Barony Place I/Barony Place II

Who is responsible for paying the dues (Assessment or regime fees) to the HOA? At a recent HOA board meeting, there was an incomplete discussion of the huge amount of unpaid dues owed to the HOA. In a previous meeting where discussion had included the word "foreclosure", one board member said that the HOA is not in the business of putting people out of their homes. In other words, if a person doesn't pay his dues, don't foreclose on his house. My response? The HOA is a non-profit corporation. IT IS NOT A CHARITY.  If an Owner does not pay his dues and does not make a satisfactory arrangement of a payment plan (and comply with it!), then Foreclose. At the recent meeting board directors' comments included that some of the debtors are dead; some have sold; some can't be found. Those remarks caused me to think that board members believe the unpaid dues are a personal, unsecured debt of the owner. My reading of the CC&Rs (Art. X, Section 2) is that the dues are...

The following email was sent to the HOA's board of directors on April 26, 2024, with a request that the topic be discussed at the May 7th board meeting. After no response from the office to my emails of April 4, April 11, and April 17, I went to the office this morning to inspect the Minutes of the November 2023 Annual Meeting of Voting Members. I learned  there are no Minutes of that meeting . Or of past meetings of the Voting Members. Teresa told me that they are on the website. She was referring to the Board Minutes for November 2023, but those are not the Minutes of the Annual Meeting of Voting Members. The Annual Meeting of Voting Members is separate and distinct from the meeting of the HOA's board. It is held  before  the board meeting. The By-Laws call for the Annual Meeting of the Voting Members to be run by the President (that would have been Justin), not by the Chairman of the Nominating Committee. Minutes are to be recorded by the Secretary (that would have bee...

At the April 27th Barony Place Neighborhood Meeting, Barony Place I resident Billie Jones was thanked for serving as the Voting Member for several years.  She is a former President of the HOA, and she began serving as Voting Member for Barony Place in January 2020, succeeding Doris Covert. Tracy Manderino presented Billie with a beautiful bouquet of flowers and thanked Billie for serving. The Barony Place Neighborhood consists of the 78 homes in Barony Place I and Barony Place II. 

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...

What does a Voting Member do? Better yet, what is a Voting Member supposed to do ? On August 7, 2020 George Reynolds, who was then a Director and Treasurer of the HOA, published a list of duties of the Voting Member of the Summit's HOA. This list can be found on the HOA's website. You can see it by clicking here or, if you are properly cautious about clicking on links, you can find it on the website. Go to www.summithomeowners.com   On the homepage, click on Neighborhood News. Then scroll down until you come to                                              Voting Members/Alternates                                          Memo concerning Voting                                   ...

  This fireplug is on Rolling Knoll Drive in front of Brookland Baptist Church Northeast. From the angle of it, it seems that Columbia Fire Department has abandoned it. The Church has tried to get the F.D. to straighten it up, and I contacted the F.D. a couple of times.  What would happen if we started "refreshing" (painting) the fireplugs throughout the Summit? Think any permission is needed? Edited 4/24/24 Fireplugs should not be painted by private parties. If the fireplug in your neighborhood needs re-painting, send an email to ombudsman@richlandcountysc.gov and request that it be forwarded to the Columbia Fire Dept. Ask CPD to re-paint it. CPD will test the fireplug for pressure and paint it with its approved color scheme.

Do you have a question for the HOA? Do you know there is a button on the HOA website's homepage, so that you can ask that question? Go to www.summithomeowners.com Scroll down until you come to ASK A QUESTION. Click on that.  What? No form? It's pretty hard to ask your question there, isn't it? In fact, it is impossible! Back in January I reported that someone had changed the page to which that button connects. It used to land on a webform, where you could ask your question. I was told that the board was busy with other things. So nothing has happened in January, February, March, or April. All it takes is an email to the Property Manager with "Fix it." The office staff should know how to do it. It doesn't involve paying big bucks to a website designer to make that simple fix. Anyone who can type, can fix it. It's likely that few homeowners ever visit the HOA's website. It is stagnant, dull and boring.  It could be a great means of communication with 2,4...

The date for the Barony Place Neighborhood Meeting has been changed. The new date is Saturday, April 27, 3:00PM.  A block party for Barony Place I and Barony Place II will be held in the cul-de-sac adjacent to 44 Barony Place Circle. It is important that at least 26 homeowners attend in-person or by proxy, so that a three-member Neighborhood Committee can be elected. The Committee will then meet and select one of the three to be the Voting Member for the next 12 months. The other two members will be Alternates. If you will not attend, please give your written proxy to a homeowner who will attend. If your email address is on the Neighborhood Directory, more information about use of a proxy will be sent to you. I am checking with the office to find out if CAMS has a form (proxy) that can be used.

Does it matter whether the Summit's HOA has a legitimate Board of Directors? If it does, to whom does it matter? Apparently, not to the board. To the Members of the Association? That's you, the homeowners. Consider these points: The HOA must have filed its tax return. The Minutes of the April 2nd board meeting report that "Becca Brendle has completed the taxes". The HOA Treasurer did not inform the board or the audience how much the taxes were for 2023. Who signed the tax returns? Did the Treasurer of the HOA sign them? Did the President sign them? Did the accountant sign them? If the accountant signed it, who authorized her to do so? I didn't hear any board member make a motion for a resolution to authorize someone to sign and file the tax returns. What if the signing person didn't have the legal authority to sign the returns or file? These "small, picky details" seem to escape the attention of the board and its professional HOA management employees...

The damaged wall at Summit Parkway and Summit Ridge Drive is finally being demolished. A three-man crew was there today. As I drove by, one man was removing bricks, one was standing in a truck bed catching the bricks, and a third man was "supervising".  I wondered whether the deal with the demolition company was for the HOA to keep the bricks or if the demo company gets the bricks. That was never discussed at the board meeting. Hopefully, the HOA just bought their labor and will store the used bricks for the day when another wall in The Summit is damaged. The wall was hit in October. An efficient HOA management company would have had this resolved within a month. Here we are, six months after the crash, and the restoration work is only beginning. After the wall and the concrete pads are removed, landscaping will make the corner beautiful again. Don't we hope...

  Here's a who-done-it for you. Late yesterday someone dumped bags of what looks like household trash in the HOA's trash can on Timber Crest Drive, between Summit Parkway and Barony Place Drive. Now the HOA (that's You) bears the cost of removing it. I suggested to the office that they go through the trash and look for an address on an envelope, then call that person and tell him to come and get his trash. Better yet, just return it to his front door. If you saw someone putting it there, let the office know.

  Photo 4/2/2024 If you stood across the street from 204 Barony Place Drive in The Lakes at Barony Place, you'd see this fence. What's wrong with it? Aside from the fact that it's a nice wooden fence, there is only one thing wrong with it. That bare plot of ground is owned by the HOA. Notice the poor condition of the grass and the lack of landscaping and upkeep? It is Parcel R23107-10-10, a/k/a 200 Barony Place. The HOA became the owner of it in October 2018. However, the photo shows only the east end of the parcel - just a small portion of an irregularly-shaped parcel that extends westward between the backs of houses on Barony Place Drive and Lakemont Drive. Behind the fence is the rest of Parcel R23107-10-10 , a large parcel of rough ground and wild grass. For the HOA, it is "out-of-sight, out-of-mind". The Developer was allowed to deed it to the HOA without improving it, to the ire of about 21 homeowners whose homes border the wild grass. So, again, what's ...

Minutes for two Board meetings are up for discussion here. The Minutes for the March 5, 2024 were distributed late, and the Board of Directors (BOD) did not approve them at the April 2nd meeting. They are posted on the HOA's website. They are better-written than the February Minutes, but they still leave a lot to be desired, from a professional preparation viewpoint. One important Motion was omitted from the March Minutes. The Ad Hoc Committee, chaired by Vicki McCarthy, was disbanded. A Motion was made to establish a permanent committee to keep the CC&Rs and By-Laws up-to-date. The HOA President objected strongly, and the Motion was withdrawn. The directors could have voted and over-ridden the President's objection, but they "played nice". It appears that, once again, work to update the Governing Documents will go down the drain. The Minutes of the April 5th BOD Meeting have not yet been published, so Members who did not attend that meeting have no idea what happ...

The Minutes of the March 5, 2024 Board Meeting were mailed to board members and voting members yesterday just before 1:00PM (5½ hours before the start of the April 4th board meeting). Why weren't they done soon after the March 5th meeting? Board members must not have had time to review them before the meeting (you know, pesky things like work schedules), because the Board did not vote on them. The Minutes were slightly better-written than the previous month, but not much.  The Minutes do not contain the name of the recording secretary, although they should. The nice women in the HOA office have had no training (by CAMS) to produce business-quality Minutes, so they are expected to do something without training. It is inexcusable that CAMS has not trained them to write Minutes. The HOA pays CAMS to provide an employee to write the Minutes. Month after month, the HOA tolerates poor-quality Minutes.  Members of the HOA can read them today on the HOA's website. Hover over RESIDENTS...

The Barony Place Neighborhood (Barony Place I and Barony Place II) will hold its Annual Neighborhood Meeting (ANM) on Saturday, April 20, 2024,  in conjunction with a block party planned for that same date. The time and location of the Annual Neighborhood Meeting will be announced by the organizers. I was informed of the Meeting at the board of directors meeting tonight. There are 78 homes in the Barony Place Neighborhood. In order to hold the Annual Neighborhood Meeting, at least one-third of the homes (26) must be represented in-person or by proxy. Watch for the official announcement or contact one of the Barony Place Alternates, Gail Luckey and Mary Evans . The ANM is extremely important. Barony Place needs a legitimate Voting Member, who represents you before the board of directors. In November 2024 the Voting Member will vote to elect directors of the HOA. If the HOA must vote on changes to the By-Laws or the CC&Rs or on other important business, it is the Voting Mem...

The Summit's HOA has a board of directors that is responsible for almost $2,000,000 in cash and an annual budget of almost $1,400,000. How is the board of directors elected? Not by you, the homeowners. Every November the Voting Members are supposed to hold an Annual Meeting, at which four (or three) directors are elected. The problem? There aren't any legitimate Voting Members. The Barony Place Neighborhood of 78 homes (Barony Place I and Barony Place II) does not have a legitimate Voting Member or legitimate Alternates. Why not? Because Barony Place has not had an Annual Neighborhood Meeting (ANM) in more than six years.  At the ANM you, the homeowners of Barony Place, are supposed to elect a three-member Neighborhood Committee. That Committee then selects one of its three members to be the Neighborhood Representative (also known as the Voting Member). The Voting Member serves for one year, until the next ANM. Previous Boards have allowed an unapproved scheme of "gettin...