October 11, 2022

Minutes of the Hickory Farms HOA Board held on 11 October 2022

Location: Zoom

In Attendance

Jim B-President

Telah Jackson- Acting Vice President

Tad Weed- Associate Treasurer

Ken Sorg- Treasurer

Ben Noviello-Secretary

Carlie Mensen –Member at large

Melissa Stark- Member at large

Pam Barrett– ACC

Meeting was called to order at 7:00

Motion to approve minutes was made by Telah and seconded by Melissa; motion passed.

Old Business

Jim explained that a possible Executive Session meeting will be November 9th for possible ACC violations as technically separate from the regular board meeting. There was a discussion of the distinction between an executive session and a regular board meeting.

Homeowner Chenggui Chu addressed the board to express his frustration with the current service provided by American trash company. This frustration was shared by many on the board, and there was a discussion of possible approaches for dealing with the situation. These included the following

Leveraging ongoing discussions regarding this topic at the Braddock District meeting.

Organizing affected homeowners in the development to present a unified demand for better service. Mr. Chu offered to help draft a survey related to this and provide it to the board.

Look into switching to the county trash service, which would require approval of 75% of the homeowners, assuming such service was even available.

Individually seeking to leverage competition with Republic/AAA trash company .

Carlie reported on ongoing efforts to use Survey Monkey to secure the 25% proxy participation (50 households) needed to get a quorum for the annual homeowners meeting scheduled for 18 October

Carlie explained and demonstrated the random number based survey monkey proxy system.

Jim explained that we need 50 homes or 25% of the community to get a quorum.

Ben reported on using Microsoft Teams, perhaps as part of Microsoft365 as an alternative to Slack and Zoom. There was a discussion of the various trade-offs.

Motion to investigate this more was made by Carlie and seconded by Telia; motion passed.

Jim described looking at existing Purple Martin houses. He reported favorably, but was concerned that if such houses were located in the commons areas it should be coordinated with neighbors.

Ben described existing SOW for repairing the blacktop path in the lower commons area

Melissa mentioned we should consider permeable blacktop as an alternative

Telah presented ongoing efforts to get VDOT to repave the development.

Treasurer Report

Ken reported that the 2020 and 2021 taxes have been filed, and presented various concerns by homeowners regarding the increase in HOA dues. Ken also reported that annual web service fees are coming due. The options of either a 9 year renewal for $207.72 or a 5 year renewal for $118.10 were presented.

Motion to choose the 5 year option was made by Carlie and seconded by Telah motion passed.

ACC Report

Pam presented updates to what she published in the newsletter. She indicated that there were 35 total actions for the year through 3 October.

Upper Commons Area Report

Melissa reported plans to have leaf removal completed before the end of December. She also reported that there was a surplus of approximately $6000 in the maintenance budget because aeration and seeding of the lower area was deemed unnecessary.

Motion to use $2,208 of this surplus to aerate and seed the upper area was made by Melissa and seconded by Jim; motion passed.

New Business

Planning for Annual Meeting

There was a discussion of anticipated agenda and presentation templates for the Annual meeting.

Meeting was adjourned at 9:15