Management Contract Bids - how transparent?

When will the Board decide on the management contract for 2024?

A Request for Proposals (RFP) should have been sent to major HOA management companies earlier in the summer. And bids should have started to come in. Have they?

At the August 8th board meeting a Voting Member asked a question in the public comment period near the end of the meeting. He asked about the integrity of the bidding process, and he asked specifically whether the bids were kept sealed.

The Minutes of the August 8th meeting are incorrect. They read, in part, "Homeowner stated that the Finance Committee should receive vendor bids in a sealed envelope."

The Minutes should state "Voting Member inquired about the integrity of the bidding process and asked if bids were kept in sealed envelopes."

In other words, all the bids should be opened at a meeting called for the purpose of opening the bids. No one (President, Treasurer, CAMS or anyone else) should see the bids before they are opened in a controlled environment. 

Who wrote the RFP? Who was designated to receive the bids? Surely, bids would not go back to CAMS. CAMS will be one of the bidders!

Has any of the bids been opened? Has the bid-opening meeting been held? Have all the directors and the finance committee seen all the bids?

Has the integrity of the bidding process been maintained?

Two years ago Justin remarked that no management company , other than CAMS, would bid on the Summit's HOA services. The reason, he said, was that the others would not do business the way that the Summit wanted.

I immediately wondered just how the Summit's Board wanted things done. Was it the classifying CAMS office employee expenses as Salaries, when the HOA had no employees? Was it something else?

How competitive were the bids this year, if the bids have been opened?

The management contract for 2023 was worth over $500,000 to CAMS. That's over one-third of the revenues of the HOA. Surely, this HOA could be efficiently run for less than that!

The Board should discuss the bids at the October 3rd board meeting, and that meeting should be open to Homeowners. 

If the board closes the meeting and prohibits homeowners/Members from attending or hides in a Zoom meeting, it's time for the Voting Members to give them the boot.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Annual Meeting, Barony Place Neighborhood - continued to 5/4/2024

Barony Place Neighborhood (Barony Place I and Barony Place II attempted to hold a Neighborhood Meeting this afternoon. Of the 78 homes, seventeen (17) homes were represented, and that was not sufficient to meet the quorum requirement of 26. The meeting was continued to Saturday, May 4, 2024, 1:00PM, at 44 Barony Place Circle. An effort will be made to have at least 26 homes represented in-person or by proxy. Three homeowners have volunteered to be on the Neighborhood Committee: Tracy Manderino (Barony Place II), Della Glynn (Barony Place II) and Gwen Hayes (Barony Place I). If a quorum is present on May 4th, those present, including by proxy, will elect the Neighborhood Committee. Once the Committee has been elected, it will select one of its three committee members to be the Voting Member for the next 12 months. The other two members will be Alternates. A new announcement will be distributed to your newspaper box, along with a proxy. If you will not attend Saturday's meeting, plea
Read more

Open Letter to Barony Place "Voting Member"

An open letter to the "Voting Member" of Barony Place Neighborhood. Good morning, Billie, If you and/or an Alternate attended last night's board of directors meeting, will you please send out a recap of the meeting to Ann Stirlen and me (and to all the homeowners and residents in Barony Place)? About a dozen homeowners from throughout The Summit showed up for the board meeting  at the church  last night, only to learn from one person that it had been switched to Zoom, which allowed the board to meet in secret. Many of them had not received the email from the office that the board was (illegitimately) closing the meeting to homeowners. There are only about 1,800 (73%) email addresses of the 2,480 Members in the website database. I attempted to join the meeting on Zoom, as I am Attorney-in-Fact for Ann Stirlen, but I was not admitted to the meeting. The HOA's attorney has quoted a section in the By-Laws that she believes allows the Board to close the meetings. That spec
Read more

Special Assessment Possible?

How would you feel about a $3,000 Special Assessment levied by the HOA against you and every other HOA Member (homeowner)? Article X, Section 4 in the CC&Rs allows this. Are you aware of that? Should the Board do everything possible to eliminate the possibility of such a Special Assessment? What is the Board doing that might just lead directly to such an Assessment? The HOA, by actions of the President (Justin Martin), the Treasurer (Vernell Butler, and the Safety Committee Chair (Dennis Rybicki) entered into a contact with the Richland County Sheriff's Department, effective February 1, 2023. They arranged for special patrols in the Summit at a cost of $48.00/hour. In the Special Duty Agreement is a Liability clause. It reads,  "The Requestor will hold harmless the Richland County Sheriff's Department from any and all claims or liabilities resulting from service and indemnify RCSD for any loss due to any injury of its employee unless there is a determination of neglige
Read more