Remington Post Boulder, CO

TO: REMINGTON COMMUNITY

Barney Moran

RE: MANAGEMENT OF REMINGTON POST

3/18/2009

Dear Remington Post Community Member,

Recently literature, petitions, and pre made Remington HOA board ballots have been mailed and posted in halls for members of our community, and statements made on an unofficial Remington Google group.

I write this letter to our community concerning my personal take on the status of Management at Remington, and to provide important facts missing from these statements being circulated. This is my personal letter as an owner at Remington Post, and not a board member.

First, I am happy to report that in these economic times, Remington Post continues to be one of the most capitalized HOA in the State of Colorado. Remington has $0 debt, and is thousands of dollars above our minimum required reserves of $250,000. This did not happen overnight. Remington’s status as debt free and prepared to fund emergencies is a direct result of a decades ago decision to have management of Remington ON SITE.

What the years have proved is our on site management brings several advantages over an off site HOA solution:

1) Arrears are lower than other HOA’s, as we see and communicate with owners about late dues, establish what owners have decided to walk away from payment, and quick legal action to keep losses at a minimum. This on site function, in these times, cannot be overstated. It is this essential eye on the ball, on site oversight of dues collection that has kept Remington Post not only solvent, but debt free with 100% reserves as required by our bylaws.

2) Small Problems remain small. On site staff attends to repairs and maintenance in real time, not over weeks as off site management often does.

3) Trust. It is no small thing to have staff remain on the job for years, the benefits this conveys to our community need to be appreciated. For the years we have employed our current on site staff, there has been no theft, embezzlement, missing funds, or loss of private information. This is a hard to value component, but we as a united board would say it is priceless.

4) People you can talk to. Visit any other community in Boulder and see if there are people on site who work for the community and you cant talk to, immediately, the day you need to. Then imagine Remington Post without the management there every day for you to visit and ask questions.

Despite our history and position, there is always room for improvement, no one, and no structure, is perfect. To this end, the Board has done historical market comparisons of what Remington pays for its on site solution vs. what existing management companies will charge for providing roughly the same services. The Board does this informally about every 3 years. We just completed a market comparison last year. Again, the Board decided the benefits of our on-site solution outweigh the off-site management offerings at this time.

Regarding the literature, both hard copy, on the web, and heard verbally in our community, I would like to address, my personal view on what I’ve read and heard.

ONLINE COMMENTS
On an unofficial Remington Google group, I am deeply disturbed to read the administrator of the comments censors some community members for what is termed “Slander”, yet allows very public slander of our on site staff. To differentiate staff from community with different treatment of slander, is both demeaning and de-humanizing, and attacks both the individuals and the very on-site solution I am so proud of fostering here at Remington.

I also note a particular slander against our Manager, Carol Klein, by a member who flooded both their own and surrounding units due to their interior plumbing defect, and Carol stood up to them and made sure our community did not pay for this flooding. This is exactly the kind of manager I want here. To run a public website allowing this slandering of Carol (or any Remington Manager) for having the backbone to defend the costs we all share in this community is counter productive to the interest of our shared community. The Manager’s job is also to make sure individual owner’s defective interior maintenance is not borne by our shared community. Have no doubt this makes the Manager a target of criticism by a small minority of owners/renters who would like nothing else then the community pay for their unit’s maintenance. The financial impact of allowing this would bankrupt Remington.

MOTIVATION OF “LETTER FROM THREE OWNERS”

I read as well as everyone at Remington the letter from three ‘owners’ and wish to provide facts left out of this letter.

1) One of the signers does not legally own a unit at Remington Post, and this was not discovered until after said signer actually took a position on the board. The Board has made sure, moving forward, no individual such as this co signer of the letter, will be allowed on the Remington Board to cast votes, etc.
2) Another of the three signers of this letter sent a follow up email to selected Board Members soliciting the job of Manager of Remington, including outlining the fee to perform these services. I am deeply concerned about this signer’s motivation to attack the current on site solution while seeking to obtain employment by supplanting it was not disclosed in the letter, and question the motivation of the signer.

3) All three signers quit the board, and then in the letter request ‘others’ run for the board. Volunteering for the Remington Post board is often a thankless, payless, hard, time consuming job. Its very easy to criticize, but its hard work attending the meeting, finding common ground, and making decisions that financially impact us all.

4) I am deeply concerned about the use of public forums to attack staff. One of the letter signers posted a description of one of our staff’s jobs publicly on Craigslist, specifically mentioning the job position as if it were available to be filled, specifically naming the position at Remington Post. This staff member got calls from people familiar with the staffer and/or the position, and the callers wanted to know from this staff member if this staff member had been fired. The Board immediately passed a resolution forbidding the public use of on line forums for this type of attack on people in our Remington community, but this did not undo the damage caused to our staff member, and I both apologized to the staff member and advised the posting person never, ever to conduct business concerning Remington Post publicly this way again.

5) These actions, taken by these letter signers, indicate the style of Management they have attempted to bring and would bring to our community. These actions speak for themselves. In a community as large as ours, there will always be differences of opinion, and personal requests for special treatment. The task of the management is to navigate both the people and personalities in a way that both value the individuals of Remington Post with the right of the community as a whole.

If anything productive comes from these attacks on Remington, I hope its more community involvement. I welcome anyone who attends Board meetings, they are open, and the more input the better. I am extremely proud of the status of Remington at this time, but agree your voice would help, anytime YOU have the time.

Sincerely,

Barney Moran
Owner, Remington Post

Remington Post Boulder, CO

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Management of Remington Post

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