secretary

 

1. Gene decided to not to continue as board member next year and asked it to be posted as open position.
2. Peter mentioned that emails from PENCO to residents are working very well (especially with last snow storm, residents were requested to refrain from on street parking).
3. Jim clarified that annual association meeting will be on 2/22 evening, 7 p.m., Town Center Comm Center
4. The team reviewed the draft PowerPoint presentation and agenda for the annual meeting.
5. Mike suggested we combine president and landscape reports so that discussion goes in a sequence.
6. Association fee increase will be first presented by president and in more detail later in the meeting by treasurer. Per Jim this is the first increase in 6 years.
7. Mike and Gene stated there were no ARC issues - work was done as per the requests. New form is working really well, makes things clear for the homeowner.
8. Mike said there is still an issue with parking of commercial vehicles in the neighborhood. Example there is one on Morningdale Drive.  EJ has yet to response to the resident's lawyer (related to the resident who has a commercial vehicle with business signs).  
9. Jim and Peter and Ron talked about the need for a good responsive attorney to assist us with liens and other deed violations.  It was agreed that Peter would call EJ and determine if there is a problem that is causing his lack of response.  
10. Jim will make first set of changes to presentation and Peter will make next set of changes before finalizing.
11. Jim wanted to review those who have not paid last year and produce correct number (4).
12. Peter said that scope of PENCO services will be listed, but will not be discussed because it’s too long.
13. Jim will talk about old and new business.
14. New ARC forms were added to the website and approvals are made quickly per Mike
15. New business items will be solicited from residents other than the two that were discussed and mentioned in the presentation.
16. Playground inspection (formal) needs to be done in order to assess how much money is required to replace or repair, and to get a report that states its fully functional/no problems  - Mike and Peter
17. Two seats on the Board will be open to election at the home owner’s Meeting.  Eugene and Jim’s terms are up.  Jim expressed intension to continue to serve on the Board and will join the list of contenders at the meeting.
18. Jim did a nice job with garbage collection analysis and is going to recommend to residents to cut down our overall number of garbage pick-up vendors (reasons will be furnished in presentation).
19. Sean and Bob wanted to talk about general updates and community relations and Sean will be coming for annual meeting.
20. Gene suggested that we get approval of meeting proceedings and budget.
21. The meeting agenda was reviewed by the team.
22. Jim explained the reserve study to the team.
23. Email contacts need to be captured from all residents - Mike & Gene