Barony Place I/Barony Place II

  12/31/2021 3:00PM Another nice brick wall on HOA common property bites the dust. This wall is on the north side of Clemson Road, west of Summit Parkway and east of the entrance to North Springs Elementary School. Hopefully, the Board of Directors will hop on this and direct CAMS, the HOA's management company, to get the debris hauled away quickly. If the brick can be used, it should be moved up against the back side of the wall, out of sight of passersby, and a couple of ribbons of warning tape stretched between the two columns remaining on the sides of the damage. CAMS has had plenty of experience with damage to Summit brick walls in the past few years. There was a wall damaged on Summit Parkway, just east of Summit Ridge Drive, and it took a l-o-n-g time to get repairs completed. By now, CAMS should have recommended a few pallets of brick to be stored on the HOA's construction site and should have identified a reliable bricklayer to have on speed-dial. This damage is so rec...

  12/30/21 9:05AM This attractive welcome sign and shelter were damaged recently, reportedly when a motorist fleeing police lost control and crashed into it. I've requested the crash date from the HOA board and office. At the December 7th Regular board meeting the directors heard a report that there had been a delay getting repair bids. Now three more weeks have passed and repairs have not commenced. The Summit needs an aggressive board and management company that will do something besides sit and wait for somebody else to do something. Is that structure HOA-owned and maintained? If it is, then it is the HOA's responsibility to bring it back to pre-crash condition. If the delay is with the driver or his liability insurance carrier, then the HOA should flex its muscles and give them seven more days to commence repairs (repairs being to the satisfaction of the HOA). Would repair approval be by the office, the board, or by one or more of the board members? But could there be a pro...

Following are some of the failures of the 2021 Board of Directors of the Summit HOA. To protect your property interests, you might want to start attending the monthly board meetings (and the pre-board meetings held one week prior).  Hold the Board accountable. Contact your Neighborhood Representative/Voting Member. Start with determining whether your Neighborhood Rep. is "legitimate". Ask when he or she was elected at a Neighborhood Meeting. (Many VMs were put in place by a procedure referred to as "getting signatures". That is not an approved method under the By-Laws.) There are important, unresolved issues created by the board including - failure of the board to declare the vacancy on the board following George Reynolds' death in April; - the failure of the board to appoint a successor to fill the unexpired vacant term ending in November 2022;  - the failure to announce and hold the 2021 Annual Meeting of the Voting Members; - the improper election of  five (5...

Has the Board of Directors of The Summit's HOA gone into hiding? You may have already noticed that their names and email addresses are no longer on the website of the HOA. So the one place that you should be able to rely on - the website at www.summithomeowners.com  - no longer displays the names of the board members, who the officers are, and how to reach them. Are you satisfied with that? When I wrote to the President of the HOA. Justin Martin, at his previously-known email address of jdmartin@sc.rr.com, my email was undeliverable. Strange. Did he close that email account? Was there a "glitch"? Or had he blocked me? I found a second email address for him and wrote to that one. His reply was that was his work email address and not to use it again. he did not explain about his undeliverable email. So, honoring his request not to use his work email address again, I hoped that only a glitch had prevented my first email from reaching him. I emailed him again at sc.rr.com and...

The Summit HOA has been claiming the authority to enforce the CC&Rs and By-Laws against vehicles parked on Barony Place Circle, the street through Barony Place II.  The following letter was sent today to the members of th eBoard of Directors of the Summit HOA. The late George Reynolds, you and I have been at odds for more than two years over the authority of the HOA to enforce CC&Rs and By-Laws over the public roadway in Barony Place II; i.e., Barony Place Circle.     The Richland County Recorder of Deeds Office has provided me with a copy of the Deed by which Barony Place Circle was conveyed to Richland County. That Deed is attached. The roadway was conveyed by The Mungo Company, Inc. to Richland County on November 1, 2000. The name of The Summit Community Association (SCA) does not appear in the Deed. Since the roadway was never owned by the SCA, it never became a Property of the SCA. Barony Place Circle was  not  conveyed to Richland County  subj...

Should Board members' names, email addresses and officer positions be listed on the HOA website? That information used to be there. Now? Nowhere to be found. Officers were selected (not quite elected) at the "workshop" (pre-board meeting) on November 30. According to the By-Laws, they should have been elected in public at the December 7th regular board meeting. They weren't. Justin announced them. Why aren't they posted on the website??? An inquiry was sent to the "Barony Place" Neighborhood Representative, Billie Jones, on December 10. Awaiting her answer. The inquiry was sent to her, as suggested to me by board member Vernell Butler. 

The following email was sent to all board members after the December 7, 2021 board meeting: If board meetings are to continue on Zoom, will you please provide headsets for each board member and committee chairman? Tonight it was very difficult to understand Auby, Paul, and Jeff. The management company (CAMS) should be providing professional advice to you on conducting board meetings. Board members should have been elected tonight, rather than at the recent workshop. Workshops (pre-board meetings) are not Regular Meetings. The By-Laws provide guidance on election of officers. Art. IV, Section 2. Election. Term of Office, and Vacancies. The officers of the Association shall be elected annually by the Board of Directors  at the first meeting  of the Board of Directors following each annual meeting of the Voting Members, as herein set forth in Article III. ... The workshops (pre-board meetings) should not be used for decision-making. Reviewing bids and making decisions in the "sec...

How important is it that the board of directors complies with the By-Laws of the HOA? Are the By-Law and the Covenants just "suggestions" for how the HOA is to be run? Can the board pick and choose which By-Laws it complies with (and which ones it ignores)? Can the HOA President just make decisions and announce them, as if the board had decided? How does the Board "decide" anything?  Here's how it should happen. A board member makes a Motion. Another board member seconds the Motion. After discussion (and there should be discussion), then the board members vote. And the Motion and vote get recorded in the Minutes. How many months has it been since "the board" decided anything, even just approving the Minutes of the past month's board meeting? While the Minutes state that the board approved the Minutes of a past meeting, the fact is that "the board" did not approve the Minutes. Justin merely stated that "The Minutes are approved as mai...