Barony Place I/Barony Place II

Do you know that there is a committee of the HOA called the "Summit Assets" Committee? Sounds pretty important to me... From the HOA's website is this description of that committee:   " Mission: This Sub-committee, is responsible for establishing a balanced annual budget, and presenting it to The Summit Community Association, Inc. Board of Directors for approval. The budgeting process considers input from all levels and includes members from the general community. OPEN, Chair " If the Chair's position is "open" and there are no members, then how is this Committee functioning? Answer: it's not. Of what is it a Sub-committee? A likely position for it would be under the Finance Committee. Who should chair it? Not a board member; I can assure you of that. Perhaps a Finance Committee member? Note that the Sub-committee is to report to the Board , not to the Finance Committee or the Treasurer. Who are the "members from the general ...

At the March 1, 2022 board meeting a question was asked about whether board meetings are open to homeowners. You'll be surprised at the answer. Look at what the Minutes have to say about that. Near the end of the first part of the Minutes, the following information appears under "New Business". " "It was questioned whether homeowners are allowed at board meetings. It was stated board meetings are for board and voting members and it was decided that meetings will remain closed to homeowners unless invited. It was suggested that this should be corrected in The Scoop." Two thousand four hundred fifty (2450) homeowners should rise up and with one voice scream, "NO WAY". First of all, meetings have never been closed to homeowners. So what's up with "will remain closed"? The HOA is not a secret club. It is a South Carolina non-profit corporation.  When I first moved into The Summit (Janaury 2018), I began attending Safety Committee meeting...

What is the correct 2022 HOA revenue from Current Assessments (dues)? According to the Approved 2022 Budget, Current Assessments are $1,262,250. At $510/home, that means there are 2475 homes in The Summit. But wait! On April 5, 2022, Treasurer Vernell Butler informed the Board and audience that there are 2800 homes in The Summit. If there are, shouldn't revenues (at $510/year) be $1,428,000? $1,428,000 - $1,262,250 = $165,750 At $510/home, are 325 homes missing from the rolls of the HOA? There must be a logical explanation for the error. But why didn't anyone ask? As Treasurer, why wasn't Vernell the first to notice the discrepany?  $165,750 isn't chump-change. It is 13% of the Budget. Will the HOA embark upon a search for the 325 homes that are missing from the inventory of homes, so that they can be properly assessed and the dues collected from them? Vernell has told me how proud he is of his Ph.D. (his "doctoral", as he calls it) and his DBA. In fact, he em...

The HOA's Finance Committee was scheduled to meet at 6:30PM today. Did it? Finance Committee members are, according to the HOA website,  Vernell Butler, Treasurer, Chair* Paul Hill, Co-Chair* Michael Bryant Auby Dellinger Mary Ann Game Billie Jones Jeff Lummel Norm Stewart On April 10th I went through the board-approved 2022 Budget with a fine-tooth comb and identified numerous errors. I offered to attend tonight's Finance Committee meeting, and Vernell rejected my invitation. Why would he, the Treasurer of the HOA, not want to know about errors in the budget? The biggest error involves 18.3% of the budget - $230,570. That's the amount listed under Salaries. The problem? The HOA has NO EMPLOYEES. How can you have Salaries in the budget when there are no employees? Apparently, it has been that way for years. * At the December 2021 board meeting, President Justin Martin appointed Vernell Butler and Paul Hill as Co-Chairs of the Finance Committee. Board Minutes since then do n...

The Summit HOA (Summit Community Association) has 2,480 homes, and these are in 28 separate Neighborhoods.  Do you realize that you, as a homeowner, do not elect the people on your HOA's Board of Directors? You don't. They are elected by 28 Voting Members - one from each Neighborhood. Who are these Voting Members? They are, like you, homeowners. A homeowner is definted in the CC&Rs as a person whose name is on the Deed. How are they chosen? Every year each Neighborhood is to have a Neighborhood Meeting. At that Meeting a Neighborhood Committee of three homeowners is elected. One of the three (the senior person, although "senior" is not defined) becomes the Voting Member, and the other two on the Committee are Alternate Voting Members. A Voting Member is also known as a Neighborhood Representative.  The person who is the Voting Member holds that office for a year. It is not a lifetime "job". Voting Members have numerous responsibilites and duties. One of ...

When a new owner moves into your neighborhood, how many people go by to meet the family and welcome them to the neighborhood? Wouldn't it be nice if the HOA or the Neighborhood Representative (Voting Member) sent out a note or email to let you know who moved in? Occasionally, "Welcome Wagon" gets mentioned in the Minutes of a board meeting. How does that work? Does the office mail out a package to the new family? What's in it? Advertising? Would it be more welcoming if the Voting Member (or an Alternate or a neighborhood welcoming committee) delivered it in person and actually said, "Welcome to the neighborhood"? Would a new owner even have any idea how the HOA functions and who the Voting Member (Neighborhood Representative) is or what that person does (or should or could do)? Is there some confusion about what the "Neighborhood Committee" of the Board is and how it is different from the Neighborhood Committee of each of the 28 separate neighborho...

Who is in charge of keeping a Neighborhood in The Summit looking presentable? At the entrance to Barony Place II, there used to be a beautiful, tall, mature tree right in front of that wall. The tree was probably planted 20 years ago. A crack developed in the wall, perhaps from a tree root. Rather than repairing the wall and cutting the offending root, the entire tree was removed. And this is how it looks now. Pretty nasty, eh? This is an entrance to a neighborhood of 46 homes, worth perhaps a total of $10,000,000 and representing an income of $25,300/year in dues to the HOA, and that's the best it can do? Notice also the ugly "parkway" between the street and the sidewalk. Dirt, roots, no grass. Apparently no irrigation. And a little farther down the wall there is a high need for pressure-washing. That was supposed to be done in 2021. It wasn't. Remember the ice storm that came through? This island, in front of 32 Barony Place Circle, used to be atractive. There were ...

Does anyone ever look at the financial statements of the HOA?  They are published every month, as part of the Minutes for board meetings. Look at the financials attached to the April 5, 2022 board meeting Minutes Without looking any further than the interest rates being earned on Reserves of the HOA, why isn't everybody on the phone with the office, rattling their cage about the huge variation in interest rates and lack of information? CIT, $100,000.55, operating MMA account, earning 0% interest CIT, $2,079.11, earning 0.71% BB&T, $191,024.01, earning 0.01% First Community Bank, $161,697.00, earning 0.55% Southern First, $109,069.52, 12-mo. CD, no interest rate shown, no maturity date shown Southern First, $107,670.23, 3-yr. CD, no interest rate shown, no maturity date shown NB, $110,102.45, 60-mo. CD,  no interest rate shown, no maturity date shown NB, $105,399.22, 13-mo. CD, maturing 11/22, 0.50% Southern Carolina Federal Credit Union, $55.00  Southern Carolina Fede...

The Minutes of the April 5, 2022 contain this line as part of the Finance Committee's Report. "Vernell has contacted Richland County about adding a traffic signal on Summit Parkway." Why is that part of the Finance Committee's report? Did the Finance Committee discuss that and approve it, before Vernell contacted the County? Did he contact the County in his official capacity as Finance Committee Chair (co-chair?) or as Treasurer? Or simply as one of 2,480 (not 2,800, as he said in March) homeowners in The Summit Adding a traffic light ought to be part of the Safety Committee's jurisdiction. It might be part of Finance secondarily, if the HOA would have to pay for it, IF the County ever approved it. But, according to the County, Vernell asked for two traffic lights and speed humps on Summit Parkway. Did he tell the Board that? If he did, why isn't that in the Minutes? Richland County Roads & Drainage Division is not going to install traffic lights or speed...

When you look at the 2022 approved Budget for The Summit HOA, you will know that the runaway inflation affecting the rest of the country is  NOT expected to apply to the expenses of The Summit. That's good to know. Right? Maybe the directors could call The White House and provide some advice. Inflation in the U.S. is somewhere around 8% now, and an inflationary rate was not unknown during the planning time of the Budget last fall and all the way up to March 1, 2022, when the Treasurer of the HOA finally submitted the Budget to the Board of Directors for approval. The Minutes of the March 1, 2022 Board Meeting reveal that the Treasurer, Vernell Butler, informed the Board that the budget increased by approximately $3,500. That's pretty good for a budget with total expenses of $1,317,550 in 2021. That's rock-solid management by a Board that has its pencils sharpened and fresh batteries in its calculator. Right? That increase is only 0.266%; that's ¼ of 1%.  But is there mo...

In the February 2022 Minutes for the February 1, 2022 board meeting is this statement within the Finance Committee's report: "Vernell Butler reported that the committee is seeking quotes from CPAs to conduct the tax preparation and audit for the Association." An accountant for the Association and an Auditor should be different CPAs. The accountant-CPA guides the HOA manager in properly preparing financial reports to the Board and prepares the information return to the IRS. The accountant gives routine advice and should inform the board if something is not being done clearly and correctly. The Auditor reports directly to the Board, not to the management company. The Auditor tells the board if the accounting is not being done correctly. The 2020 Audit should not have been a "clean" audit; it should have been "qualified". The Auditor should have pointed out material misstatements  in the financials and could (should?) have recommended changes. 'Last y...

Last week-end I went through the HOA's 2020 Approved Budget with a fine-tooth comb. And what to my wondering eyes should appear? Multiple reasons that thE 2022 Budget never should have been approved. On March 1, 2022 Treasurer Vernell Butler presented the Budget to the Board of Directors and made a motion that it be approved. Director Mary Ann Game seconded his motion, and the motion was approved unanimously. Presumably, Vernell distributed the Budget to all board members and Finance Committee members before he made his motion. How many of the board members examined the budget before the board meeting? How many examined it carefully? How many understood what they were looking at? I found significant errors in the Budget. So I emailed Vernell and asked to attend the next meeting of the Finance Committee. I suggested they would want to know about the errors and prepare a recommendation to the board to amend the approved Budget. Vernell's answer? " the answer to your request ...

 A recent count of the number of homes in The Summit puts the number at 2,480. This would include the approximately 80 new homes in the Lakes at Barony Place and the four new houses on Rolling Knoll Drive. Now, here is the BIG question. Why would the Treasurer of the HOA, Vernell Butler, state at the April 5, 2022, Board meeting that there are 2,800 homes in The Summit. As Treasurer, shouldn't he know the exact number? After all, the top line of the budget includes the $1,000,000+ in dues collected every year. The correct number of homes ought to roll right off his lips. Is he ignorant of the correct number? What would be his reason, as Treasurer of the HOA, for inflating the number by more than 10%? If he doesn't know the correct number, should he be Treasurer?  And why didn't he answer the question about what the Operating Accounts were? Why did he defer to the HOA Manager to explain them? And wasn't it Vernell who said the Operating Accounts were for small expenditu...

 Do you want more traffic lights on Summit Parkway? If you attended last night's Zoom meeting of the HOA board of directors, you heard Vernell Butler say he had contacted the County about new traffic lights. Why would he do that? To slow down speeders and "people flying through hitting children in crosswalks." First of all, traffic lights don't slow down speeders. Secondly, has there been even one child hit in a crosswalk on Summit Parkway, struck by someone "flying through"? And why is Vernell sticking his nose into the speeding problem on Summit Parkway? The HOA's Safety Committee has been addressing that issue for four years, and Vernell isn't even on the Safety Committee.  The proper procedure would be for the Safety Committee to look into whether more traffic lights are needed. If it concludes there is a benefit, then the Safety Committee should bring it up to the board and request authority to contact Richland County Roads & Drainage Divisi...

Tonight's HOA Board meeting was a MESS. The board leadership (that would be Justin Martin, the President) does not have a clue how to run a Zoom meeting. It is the president's job to run the meeting, not to sit back and watch it run off the rails. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to run a Zoom meeting. It does require organizational skills and decision-making skills.  I'm not going to give them the solutions to everything that was wrong. I'll sell it to them, but that Board would not buy a Lottery ticket from me, if I told them it was worth $1,000,000. Justin let too many people just ramble on and on. Many of them should have been re-directed to committees; e.g., the people who thought the HOA ought to create shelters for kids at school bus stops. That should have gotten ONE MINUTE of Board time; not 8-10 minutes. Vernell Butler had some classic things to say about being a steward and general, worthless words about the condition of finances ("in good shape...

The main phone number for the Summit HOA is STILL not working. How long ago did that number stop working? December??? The main number is 803.865.0609. Call it. You'll get the disconnect message. At tonight's HOA Board meeting Justin ran down AT&T. Too bad that AT&T didn't have an executive listening in. Justin laid off the blame for the phone line problem on AT&T, but that's not how I heard it several weeks ago. I heard that there was a third-party provider involved with phone service. As I heard the story, when the office tried to switch providers to save money, that's when the problems arose. Somehow, the main phone number had to get back to AT&T, and now it will be ported over (transferred to) Spectrum. I also heard somebody is going to be on the hook for $1,000, but that didn't get mentioned tonight.  The office is operating on a temporary number of 803.409.9976

A lengthy thread titled "Summit HOA" was deleted from the NextDoor app sometime earlier today. There were probably 100 comments, including a few snarky ones from Vernell Butler, Board Member and Treasurer for the Summit's HOA. One comment about the March 1st board decision (without vote) to prohibit Homeowners from attending board meetings, except by invitation, from Vernell was posted at 7:28am today began with "our meetings are closed to gus". They are not only closed to me; they are closed to ALL residents and, now, to ALL Homeowners, except by invitation. Are board meetings now private parties? Vernell also posted at 7:32am today: "Gus Philpott get your doctoral like me then talk to me about reading comprehension. Pick an argument you can win. I am not ..." His message was probably continued on NextDoor, but the thread has been deleted. At about 8:38am today Vernell posted: " Greg and Rhonda Richards to be clear sir, I have given said individu...