Next Annual meeting April 26, 2014 at 1:00pm in the Grand Masters Ballroom.


 

 Annual Owner’s Meeting
Saturday April 20, 2013
1:00pm
 
 

Richard Glomski-President
Any more ballots? Raise your hand and we will collect them…brief time. Ok, then the voting is closed and we will announce the winner at the end of the meeting. Then we will have a meeting immediately following this meeting downstairs and we will elect officers of our board. Now I will make an introduction of the board.  To my left, I have Joe Jacobson who is the management team, Ann Bonneville-treasurer, Aaron Kabat-facilities, Vicky is our secretary…Vicky Anderson and to my right Andrew Farah-board member and we have Doug MacMillin who is leaving our board. He has done a great job for us but he isn’t going to be going for the position anymore so we will have a new position. We appreciate what he did for us and everybody give him a hand. (clapping)
(whispering) Oh yeah, I am Richard Glomski, I am your president. I forgot that. (laughter) Now I know who I am too.
I attended the wine and cheese reception last night and saw a lot of you there. Got to talk to some of you there.  It was a fun time. I think it was well worth it. We need some feedback on this. If you liked what you had, tell us. If you didn’t, tell us and we will try to change it. Andrew was your president previously and I agree with quite a bit of what he had done so I am not really going to reiterate on what he has done but I think we have come a long way to increase the value of our ownership and we will have a report from Joe later on regarding where we are at with our buildings. I think we have a ways to go yet. We have things that need to be done and we will continue to work on that. We have accomplished Silver Status and we’re heading toward Gold Crown. So we need to get our forms and fill them out and it will only add more value to your ownership. We are working on this very hard, so fill out your cards favorable and we will get there.
Our resale program fell a little short last year. There is hopefully some room for improvement in this. Joe is working on a new contract. So the resale program we are expecting to be better than last year. There are many reasons for this. One being the economy which I think is getting better and the other is the sales force which I think will be better too. Joe will also comment on this later.
I would like to call on Aaron to give his report on facilities.
Aaron Kabat
Thank you Richard. Good Afternoon everyone (people saying “good afternoon”). Good to see all of you. We have a good turn out today. First, I hope you all had a good time last night. We upped our efforts a little bit with our package this year, so like Richard said if you have any comments, we would enjoy hearing them. We do this all for you, so if there is anything we can add or change to make it better, please let us know. Today after our meeting we will be meeting in the Crystal Room and we will be having a light lunch for all of you. Most likely it will be around 3 O’clock, but if the meeting finishes early we will try to get the food out as soon as we can after that. Then starting tonight, we would like to start a new tradition for all of you and have entertainment. Tonight we will be having dueling pianos right back here in this room. Now if this is the first you are hearing this or you’re interested in more tickets, let myself or Vicky or Kris (who is taking the pictures in the back of the room), and we can get you set up with more tickets.
A few notes about some things going on here at the resort for the golf fans out there, we have new pricing for golf. Our pricing has been a little complicated in the past, so this year what we are going to do is give everyone $5.00 off of the posted rates. Now this doesn’t include any discounts or other coupons that might be due to other promotions that are happening. But $5.00 off any rate be it spring, summer or fall and that is also applied to any guest that you bring along with you as well. We are also going to start an owner’s golf time. This time will be 2 O’clock on Sundays and will run through the rest of the afternoon.  It will be $10.00 for 9 holes per person and $15.00 for 18 holes per person. Now again this starts at 2 O’clock every Sunday. You’re welcome to bring as many guests and friends as you would like to. Keep in mind if you need carts or rental clubs, we would appreciate a call ahead of time just to make sure we can accommodate your needs. If you have any further questions about that, feel free to call Josh, he’s our head golf professional down at the golf shop.
The Owner’s Golf Outing will be held again the last Saturday in September, which is September 28^th. I see a lot of familiar faces here that have played before, but we would love to have some new faces in that group as well. So if you are an avid golfer or a novice and just want to come out and have a good time, mark your calendar for September 28^th.  It will be $55.00 per person and that will include 18 holes of golf with cart, lunch, prizes for every participant and a ton of fun as you would imagine.
Another fun thing we are looking forward to - in November we are going to start an Owner’s Appreciation Weekend. So if you are available, mark your calendar for November 23^rd. There will be a lot of different things going on that we are developing at the moment, so check your calendars and keep your eyes peeled. We will be posting things to the Foxtales. We will be posting information to the website - and with that please note that all information concerning the Owner’s Association can be found at www.foxhillsresort.com and in the top right corner there is a logo that says Fox Hills Owner’s Association. If you click on that, most of our general information, information about events, special discounts and promotions specifically for you can all be found in that area.
Lastly, we are going to give away a free week today for the 2014 season. Everyone it seems have found the sheet of paper that have a blank for your name and e-mail address on your table. Is there anyone who doesn’t have one? In the back there, Kris, if you want to find something they can write on. We want to make sure that everyone has a chance here. If you don’t mind filling those out, Kris and John will come around during the course of the meeting and we will get you entered for that drawing and we will pick the winner at the end. So somebody is going to go home with an extra week. (Question from audience) “If you don’t have e-mail?…..” (Aaron)- Oh, if you don’t have e-mail, put down your phone number so we can contact you or you can leave it blank. (Joe Jacobson) or their street address because some of them aren’t current. (Aaron) or your street address. With that, thank you all for coming out this weekend.  We really hope you enjoy yourself. I f there is anything myself or my staff can help you with, please be sure to let us know. We really like having you guys around and this is a fun weekend for us. Enjoy yourselves and we look forward to lunch a little later today and dueling pianos tonight. (clapping)
(Richard) Thank you Aaron. He’s always got some good tips for us. I would like to tell you 6 items that I like to see happen in the next two years. One of them is to improve the value of the ownership. The second thing is try to get a resale program, if possible. We’re working on that. We’re working on it hard. The second thing is get Gold Crown status.  We want to try and accomplish this. Keep the grounds up, keep it looking nice, do repairs as required, maintain a low maintenance fees. I am not saying we aren’t going to have any increases down the road. It’s very possible with costs the way they are, but at this present time, there will be no increase in dues. We are doing fine. You’ll hear some of the reports later on so this is where we are at right now. We’d like to keep this in the future as close to zero as we can and we’ll work on this. We also want to start a reserve fund so when some unexpected things come up we can fall back on the reserve fund rather than assessing our members.  So these are the points we are trying to take care of and we are going to work at accomplishing this. The other is, I would like to have increase in winter activities that we have. So if anyone has any suggestions or whatever, please bring them up to us or let us know and we’ll consider them. If it is something we can do, we will do; but if we can’t well, then we won’t. But we will try to get some winter activities going here if we can so we can encourage people to come here in the off season more than when it’s just warm out and golf.
So now I would like to present Joe here. He’s got a couple of reports for us and Joe.
(Joe) Hello! (audience-hello, rumbling) (Joe)  I guess I got a little too close to that microphone (laughter). Ok, as Richard said the board went through their analysis that they put together their report and decided that there was no dues increase needed, which I think is a great thing.
If you go to the financial report on the page behind your agenda, I’m just going to go through highlights. I’m not going to be going through it line by line.  You can ask questions later or during the question and answer. If you go down to total revenue at the bottom of the first revenue section, you’ll notice the difference between 2012 and 2011. That’s basically because of the special assessment that was done in 2011. You see there was $406,000 one year and $50 in ‘12. If you go to wages, top line in expenses, you’ll see that wages are down again. Bad debts about the 6^th line down are down. That would be like when we have to take units back because they were behind on dues or went bankrupt and so forth. If you go to the top of the second page electric, gas. We talked about that last year. We were down a good amount of money. I think a lot of it has to do with improvements we made. The energy efficiency um, we did attribute some of it to that warm winter of ’11 and into the spring of ’12, but we all know we had a lot of air conditioning last summer and it was extremely hot and we had an awful cold fall so we’re down substantially again even though we haven’t had that mild winter. It’s got to be these improvements we’ve been making which the board and we, as the management company, with a lot of input from you the owners, we got a lot of good suggestions and it seems to be working well. If you get down to the very bottom you’ll see we’ve got a total operating loss, um, you got to remember in there is a $130,000 of depreciation which is not cash. That’s for taxes but it is not actual cash expense. Then you have our renovations expense was up $56,000 and, of course, we have the $454,000 less in revenue when we are comparing to the previous year for that special assessment. So, all in all, on a cash basis, we’re not negative when you take out the non-cash items, the bad debts and the depreciation.
If you go to the very back page on the cash budget and you go to the bottom you will see the $25,000 income loss that is at this time what the board is planning to do for 2013 to put in a reserve fund. We’re still working on that plan. I’ve been uh the management company has been asked by the board to put together a 5 year plan for improvements. Since the original 4 year plan we told you about 3 years ago to renovate the buildings is basically done, it will be completed within the next month or so. Now we are looking at a long term plan. What can go in reserves? What still can be done? We all know there’s things…there’s asphalt work that needs to be done, pool floor, things like that but we’re going to put together a long term plan to get together with your board and plan to not only take every step we can to do this under the current dues structure but to get the work done and put some reserves away so hopefully we won’t ever have to do a special assessment again.
When we get into what was mentioned about RCI and Gold Crown status we presently… is it 5 categories Vicky? 5 categories that we need for Gold Crown? (Vicky-yes) There’s more categories than 5 in our RCI report but there is only 5 that count - that they grade us on for that. We presently are above Gold Crown status in 3 of the 5 categories and right on Gold Crown status in 2. That period runs from September 1- August 31^st.  So as long as we can hold this out for the next 4- 5 months we will have Gold Crown status. We’re doing our darnedest to stay there. Silver Crown has been the best we’ve done since I have been affiliated here and we’re crushing that at this point. Hopefully we can keep it up there.
Richard talked about the resales and the sales in general. Two years ago we brought a company in called Compass Resort. They did a good job in their initial year. They sold between 60 and a 100 weeks…Vicky would have the total, and really we are looking to build on that this year. One of their principles of that company said he was just going to back off a little bit and he kind of retired - his partners is what he did and the sales part was his end of it. The guy they sent up to take his place really didn’t do the job. We went shopping to look for somebody else. They recommitted. They actually are going to be up here on Tuesday to start putting together their sales effort. They are working with Aaron and I to do more things like bring tours in like you saw in the past, referral parties that some of you have asked about- so watch your  Foxtales and the website for that. We’d really like to get this where not only can we sell my stuff to get that in the hands of owners but to sell some of your stuff.
As far as the facilities management, I don’t want to get too long winded, but we started 3 years ago. We told you we were going to go unit by unit and replace what needed to be replaced. If the carpet was still good or the cupboards were still good, we were gonna leave those and try to get through this whole facility. At this point, we will be through every building in the next few weeks except for Golf Villa 6 which really needs paint and carpeting. We did put some furniture in there, so in the fall when we do that one we will be totally finished. Now when we say totally finished, that means that there are places where we left the carpet when we started this 3 years ago that now may need carpet. After this summer there will be 3 more years of wear on it, so it’s a constant evaluation process. We’re not stopping. This fall and over the winter we will go back to those first units we did; and if there was carpet left that now needs it or the kitchen cupboards now need to be changed, we will continue to do that. But we will be able to do this at a pace that isn’t quite as frantic as it was the last 3 years when we tried to get through all 22 buildings. Originally it was a 4 year plan, but we are pretty much done in 3. We’re going to continue on this and then we are going to (since there won’t be as much going out in that) we are going to work on the reserve and other things around the buildings that need to be done. Improvements to the Rec Center building, improvements to the outside of the buildings, patio doors is one- we did not do any patio doors-they are all the original doors. We just didn’t feel it fit in the cross structure when we first did it, but some of that will be getting done now. So the first summer, if you remember, it was all RCI inbounds that got put in those new units. Unfortunately you owners did not get in them. Some of you may have gotten in them last year. If you come this year (not if you are here for Christmas) but by this summer, you should all get a unit that has been gone through, painted, new furniture, new art work, upgraded…like I said we didn’t change everything unless it needed it, but they should look a lot nicer. We’ve been getting a lot of good comments and our RCI inbounds certainly are confirming that with the scores we have presently have going on that Gold Crown status.
I don’t have much else, I think. I am sure you will have some questions when it comes to the question and answer time.
(whispering) Ok, Andy just said my wish list for the outside or it’s really your wish list because I talked to a lot of the owners. We had a comment last year that some people, several people, would like to see some different colors and that presents a little challenge because the roofs are all one color and the window trim but our decorator has come up with some colors. We are going to paint this summer and there’s a plan that maybe they will vary, we will have 2 or 3 or 4 different colors and every 4^th building is this color. So we are going to start that this summer with the buildings we paint. The outside of the Rec Center building I want to do something with that overhang it looks awful. I had a contractor in my office yesterday and I am hoping to have that done before you come back in the summer. Long term Richard and I have been working on the pool floor in the Rec Center. We tried to do it this past winter but by the time we got the bids it just wasn’t going to be done with this year’s schedule. If you were in there, you’d see the tile and lockers all got done last year. The pool building the main floor definitely needs some help. It needs to be redone, but it is a big project. At this point, it looks like we may need to take all the tile up which is not going to be a short project. We need to schedule it when there is the fewest number of people in here in the winter. Since it is going to be a big project and expensive, we are doing our homework on it. We’d like to only do it once. Number of years ago, before I was here, remember the tile that was out there, somebody sold a new product to the resort that was supposed to make that tile look like new and be non-skid. Well, all we did was take the finish off the tile and then we ended up with tile that was very slippery and the insurance company wanted us to do something so we got a painting contractor in that said he could get paint in that would definitely stick and have grit in it and that didn’t stick too well. So what we have is what we have. So Richard and I are working on a solution that not only is not slippery but looks much nicer and doesn’t cause an undo financial hardship. We want to do a really good job but we want to do the homework and do the best job we can for the best price we can for all of you. (away from the mic…does anybody have any other comments or things I should cover?) I will be around here after the meeting and I will be here for questions and answers. I’m not just looking for questions, if you have feedback or ideas. Some of our best ideas on how to fix things for energy consumption, some of those things have come from you people right here. It’s a big pool of people, a lot of good ideas, so feel free if you have any thoughts.
(Richard) Thank you, Joe. (clapping) One thing I failed before when I opened the meeting I didn’t establish the quorum, which we do have a quorum here; we do have a voting presence here so that is established. So we can shift into the question and answer period if the people have some questions step up to the mikes and state your name and who you would like to get the answer from.
(Barbara Kanera) When we could use the pool over by the hotel they had that nice cabana where there was shade. It was like an overhang. In the Rec center you go outside and you just bake in that sun, there’s no protection for children. Is it possible that an overhang could be built? Are you aware of what I am talking about?
(Richard) Ok, that’s a good idea. Thank you.
(Rosalie Klingbeil) I just have a concern that every time I am here, I would like to see a bigger clock in the pool area. When I am swimming without my glasses I can’t see much (laughter). And a bigger one inside and at least something outside so people can keep track of time and not get sunburned.
(Richard) Ok, thank you very much.
(Beverly Bitter) I was wondering if we do get to the Gold Crown status, does that mean that our point value would go up.
(Richard-prompted by Vicky) as of January 1^st those would go up, right.
(Tim Hanson) We have these huge water heaters in the units in the villas. Is there an inter tie between the units? It would save so much energy by being able to cross over and valving to…you don’t need to run those water heaters so much. Just something to look into.
(Richard) I think Joe’s got an answer for you.
(Joe) It depends on the building. Some have an individual unit for each unit in the building and some have, and that will be in my 5 year plan. We have not been replacing with conventional units. We have been putting tankless in and that is one of the reasons you are seeing the energy costs down. If you are out in the Golf Villas 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 have two big water heaters for the whole building and there is a circulating system in there, so they are sharing it. Most of the rest of them were built before anyone was too concerned about energy costs and there is actually a 100 gallon water heater in each one of those units, so we are heating 400 gallons of water per building. We have put in several of the tankless. I don’t know for sure, but I think it is well over 10. That is in the plan. There are 6 more out there to be put in before the season starts. That is a big area of concern. If you want to talk later, I can tell you what we are doing and if you have any thoughts on that, it would be great. (thanks)
(Richard) Thank you for your interest, it is truly appreciated.
(Charlie Ross) Have you ever thought about door bells? When people come to visit you, you have no way to know that they are there.
(Joe) We definitely have.  In fact, it was one of the things I wanted to do in the renovations and we hadn’t had comments on it forever and what I was told by some of the staff was that people all have cell phones now so it isn’t an issue. I will go back and look into wireless. Because they weren’t put in initially and it’s all dry walled, but I can’t believe in this day and age that there must be something wireless out there that we can do. Yours hasn’t been the only request lately, so I will definitely write that down.
(thank you)
(Jim Treadway) I have a question on exchanging with RCI, I think when you exchange into a week resort you can do it 2 years in advance, but if you do it to a points resort, it’s only nine months. (rumbling)
(Joe) Well I will defiantly ask the question because they require us to deposit your points two years out and we don’t have an option. We didn’t bring an RCI rep here this year because they don’t come here for  free, so we talked about it and there weren’t that many questions last year so we will definitely get an answer for you.
(Joe) ma’am you have a comment on that?
Yes, Anita Lytle, I just made a reservation two weeks ago and it’s two years for weeks and ten months for points. The exchange fee for points was $139 and the exchange fee for weeks was $209.
(Joe) Ok, I will ask them the question and they may have an answer but simply because we have to spacebank farther in advance for points than for weeks, so it seems strange to me that they wouldn’t  you owners if you points are in there already, why you wouldn’t get to book them. But I will ask the question.
(Richard) If we get an answer to that, we will try to get it on the website. Thank you.
(Rosalie Klingbeil) I just had another suggestion for the pool since you are messing up the floor, to possibly put a slide in there? For kids, it’s not going to be a waterpark but it’s something to keep them occupied maybe. Another question I had related to when we stayed here, this past winter, we no longer had the Golf Channel on the cable network and wondered what is being done with that or if you ever considered switching to Direct TV? I have a daughter in Madison and they changed their fraternity house to Direct TV from cable and saved a tremendous amount of money.
(Aaron) Absolutely, we are actually looking into that right now. The fact that the Golf Channel, Speed Channel and 3 other channels just vanished from us one day unbeknownst to us. Cable didn’t rely that to us very well. We actually had Charter here yesterday telling us what we need to make the switch from analog to digital and in that process we are looking into other companies as well.  With our layout here, because we are so expansive, it is a lot of cable to run and if we are going with satellite we would need several different dishes which increase the price quite a bit, but we are considering all those factors and we should have something within the next month or two. Thank you.
(Richard) yes, sir.
(Ray Ogea) I noticed on your event for next fall, that’s deer season.
(Aaron) unfortunately, that is the only date on our calendar that is open. In the future, we can be a little more flexible. But due to weddings and stuff that is the only spot open in 2013.
(Mike Martin) We own a 2-bedroom and we had an issue for a number of years and you talked to RCI, but it still isn’t resolved. A 2-bedroom has the ability to sleep 8, but when we transfer out,  RCI says we only have 6. When we ask RC,I they say well you only have a dinner serving for 6. We need to get this solved because it is hurting us when we trade.
(Joe) Thank you Mike. I thought we had that resolved. When I spoke to them and we have our decorator here, but that is why those two stools had to be at the counter. They have assured us that this qualifies. I will be calling our RCI rep next week and we did speak with them when they were here last year. They said they would take care of it. Shame on me for not following up on it. I will follow up on that. Thank you for reminding me.
Rosalie Klingbeil again, I just was wondering when you do these renovations, what do you do with all the stuff you get rid of? Do you trash it, sell it or recycle or donate it so somebody?
(Joe) all of the above. We sell what we can sell, because we try to get money to buy new stuff. We don’t get much money. I think we get $50 for the refrigerators and ranges. Some of the tables and chairs we sold. What we can’t sell ,we donate (muffled talk about who picks it up) . It’s a local charity that comes and picks it up and uses it for less fortunate people. The bedding all went to a church down in Chicago that makes quilts and things for less fortunate people which it would have cost a fortune to take it to the landfill. They brought a trailer up here and we put all the mattress in there and they came and hauled it away and it saved us money and they put it to good use.
(Rosalie Klingbeil) with relation to that - we used to have a recycling program here. Do you still do something like that?
(Vicky) On the bulletin boards in the hallways it will tell you to bag it up and put it outside at the end of the sidewalk and housekeeping will take it away. It can all be co-mingled.
(Rosalie) Could you put it in the check-in packets instead?
(Vicky) Sure. I think it is actually in there too (but people don’t look at them) but we will make sure it is there.
(Joe) I know in my area and here too, I think they call it single streaming where you can put it all together so you don’t see all the separate containers anymore. We will make sure it is in the check in packet.
(Janice Arendt) I have a question. I understand the importance of limiting the number of guests you can bring, but is there a way that if you own more than one week you could put a star or something so that if you own more than one week you can bring two guests? I know you can go to the hotel pool.
(Vicky) We can work something out for that.
(Richard) Talk to them at the time and they can probably work something out.
(Vicky) Janice come see me and I will take care of this for you.
(Janice) Also my sister Jean called and asked about better wireless. I know you are working on this but if you could get better wireless.
(Aaron) Yes, that kind of goes along with the cable. We’re doing a lot of testing right now and it will be good in one place and then because of firewalls you can’t get it 2 feet further. We are talking about increasing our bandwidth within the next two months and this should help also.
(Richard) Actually with the internet thing we are above the curve with a lot of things and we are leading this kind of. There will be some growing pains but it will work out. I think you have to be a little patient on that with us too.
(Joe) This past winter we didn’t have the issue, but this past spring break we didn’t think about all the young people out here and they are all on a laptop and playing games and it all kind of crashed it. We are also looking to not spend money when we don’t have to because the more modems you put out here, the more it costs because there is a fee for those, but we will probably beef it up now that we know during those peak times. We kind of got caught off guard because we know we need it during the busy time, but we didn’t think about the big presence of young people during spring break. Some of them have up to 3 or 4 devices with their phones and their games, I-pods and I-pads and every one of them is hooked up. I know when our two college kids come home, our internet starts to crawl because I have a 12 year old as well and they all have 3 devices that seem to be going all the time, it seems like. So we did learn from that and it is a work in progress but this coming season we will have a better handle on it.
(Richard) Sometimes even the pipeline the supplier has isn’t large enough to take care of this overrun. I know the service we have at our home is that way. I know around supper time it is slower than molasses in January. You wait until they are off of it and it is much better. So sometimes it is the pipeline and not necessarily our end.
(Aaron) And as we go through the process, please be sure to give us your feedback if it isn’t working. I know I have had some guests say “I don’t want to pester or bother you”, but it is really important we know where the black holes are so we can investigate it.
(Janice) We were here during spring break, so that explains it.
(Richard) OK, thank you.
(Ray Suennen(?)) In the  budget do you have depreciation expense in there?
(Richard) It’s not in the budget because the budget is based on cash. The budget is cash but the financials are based on accrual - if you understand the two of them.
(Ray) I understand. Another question regarding the bad debts. Can you identify how many weeks are not paying and what percent of the total unit weeks approximately?
(Joe) We can get a definite number, but Vicky’s estimate is about 5%. Total owner’s there are over 4800 and we are very actively pursuing them and we have been doing this for a number of years. That is why you see the bad debt down. I think you probably heard this over the years if you have been here, we started out with the easy ones. Now we are down to the people we can’t find, the people who have gone bankrupt or won’t give them back. We try to take the easy approach, and if you are destitute, we try to take the easy way and send them a deed and get them back. Now we are down to the ones that have moved maybe 5 years ago and we can’t find them and you have to advertise. But that is why you saw that bad debt number down. We have gotten a lot taken care of. We can get you a hard number and if you would like to give any one of us your name, we can get it to you or would you like it on the website or put out as a report in the Fox Tales, but it is significantly less than it used to be.
(Ray) You also said there were 60 sales approximately last year…
(Joe) year before last year
(Ray) Year before last year approximately, how many of the 5 percent unit weeks would that equate to?
(Joe) For total weeks there are a little over 5,000 but that’s hard to say because some people own every other year, some people own 4-shares or combinations. 5400 would be the biggest possible number of units.
(Ray) so 5% of that would be roughly 250 units?
(Joe) yes
(Ray)There was a $100,000 decrease in bad debt expense so does that mean that units were taken back and they are sitting there in a bank somewhere and they are not incurring a maintenance fee on an annual basis?
(Joe) There would be some of that but when we brought Compass in we worked with them so that they would sell for every so many weeks of my weeks they sold they sold one held by the owner’s association,  so yours held as a group are sold and producing dues. So to answer your question some of it could be that we took weeks back and its multiple years that were out there and we had to write it off when we got it back. According to IRS rules we can’t just decide to write it off. There has to be a reason to write it off, like it’s uncollectible and when we get to that point we write it off. Maybe our accountant here could answer that a little more effectively than I did.
(Ray) Well adding to that question, do you have unrecorded bad debts out there at this point and time since your statement just lead me to believe you don’t do a year to date true up. You did a catch up on some of them.
(Ann) Well there’s always more bad debts coming as the attorney’s do their processing and they go through foreclosure or whatever they need to do.
(Ray) OK, let me restate it. For all of those delinquent maintenance fees that have not been paid, are they all accrued as bad debt on a yearly basis?
(Ann) No, it’s estimation. For tax purposes, you aren’t allowed to do reserves for bad debts, like banks do, we aren’t allowed to do that. So this is specific ones that were written off either the attorney has finished his processing, we’ve gotten the deed back or I will look through them and say this person hasn’t paid in the last however many years and the attorney can’t find them, then I can write them off. So yes there is always going to be some in receivables but we have been paring them down each year to get it more realistic.
(Ray) So right now with the 250 units out there times the $500 that is the annual bad debts that we are not receiving at this time and those costs get spread over the rest to make sure maintenance fees cover the costs as a whole. So that’s roughly $250,000 per year.
(Richard) If you look at the maintenance fees collected that is what we received and that varies from year to year depending on how people pay. Sometimes people are delinquent in that and will pay later so the dues actually come in the next year versus the year they were supposed to be paid. That figure does get kind of skewed, at times.
(Ray) Pardon me, $125,000.00. Thank you.
(Joe) That would be correct if they were all full year owners, 2 bedrooms, weren’t even or odd. Not any of them were 1 bedroom, or 3 bedrooms. It would be close, yes.
(Rosalie Klingbeil) Sort of related to that but not really, how many weeks or units are out there that have never been sold or have been repossessed. And is there any plan that if they were ever all sold to build anymore?
(Joe) Good Question. There’s plenty of place to build. I have always said in the past that until we would sell all the ones we have left, which hopefully won’t be that long if Compass does the job I have seen them do other places. We’ve discussed with the board that we wouldn’t build until we have any owners that wanted to get rid of their units could do so. I don’t think it’s good for us to build new inventory at the same time there are people who want to get rid of their inventory. It’s not good for the value of either. So if your question is “do we have plans to build right now even if my limited supply of weeks were sold” the answer would be no, we haven’t even looked at that. If we had a demand at some point which would mean any of you as owners who wanted to get rid of yours would be taken care of and ours were all sold, yes we would consider it. There is room to build more property.
(Gary Little) I am kind of wondering what is the relationship with the hotel and us people here. For example they say they are doing upgrades here. Will that affect us in any way?
(Richard) That’s a good question but I think I will let Joe answer that one.
(Joe) Everybody got a disclosure book when they bought or should have and it’s pretty well spelled out in there, but it’s complicated and it has some legal-ease in it. So what you as owners and myself as well since I own units and everyone else up here as most of them are owners here. Your unit 1/52^nd of it, let’s make it simple here; you’re a one week owner you own 1/52^nd of that unit with 51 other people.  The association as a whole owns all the common areas in that building, the hallways, the yards around it, the roads that come in there. The rest of the thing, the golf course, the hotel , conference center that you are in today, the bar is owned is owned by Fox Hills Resort, LP which is a totally separate entity. So to answer your question, no, if I decide to put new siding on the hotel, it’s not in your budget. It’s in my budget. The only things the association dues go for is to maintain those buildings down there and the pool building. The pool building down there - not the pools up here, and those roads right down in there.  They mow the lawns right around those buildings that it just those buildings. 22 buildings and the pool, check-in, Recreation building.
(Richard) I think it is important to know what the Jacobson’s do for the owner’s that they don’t have to do. Basically, there are people who complain we used to do this or we used to get that and stuff like that. Then they say the hotel pool can be used by us anytime, that’s completely on his dime. He’s paying for the care of that pool. He pays for cleaning the carpets that lead to the pool. He pays for all of that. The Association doesn’t pay for any of that and he’s allowing that. He does other things too. He has promotions that he has going on, like this dueling pianos tonight for instance. That’s in his facility. The Association is not paying for the room. We’re not paying for that, he’s doing that. He does a lot to try to make this better. He understands that the marriage between the condo association (which is the owners) and the resort are somewhat connected, because if one succeeds, the other one will succeed better too. He’s been more than fair with most of his things. I know there are some things different than they were described years ago because it’s a different owner. The other person made some deals and walked and is not responsible for those deals. And most of those answers are in that disclosure book. It will define the difference between the two entities, but you have to remember that everything the Association does there is a direct cost to the Association. What Joe does for us usually doesn’t relate to a direct cost to us. He’s been very generous to try to make both entities work. You got something to say yet Joe?
(laughter)
(Joe) I do. It is a marriage. (clapping) We all need each other. If we locked this place up, you would have your condos (kind of like the place up at Cable) with no restaurant and things like that. On the other hand, it wouldn’t be very good for us if we had a bunch of empty condos out there if something happened to the condo association. So it’s good for all of us. One thing I forgot in my facilities report, one thing Aaron and I are working on, you people who use the fitness center we are looking at and should have in the next few months new equipment in there. That equipment served us very well but it is very dated and we are looking into that as we speak. We’ve got some quotes out there so that’s one more thing that if anyone is staying here or for the owners who driving distance can come out and take advantage of that on a daily or couple times a week basis. So…Amy?
(Amy MacMillin) I just wanted, you took my fire Richard. I want to thank you, Joe, and your family for managing this and doing a wonderful job. Please don’t ever go anywhere and I think it is an insult that some people were questioning you and I want you to know, please stay.  (clapping)
(Joe) There’s never any insult. If people have a question, I would want them to ask. I don’t ever take insult to that. If you don’t know, then you should ask because you are misinformed otherwise. I would rather have people know exactly what is going on. I never take offense to anything. Believe me when I first came out here I knew nothing about timeshare or hotels or golf courses. And it took a long time to figure things out and there are people out there who no way would know it. I’ve had to live it for a long time to understand it, so I don’t have an issue with questions at all. I do think that most of you have been very understanding. We have all started out what was a rough period when Mr. Likas left us with the association in a big debt a long time ago; many of you have been here that long. Everything is going great now and it’s because we have all worked together and persevered together. It’s worked out well. It’s rather enjoyable now that we are to the end of it. I look back and have a lot of fond memories and enjoy a lot of the conversations and interactions that I have had with all of you. Oh, and I’m not going anywhere Amy. No plans on it anyway (laughter). I do have a 12 year old. I was hoping to retire early, but I don’t think that is happening.
(Richard)  Yes sir.
(Kurt Keller) I just want to make sure I have a correct understanding. The association owns 22 buildings but Fox Hills actually owns the Rec Center.
(Richard) No the Rec Center is owned by the……(mumbling) excuse me, I’m misinformed already.
(Joe) We own, the owner’s association has never owned the Rec Center. We’ve always just let them use it for free. They pay for the maintenance. There is no rent charged on it. They pay the real estate taxes and the maintenance.
(Kurt) Yeah, so the Rec Center is owned by Fox Hills and we just pay the maintenance for it.
(Joe) Correct. And that was the way it was when we came here. I don’t know what Mr. Likas’ plans were when he built it but that’s the way it was and we never changed it. Number one, the association didn’t have any money back then to buy it anyway and it’s gone along just fine for so long I don’t see any need to change it. But you pay for the upkeep only. No rent. It is taxes and upkeep.
(Kurt) Thank you. I just wanted to make sure that was clear.
(Richard) Thank you. Yes, sir.
(Ray Ogea) I remember when Likas was here and that’s when I got my card as a Fox Hills owner. On the back of that card it says that I get a discount in the bar and the restaurants. That is no longer right. When are we going to get new cards? (laughter)
(Richard) You can get a new card. Just contact Vicky and she can get you one. (laughter) One that doesn’t say that on the back. Thank you. They do have some discount programs like Aaron said earlier. They do have some discounts on golf and they are trying to work this in with us. And they have growing pains as well as us for that matter and some of this stuff is going to take a while. I’ve seen some improvement here since Aaron has been here already. Things have shifted better, not that it was bad before but Aaron has brought some new light to what they are doing and has some new ideas. I think it is working well. Anymore questions? Ok, one more question and then Joe has something to say yet.
(Sandy Siewert) I am wondering, some of these owners that have disappeared and you can’t find and aren’t paying. Is there a chance, and I don’t know if this is legal or not, that some of us that have been owners for years and years maybe some of us people know these people and know where they went. Is there any way you could list the people that aren’t paying?
(Vicky) Legally you couldn’t do that.
(Sandy) Even if it is just trying to stay in touch with them? That’s what I thought. It was probably a legal snafu but, there could be ones of us that might know.
(Richard) If you think you might know people like that, you can provide it to us. (laughter)
(Joe) I tell you what I will do, we will ask the attorney what we can do.  Like if we ask a simple question – Fox Hills owner’s association is trying to contact John Doe, do any of our owner’s know him? And we put that in the Foxtales, would we be able to do that when it doesn’t mention why we are looking for them. We will ask that question. We will ask the question because the last thing I want to do is something that is going to cause any liability for the Association.
(Sandy) I know you don’t want to do that, but maybe people have kept in touch with these people over the years.
(Richard ) Thank you we will look into that. If there are no more questions, Joe has something very important to talk to you about.
(Joe) I will try to be brief, I sometimes like to talk. (laughter) To go along with this conversation, we had a few minutes ago about the improvements we’ve made and whether I am going anywhere or not. Well I’m not, but somebody else is. When I took over 11 years ago out here, before this we had Meyer –Jabara, we had a management company and we were just investors. Palm Beach Hotel Group and then Meyer-Jabara. They were the ones who ran it right after Likas. And then my brother Eric was in charge for a year or so and then we had Bob Dove was the general manager came over from the Bergstrom properties and then I came aboard. We had a little transition in our family businesses and I came here. I knew nothing about this business, but I started looking at it and it's just business. There ought to be a better way to do this. A lot of the people were good people who worked here, but they were set in their ways and they didn’t quite look at things the way I did. So I made a decision that I needed to find somebody else to get this done. So I went out and hired John Anthony Holzschuh, who at that point was running a paper mill in Neenah and I can tell you he is retiring this fall and none of us would be where we are without him. Because I am in an office in Menasha and I look at financials everyday and I talk to John every day. My day starts every day with John and I on the phone at 6:30 or 7 in the morning to talk about Fox Hills. He’s the guy who’s here. He’s the guy who brought Aaron on. He’s the one who has fought these battles when we didn’t have the money to keep the units up and it’s been a heck of a battle, but it’s been fun as well. John and I have not only become working partners in that time, we’ve become friends. So if you see John around, he’s standing in the back, he’s probably going to kill me for this, but wish John well. He’s retiring this fall, but he will be around until then so wish him well. He’s done one hell of a job and I would like everyone to give him a hand. (clapping)
(Richard) John would you like to say a few words or at least waive your hands so they know how you are? (laughing) John has been very helpful. Once I came on the board, I found that John has a very hands on type approach. He views every subject personally. He has been an asset to the organization and he will really be missed. Oh yeah, we have a drawing here and a vote. Do you have the results? We have the results. Oh, we’re going to make Vicky do it. She begged us that she wanted to talk a little. (Laughter)
(Vicky) OK, we had a 173 and ½ votes because alternate people get a half of vote. We were able to get a winner with 79 votes and that is Richard Isely. (Clapping) Richard are you here? Please stand up. (He stands) There he is our new board member.  Thank you.
(Richard) After this meeting the board will meet downstairs and Richard you have to be there also. We have to elect officers and then we will come up again then the people can meet us and give us their gripes, etc.
(Aaron) The reception with the food and drinks will start shortly before 3 O’clock. I will try to get things out quicker…Joe didn’t talk as long as we expected. (Laughter)
(Joe) We will do the drawing. I am not a part of your board. I am the management company, Aaron and I; we will be up here so if you have questions for us while the board is gone. We’ll still be here.
(Aaron) And again for you that are looking for tickets for tonight or looking for more information for dueling pianos tonight. See myself, or Vicky or Kris (who is taking the pictures) and we will get them for you. Doors will open at 6 O’clock and the entertainment will begin at 6:30 and we hope to see all of you there. It is a 4 hour show. There is an intermission in there. Bars will be available and food will be available for purchase also during that time.
Mumbling while someone from the audience comes forward to pick a name for the drawing.
(Richard) Doris Jochman. (laughing, clapping) Ok, see Aaron or Vicky. Ok, the next thing on the agenda is the next owner’s meeting is the 3^rd Saturday in April.
(Vicky) Nope the 4^th. The 3^rd is Easter.
(Richard) The fourth Saturday in April. So the date is the 26^th? Hopefully we can have things pretty much like this. Last year they had something going on and we had to be out of here. This year Joe blocked us off. Would someone like to entertain a motion to adjourn?
Rumbling (Vicky) I need a name.
Don Brown made a motion to adjourn and Amy MacMillin seconded. (Richard) All in favor?
 (chorus of I’s)
(Richard) We are adjourned. End of recording.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Annual Owner’s Meeting

April 21, 2012

1:00pm

Fox Hills Resort

Owners Association Meeting

April 2009

 

Meeting Minutes

 

 

 

John Holzschuh: I would like to call the annual Fox Hills Owners’ Association meeting to order. I’m John Holzschuh, the Vice President of Operations at Fox Hills and I’d just like to cover a couple of things quickly before we get into the meeting. Everybody should have pamphlets and handouts, showing budgets, etc., and we also had a vote on a quorum in our annual meeting and we believe we had that to conduct this meeting. Last year we had informed you that we were going to have the meeting on today’s date, which we did. So with that in mind I’d like to cover the agenda and then I’ll some introductions also. The agenda is going to be; I’ll be making some announcements of funds, we’ll talk about some improvements in last year, and Joe will talk about budget issues, and we’ll do a question and answer session like we normally do, and then we’ll do the meeting summary and talk about next year’s meeting date. With that in mind I’m going to introduce everybody; Joe Jacobson, the developer, Dave Petouka, Mike Mlevza, Andy Phara, Vicky Stangel, Ann Francis, and once again myself. (Discussion in background.) Oh, I’m sorry, Vicky Anderson, she got married. I apologize. (Applause) Just can’t break the habit. If you would flip your sheets over if they’re glued or stapled, however you have them, I’d like to briefly talk about 2008 renovations. We had a number of DVDs and T.V. we changed out, mattresses, we added some additional furniture to the condos. We also bought a robotic pool vacuum so we’ve reduced the labor. It operates at night; we just release it and it monitors; it’s picked up and released by security and that helps us keep the pool clean and also reduces the labor, not having somebody man it. We added a refrigerator and we also did signage which everyone has requested for years. I hope you like it. We also had to change the phone system. It really just went kaput and we had no other choice. We did have a lot of complaints by owners not being able to contact Vicky, and we fixed that. We have a new system. We did carpeting in five buildings; and the next two go together, we changed unit doors and we did the keycard lock system through the entire area, which is big improvement. We also did 32 fireplaces, we did some hot water heaters, we replaced two roofs, and then we had a culvert collapse on us because of last years, last Spring’s heavy rain, more into June, early summer and we had to replace that. Also, there’s something missing on here; we did add two handicap rooms in condo 12, so we have handicap accessibility into this year. The capital budget for 2009; we’re looking at replace two more roofs, we are adding five dishwashers, looking at adding five stoves, ten more t.v.s, we want to change hallway carpeting in 11 more condos, exterior paint for buildings 6 and 20, 120 new mattresses and box springs, 10 new water heaters, the dessert air in the pool area, two more handicap units we want to do, and then 6 additional washer and dryer sets, 32 more fireplaces, and then we have a contingency fund which we budget in case of an emergency, like the culvert last year and the phone system; those were two major issues that happened that we hadn’t gotten budgeted. Any questions on what we have done or what we’re proposing? Okay, if you think of them we’ll just cover them at the end. Joe? 

 

Joe: Okay, if you look at your financial, and by the way as John said, if you have any questions you all know the drill, we can answer all kinds of questions when we’re done; the microphone’s up there. We all know we’re living in pretty trying times here, so I actually had the accounting staff do a little drill for me yesterday and check out where we are in dues collections versus previous years. It has slowed down a little recently, we were quite a bit ahead, we’re still $3,000 ahead of last year’s pace which was a big relief to me considering what’s going on out there in the world, I didn’t know how people were paying, but at this point we’re doing okay, so we still have some people that Vicky and the collections department has to chase around, but we’re ahead of last year’s pace at this point. Not by much, but we’re still ahead. Okay, you can see that our actual income versus our budgeted income is pretty darn close. Obviously we took in less money, it means a few less people paid dues then the year before, or a little less interest. Expenses, we were over a little bit on wages and salaries, but I don’t know how many of you keep these for posterity, have old ones, we’ve reduced the wages substantially over the last number of years. I think we’re going to actually track, you notice we’re budgeting less than year and we’ll hit that number. We did have one employee that did have some health problems and we had to get a legal opinion on what we could do and we ended up double staffing the position for a while due to legal councils’ recommendation for part of last year, due to a health issue, or we would have been under budget, and we will be under budget going forward. Oh, there are seats open in the front if you want to come in and sit down, there’s plenty of room up here. Thank you Vicky. Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention I was looking down at my notes here. If anyone has any questions later on any of these we can go through, but as usual I’m going to go through and pick out the ones where there’s a major difference. Obviously electric and gas. We budgeted $275,000, we’re $294,000. If you remember last year’s meeting I did say we were off to a pretty lousy start. The last two winters had been appreciably colder and longer than what we had been running, and we always based our budgets on the previous years. We have done many things to lower the utilities, like the new fireplaces and things. We continue to work on that. I don’t think utilities are going down any. We all saw last year when we had $4.00 gas and what our home bills are like. So it’s not from a lack of effort but we’ve had two long, cold winters here, as well as you’ve had at home. Renovations and maintenance. You’ll see we are $263,000 versus $206,000 that we budgeted. Part of that was the $13,000 for the culvert that collapsed. It was about 10 feet down that we had to dig out. We tried to get a little relief from FEMA, out of New Orleans, but that didn’t work for us, they didn’t think that we qualified. We had to put the phone system in. The phone system on this property dated to when it was built. It was an old PBX system. For at least ten years we’ve been buying used parts where ever we could, searching the internet. I was always hoping we could find an alternative which we finally had to last summer. It just quit and we couldn’t get the parts anymore. The total phone system was aprx. $50,000. It was broke down by the equipment each side of the resort needed. Condo bill was around $25,000, it was a little under half of the phone system. There are a lot more extensions out in the condos than what there are in the hotel with 102, but we need different equipment for the offices and things that cost us more, so I did have the guy when he bid it out break it down separately, but that’s an expense we weren’t anticipating, but as John said now you’re not getting the dropped calls. Some of you when you were calling the offices and things we were starting to have too regularly with the old system. And then we had the, again it’s under the renovations and maintenance, we did mention that last year at this meeting we had an architect coming in drawing plans to make those two rooms handicap accessible and we did get that done. We didn’t have a price ? for it last year at this time because we still had the architect working on it but we did have an owner who wanted that done, and actually there is legal action that can be taken if a place isn’t handicap accessible, so we got that done and that was another $13,000 to do those two units, make them handicap accessible, redo the total bathrooms and everything, so that is where we went over last year in renovations. It all went for good things in the condos. This year we’re budgeting $175,000 vs. the $206,000 last year. In lieu of the economy we don’t even know if we’ll spend that. With some of these projects we just discussed in the board meeting, the board will wait on and we’ll make decisions on as the year goes on, depending upon how things are happening out there. That’s a wish list. Obviously if there’s a roof that’s in bad shape, things like that have to get done, but the improvements of just upgrade, those decisions will be made by your board that you elect, based on what’s happening. We’re a little bit, probably like all of us, we want to keep an eye on what’s going on in the world out there and see how the news continues to come in, if the economy starts to come back or whatever. So, the bottom line is, we got a profit again in actuality of $109,000, certainly it’s less then what we budgeted and less than last year part of it over on expenses in the renovations and obviously in the utilities.  I’ll be happy, I’m sure there’ll be a few questions on this one, when we get to the question and answer period and I’ll be here to answer those. 

 

John: Anybody have any questions at all about the budget? Yes sir? Could you go to the mic so we can all hear you? Thank you very much because we record this. We record this so there’s minutes and we keep them and that’s what we should be doing by law. Thank you.

 

? : My question is what are the management fees? I see wages and salaries and then I see management fees.

 

Joe: Management fee is traditionally what somebody charges you to manage the property. Your wages cover the actual people doing the housekeeping, the laundry, whatever, but there has to be somebody on the payroll to actually make decisions, you know, give some direction. So traditionally, management fees are 10% of dues revenue, that’s how most associations do it. We froze our management fees a number of years ago. We did that with the board of directors. We said we’d freeze them because the association at that time was in a little bit of a financial crunch. If we were raising them like most management companies did, they’d be a little over $200,000 a year right now. I and my staff spend a lot time out here, and we’re not on the payroll. I spend a good part of my time, as well as plenty of other people, out here working on this and that’s where that comes in, they’re not on the Fox Hills payroll. Like for instance, the accounting staff, when you see professional fees, that’s done out of our office. We used to have ADP for payroll, automated data processing, you may have heard of them they do a lot of payroll. That used to cost us about $60,000 a year. Right now we do all of our accounts payable, all of our payroll and everything for professional fees that are under half of that because they are done by people who work for me, and at the management company, but there are no wages for them. Part of the reason your association wages have gone down close to $200,000 in the last five years is we’ve eliminated some of those positions they used to have on staff out here where they did the payroll out here, or they did accounts payable out here at the resort and things like that. We’ve centralized them, I have some other companies, I’ve centralized them there, so that all falls under the heading of management company. Yes sir?

 

? : Why are there no charges for bad debts . . . did you quit trying to collect them?

 

Joe: No, that’s a good question. We just went through that at the board meeting. I’ll probably get more lengthy than I need to, but I’ll try to keep this brief. The computer system we bought two years ago for the association had an upgrade last year which made it very difficult to track our income. It didn’t bring the credit cards across properly. We got a new upgrade, everybody, not just us, but all customers were a little unhappy. We got a new upgrade about a month or so ago, which allowed us to do that. We always new what the expenses were and stuff. We were having a little trouble, we knew what we were depositing in the bank, but what came in the credit cards; who paid what unit. So that’s all squared away now, so we didn’t file our taxes yet. They should have been done by April 15^th. Because we just got this upgrade we’re going to be filing them shortly. How we decide what to right off for bad debts is, there’s bad debts out there, and we’re always trying to collect them, but some of the bad debts you’ll remember, I’ve explained this in the past, that some of these bad debts there here pre-us. They’ve been here over ten years and what we do is we decide to write off what we think is uncollectible and also what factors into that is the accountants, the attorney, sit down and look at the income tax, the association never had to pay income tax in prior years because they were never cash positive. Now that the association is cash positive, we have to pay income tax. So part of what they decided to write off each year is number one for tax purposes, number two it’s really uncollectible. You know we’re still chasing people on a regular basis to answer that question. But I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that’s exactly what we didn’t collect. Some of these debts are people we couldn’t even contact, they passed away or they moved out of the state and the attorney then has to advertise and try to find if anybody knows where they are for us to foreclose on them or go after them for the dues and sometimes that’s a long drawn out process. So there is stuff out there that we could almost always write off that is totally uncollectible, or bankruptcy or whatever. But Vicky, overall how are collections going? What she’s saying is we continue to make the progress we’ve talked about, the collections are better each year obviously there’s a new crop that comes up. There’s people that find themselves in financial duress like with what’s going on the world right now, lost a job or something. It seems like every year you get some new people you know that something’s happen in their life and they can’t pay, but we continue to very, very diligently go after collections. So, . . . ? mentioned this a number of times. When the Fox Hills Owners’ Association was in the dark days with some of our predecessors and I don’t need to name names, most of you know who we’re talking about, they didn’t even tell you how bad it was. I brought that up a number of years ago and said okay, this is the situation, this is how much is out there. We’ve always brought it up, and there is a legacy of bad debts out there that pre-dates us, and for tax purposes we’re taking those so the association doesn’t need to give the IRS any more than they have to. But it isn’t, what you see on that statement really is not a factor of what we’re trying to collect. We’re trying to collect it all. Some of the things we’re trying to do, until somebody else has a question, I’ll just tell you a little bit what we’re working on. Obviously we think utilities are going to be, continue to rise. It’s going to be an on-going problem forever. The new fireplaces that we’ve been putting in, all of the old fireplaces had 8” vents going straight up, they were damperless, it was just like having an 8” hole open in the side of your building all the time. That’s making a big difference. We had Focus On Energy come in, we had a professional come in where they pressurize your building and they come in with infra-red and they test where you have heat leakage and so forth. We did all that before we started changing the fireplaces, things like that. The new water heaters, every one of these condominiums out here had a 120 gallon electric hot water heater in it. I don’t mean every building, I mean every unit. Four hundred eighty gallons worth of hot water we were heating 365 days a year, 24/7, in each one of these buildings. Some of you’ve done some research on this perhaps for yourself. In Europe and in Asia, everywhere besides the U.S., they don’t use tank heaters. They use tankless on demand heaters. The units we’ve been putting in in the condos are actually less money than the 120 gallon one. We’re putting in tankless on demand units. By the time we wire them, because it takes a little different wiring, they are 220 versus, or they’re more circuits, more 220 circuits, but they’re on demand, so when there isn’t somebody calling for hot water, your not in the shower or whatever, it’s going to be a huge energy savings. We’re monitoring, we put eight of them in on test, we’re monitoring the savings, but according to the engineers and Focus on Energy and everybody it should be a big savings to us, so if any of you ever come up with ideas or see them at home or anything, we’re always, John was just at a WPS seminar last week, we’re always looking at ways to do this, but gee we’re not geniuses so if anybody had a good idea or may come up something, or see it on t.v., pass it along to us or one of your board members because I think that’s the number one things we’re going to have to continue to fend off is rising utilities. Sir?

 

?: Getting back to these bad debts, what really happens with that as far as these people don’t pay and stuff like that, as far as their estates and everything?

 

Joe: What happens is many times, say if it’s a, well there’s many different examples, somebody may have passed on or there may have been a divorce or bankruptcy, normally in a bankruptcy, and I see Vicky left, she’s the expert, but I believe that in a bankruptcy they quit claim the deed back to us, sometimes we have to go through all the rigmarole, like if we can’t find the people and advertise to get them to do that, but normally we collect, we’ll get a judgment for whatever we can get from the judge, you know we go in front of a judge and they say yes you need to pay ‘x’ amount dollars and normally they will then give their title up because, or some don’t some pay it, but obviously if they don’t pay us they can’t use the week. They’re a bunch of people out there now who can’t bank with RCI who can’t come onto the property, they’re barred from using their membership privileges when they’re behind. 

 

?: They’re barred from using their membership, but what I’m saying is what really happens to the estate part of it? Does it go back to you then?

Joe: The week?

 

?: Well, the property itself, we’re partly ownership on that, that’s what we’re paying on.

 

Joe: Right, I don’t know if we’ve foreclosed on many lately. When we had an on-going sales program, your board at that time would give them back to us to resell because the board didn’t have a resale program. Nothing is really going on right now. I don’t think that I’ve got any back recently. We’ve just been getting people to pay their dues, but we talked about that today in our board meeting. That is something that we’re going to address in our next board meeting. What are we going to do in the future about that situation? We’re going to have a board meeting next month with our newly elected board on that situation. Yes sir?

 

?: Okay, I can see where our expenses and budget are actual, and we actually have an operating plus of $109,000? (Joe: Correct) I don’t see a line item listing that and what the association actually has as a cash surplus because we did a surplus last year also? (Joe: Correct) Now last year’s plus this year’s, but that’s not listed anywhere on the . . .

 

Joe: We should have mentioned this earlier. We do this every year. We do have balance sheets here. Vicky you have balance sheets? Anybody who wants a balance sheet after the meeting, Vicky has them. Again, if you want to see a balance sheet on this, let your board members know. The board of directors several years ago decided to give balance sheets only to people who asked because a lot of people didn’t understand them. We do have them up here, we should have announced that right away. 

 

?: The only reason I bring it up is because you and I both know that where’s there’s a dollar, there’s a crook. And we found that out in Washington and the stock market.

 

Joe: No, I agree. And one of your board members has brought up doing an audit. We have somebody independent do the taxes, we’ll get another price on doing an audit. We did have a CPA on the board a number of years ago who wanted to do an audit and we got some bids and then he decided he thought it was a little too expensive. From his expertise he thought that the books looked fine. One of your board members has talked about that. Hey, those are all good ideas. We should know where we’re at all the time.

 

?: One more question. Where are the fees that we pay the lawyers to do the things for the association?

 

Joe: Professional fees. (?: Professional fees? Okay) Yeah, it’s under professional fees. Professional fees cover legal fees, they cover accounting, payroll and accounts payable. All that stuff is processed. I guess I wasn’t clear enough before. The part of that that gets paid to the Jacobson Group is some $30,000 a year, is that right Ann, $25,000 a year. That’s what I was talking about before. ADP alone used to cost us $60,000 to do our payroll. Now we do all accounts payable, all payroll, and all accounting for $25,000 a year. Some of that’s attorney’s fees, income tax preparation goes out to somebody independent, that is not connected to myself or any of the companies here, that goes to Hawkins, Ash, Baptee (?) in De Pere. They do that so that’s all under professional fees. The legal, payroll, all of those things. I would like to say to that we haven’t had an RCI rep for the last few years. It isn’t that we don’t want them to come.  I don’t know if they’re trying to cut cost or if they don’t want to answer your questions but it was nice when they came and had a little presentation, so if any of you are talking to RCI let them know that you like it when your owner rep shows up and can talk to us about RCI. More questions? One other thing I should tell you about, you may have read about it, if you’ve read about the new swimming pool issues. There was a young girl a year or two ago that got stuck to a drain in a swimming pool and drowned. There’s new Federal regulations, but so often when happens when it’s a government deal, they don’t really know what they want us to do at this point. We’ve had people in, we’ve had engineers in, we’ve looked at the systems on the pools. There will have to be some work done on the swimming pool in the next year or two. Originally it was all supposed to be done this year. There’s a moratorium on it now until the powers that be, OSHA and congress who did the bill can decide exactly what the bill means and what we have to do. Basically the covers on the drains need to get changed somehow so that somebody can’t get stuck to it. Because by the time you shut the drain off, obviously, and loosen that suction the person may have already drowned. It happened one time so now every pool in the country needs to get changed since it’s happened once in history. So, we do not have it in the budget. We have it under contingency because we have no idea what it’s going to cost us at this point. But in case any of you are concerned, you read it in the paper about this, I know I saw it a few weeks ago, this is a national deal. I just want you to know we are aware of it and we’re working on it, but we’re not going to, if we would have made improvements according to what the first bill said, we would have spent the money and now they would have told us that gee, now that doesn’t work anymore, we’ve changed it. We’re waiting until we have definite, we have Senator Feingold’s office keeping us up to date and finding out exactly what we need to do, because it seems on the state level, which their charged to enforce a federal rule, they don’t really understand it either. They don’t even understand it on the federal level so I don’t know how the state could so we’re hoping our elected officials will be able to keep us in the loop. Mam?

 

?: I have been a Fox Hills owner since 1986 and at the time that we purchased our unit we were promised pool privileges that we could bring company and friends along within reason and I’ve seen the promises that were made by Fox Hills to owners, eroding, eroding, eroding until there isn’t hardly anything left. Now if I want to bring my son and daughter-in-law and their child, I can’t do it without paying extra or; and yet the people who work here can bring their entire families to swim and use the facilities.

 

Joe: That’s not correct. No (?: No?) The person who works here can’t. We did talk about this last year at this meeting. The bylaws have always said an owner can bring a guest and somebody did ask us, well what happens if my grandkids are here and so forth, and there’s an exemption for party, right? So you’re saying there’s an exemption for the party, but then you have to pay for it. It’s $2.00 a person or something. Okay. What I would suggest is, we talked about this in this meeting last year and we weren’t given any advice. We’re just following the by-laws as they’ve always been written. Now what a salesman told you and what the by-laws were may have been different, and I’m not saying that’s right, if you’d like to see a change, call one of your board members. We’ll make that change in the board meeting. We have to think about how we do that. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be able to bring in your people, but then what do you do with people who abuse it and show up with 30 people? That’s why the board last year, we had some of those instances where that’s why the board reaffirmed, they didn’t change anything, they just reaffirmed the policy that had always been there. Ninety-nine percent of you that would never be an issue and I don’t anyone is going to say anything if you show up with a couple people, but then you get the few people who want to bring in 30 kids for a birthday party and you’re there trying to enjoy the pool and you can’t enjoy the pool. 

 

?: Well and I guess if somebody brings in 30 people, Fox Hills should say something to that person who brings in 30 people.

 

Joe: Well correct. But you know who interprets the rule. There’s a rule there and the rule right now says each owner can bring in a guest. Now the rule can get changed. All the board was asked last year by one of the / you owners had it brought it up at the board meeting last year, called somebody or had Vicky bring it up, what about the rule and the board at that time, not having any other input decided to leave the rule as it always stood. We may be enforcing it different. That’s probably the issue. That now that there’s somebody down there all the time, that the office is down there, that we may be enforcing the rule we weren’t in the past, and I’m not saying that that’s right, it’s right to enforce the rule, I’m not saying it’s been enforced the same as it always was. There wasn’t always somebody down there before. There was just a part time kid giving towels out, so we maybe need to adjust that policy. We’ve got it in the minutes and feel free everybody to pass your comments on to your board members because we’ll be happy to, right gentleman? Right now, if you have five people in your family, on that membership, you can bring five guests the way it’s written up. It’s one guest per owner member in the family. So if have my husband and I are owners, and my son at one time was on that membership because he was a minor, what happens to that now. He’s no longer a minor, and I do know the rule has changed since we purchased into this ownership.

 

Joe: I don’t think the rule changed, I think the enforcement changed.

 

?: Hhmm, no the rule changed. Yes it did. The rule has changed.

 

Joe: Well, in the ten years I’ve been around, that I know, we’ve never changed anything in those by-laws to do with that. So I think the enforcement of the rule, I could be wrong and we’ll go back and look, but I think the enforcement got changed just because there’s people down there. But, hey it’s your association. Give people input.

 

?: I’ll do that, thank you. (Some applause.)

 

Joe: And thank you for the input. That’s how we get things done. Nobody be bashful to bring things up. We can’t improve things if we don’t have your input. I’d much rather have somebody tell us if they have a problem than just be mad about it. That’s how we get things done. (Thank you sir.)

 

?: I have a problem and I’m mad about it. I came to the rec center Monday morning at 10:00 a.m., no problem, I love the hot tub. For the last 20 years I have used the facility 3 – 5 times a week except when I’m traveling. Wednesday morning I came, 10:00 no problem to use the hot tub. Came yesterday afternoon at 4:30, and I believe the girl’s name was Allison, she said I’m sorry but I can’t honor that card of yours, it’s an old card you’ll have to come back Monday morning and get a new card I won’t let you in. I said I’ve got an $11,000 timeshare, Presidential red week, I pay $500 a year in maintenance, and you’re not going to let me in. I said what if I came from Milwaukee with a girlfriend with a bottle of wine to sit in the hot tub? You’re not going to let me in? Nope, can’t let you in. My boss said you can not come in with that card; this week. (Joe: Well let me ask you . .) So what did I do, I went to the hotel. I don’t own the hotel. I don’t own any part of the hotel. I went in there used the hot tub in the hotel. I couldn’t use the rec center. Now talk about guests, yeah the rule has been changed, but I’m an owner and I could not get in. Really sweet.

 

Joe: Okay, one second. (Background discussion.) Okay the consensus is here sir that it definitely is our mistake, it shouldn’t have happened. It is a new employee and they said you do have an old, old card that should be update, but that is no excuse. She should have been apprised of the situation that there are some old cards out there and she should have let you in. It’s our mistake. So I would encourage you to come in and get a new card, but there is no excuse for it. We can apologize, but that doesn’t help.

 

?: Absolutely. She was very nice, very firm, she wasn’t rude or anything. She just said under no circumstances can anyone get in without the approved card.

 

Joe: Well, we didn’t do the job then to make her apprised that there are some old cards out there. I apologize, but it’s our fault. Shouldn’t of happened and I’m sorry. (Someone asking a question from further back in the room.) Joe: Yes, I heard that. The question was, somebody hollered out from the crowd, couldn’t she have pulled up his ownership? Vicky? She could of. She’s brand new, it was one of her first days on the job, it’s a mistake, it shouldn’t have happened. Believe we’ll / they’ll get some, ya know, somebody’s new on the job, all of us make mistakes, it’s not an excuse. It’s good that he brought that up because we can take back now and use that in training in the future to make sure people have a list of what to do if that comes up. It was very unfortunate. Ma’am?

 

?: I was wondering, on some of the units, like unit 7, I always request a lower unit because some of my people are handicap, not handicap but semi-handicapped, but there’s the outside stairs and I was wondering if there’s a possibility that at least one railing could be put up on those outside steps.

 

Joe: Okay, on the units that have, like some of them have that little bit of slope and a few steps.

 

?: Yes, like 7 steps to get to the units. The units are fine . .

 

Joe: Yes, cause they’re flat once you get in. Particularly if you’re here in the winter or something, I agree. Okay, we can put that in the notes that we look at that. It’s a good point.

 

?: My husband and I would like to turn over our RCI to our son. How do we go about doing this?

 

Joe: See Vicky Stangel, Anderson excuse me, I’m in that old habit yet too right after the meeting. She can explain how to do that.

 

?: Which one? Okay Thank you.

 

(Some background discussion at the front table ? back to the membership card subject.)

 

Joe: What is the approved membership card? The newer one with no picture, brown and burgundy she says, cause I know you can’t all hear. If you don’t have one you can just stop down there and get one. Regardless even if you have the old one, hopefully after today that never happens again. We can mail them too. If you lose your card or have an old card, call, we’ll mail you one. Sir?

 

?: This concerns the pool policy. How do we get in touch with our board members in order to give them input and discuss the situation a lot of other people are concerned with here. 

 

Joe: Today, as most of you know, you voted, there’ll be an election at the end of this meeting since you got to vote here, many of the ballots were sent in by mail. We will count the ballots and a newsletter will be coming out, being put on-line, if you don’t have the internet call so we can send you one that will have the results of the election, who your board members are and how to contact them will be in the newsletter.

 

?: Okay . . . I was just thinking since there was some pool discussions here wouldn’t it be a smart thing for us to head into a situation where we have like a user fee for the condo pool area let’s say, now I come from Kewaunee, I’m a member of a fitness center there and they have a pool and hot tub and what they do is any kids under seven years of age get in free, anybody over seven pays $5.00. (Grumbling in the background by the owners . . . we’re already paying $500 a year . . . ) I realize that, but I think we gotta get this pool situation taken care of because I have three grandchildren and we were turned away a couple of months ago because we were over the limit of one grandchild and I was a little disgusted. Obviously we went over to the hotel and had no problem, but we need to get this issue of the condo pools taken care of.

 

Joe: I would agree because if you’re in one pool or the other, we’ll have to address this as a board, because either way, like the other gentleman you’ll have the inconvenience of going over to the pool in the hotel and either way you’re using the facilities but it’s a convenience matter, it’s not stopping anybody from using it, but it sure is inconvenient, so everybody look for that newsletter, get your thoughts to your new board members because it is a fine line. You wouldn’t have had a problem with your three grandchildren but the person who shows up with 13 or 14 of them and then there’s people trying to enjoy the pool, we just have to come up with something that works for everybody.

 

?: Well maybe what you have to do is have a separate policy for large groups, groups over 5 or 6. That would be a special idea.

 

Joe: That’s a good idea, we’ll definitely take that in. Yes maam?

 

?: We haven’t been here for the last couple years staying in our unit. Does this pool policy, is it applying to people who bring two couples with them, you mean to tell me those three couples can’t go swimming together? 

 

Joe: If you’re staying on the property, let’s clarify this. Anybody who’s staying on the property can go in the pool, and your guests. So if you have two other couples in your unit, yes, cause you all have cards, you don’t even ask, you just go in there. It’s, and I’m not saying this couldn’t have been done in error at some time, but everyone staying on property should be able to get into that pool.

 

?: Okay, that was my question.

 

Joe: It’s if you come in, as the gentleman drove in to use it and normally he should have got in with his card but he had the old and we had the new employee. It normally is, if you’re bringing people in, and as I said, if you come in with a small group it’s not an issue. If you bring in 13 kids for a birthday party and there all, like I have two teenagers. If I bring one of my kids with 13 of their friends and they run around like wild Indians while you’re trying to enjoy the pool that wouldn’t go over too well. (?: Definitely) But we need to find that fine line that works everybody. I agree that we need to look at this.

 

?: When were the new cards issued? How old are the old cards? 

 

Joe: The old ones are over five years old. No, the new ones we’ve had out for over five years. The old ones all have pictures Vicky? Okay, she said there’s some cards dating back even pre-the-picture cards and the picture cards are old. The news ones are burgundy or brownish. They don’t have your pictures on and regardless, you will be able to use that card, we’ll get that straightened away today, but if you have an old card just call, email, we’ll send you one.

 

?: Okay, thank you. (Joe: Thank You)

 

?: Prior to the internet site they were allowing the owners to advertise in the newsletter. Because we have two units we’d like to get rid of, actually give away, and it’s just not fitting our lifestyle anymore and I wonder, I called people who were advertising in the newsletter to see how much response they got. I think I called every person, every newsletter and they had none. So I’m hoping that the internet site might be more successful because as I said this isn’t the best time to try to sell them so even giving them away, and I’m wondering if advertising on the site has been more successful.

 

Joe: We just put it on this, so it is new that we’re going onto the internet. Hopefully more people will take the time to look at it and yet there are people who don’t have the internet either and yet you can look at it at your leisure. I don’t know how it works at your house, but at my house sometimes what I call the circular file fills up, but sometimes I take the time to go through it all and sometimes the stack gets too high, your busy and you don’t go through it all. Sometimes things get into that pile that I wish wouldn’t have gotten in there.

 

?: So, we’re sitting in the back if anybody wants two timeshares. (Some background discussion.)

 

Joe: All right, thank you ma’am.

 

?: I’ve got another comment on my first being here and then I want to follow up on what this lady talked about. I had my current ID in a little Valese (? Bag) where my shampoo is in and everything, set it down outside in the lobby. I was gone for about 10 minutes, came back and it was gone, so my card was stolen along with my shampoo, so that’s why I used my old card which should have been valid. (Joe: I agree, it should have.) Now as a follow up to this lady. I don’t know how many buildings we have, about 20 buildings? (Joe: 22 actually.) Okay with four units per building that’s 80 . . . say 90 units at 50 weeks a unit, 2 off and whatever you set aside for RCI, we should have like 4000 owners (Joe: A little over 5000 actually because some are alternate week owners.) Okay 5000 owners are supporting our budget every year, now it’s $500 a person, right, I think, at least that’s what I pay?

 

Joe: Well, when I say 5,000 there aren’t that many weeks when I said owners. Some are alternate years so they only pay, you know if I own even and you own odd we make a whole so that’s one $500, so we’d have to go back to week. So don’t use my 5000 number because there are less weeks than that.

 

?: Okay, my concern is that we’re no longer selling, and we’re not sold out right?

Joe: No, there’s less than 10% left, but no we’re not.

 

?: Okay we’re not sold out, we’re not selling, there’s obviously attrition through bankruptcy and all this other, death, etc., people want to give them away, in 5 – 10 years we might have 1000 people supporting the whole budget which would put our maintenance fee at $2000 a year.

 

Joe: Well we are, we did talk about that in today’s board meeting. One of the people running for the board has suggested we look at that. We have looked at different ways to do things in the past. (First side of tape ended . . . ? Continuing . . . ) . . . came about. You remember when all of you were solicited years ago, most of it was through the telephone. We’ve tried mailing, we’ve tried other things. We have not been able to generate a steady tour flow. In the last year or so we haven’t made an attempt. We did try several times. We are going to talk about that as a board in our next meeting. I know at least one of the people who ran for the board, if you read there comments in the newsletter, wants to make that a priority and we’ll have to see what we can do. I totally agree with your comments. I’ve talked about that with our staff here, what do we do in the future as people get older? Some give them to their children, some will them, some sell them, but some don’t. Sometimes they pass away, there’s no will and they’re in limbo for a long time. Or they just get in a situation where they can’t pay. There is no doubt that we need to figure out a solution for that and it was discussed at the board meeting prior to this and will be on the agenda at the next board meeting. Ma’am?

 

?: I have two comments today. One is going back to the swimming pool and the number of people in. We also come out here with our children all the time and now they’ve grown and they have spouses or friends they want to come with. We only live a little over an hour from here, so sometimes we want to come out and go golfing with them. Well it would be nice to go into the pool and relax after golfing a round, but all of a sudden now, because we aren’t staying and they’re adults, we can’t go in the pool with them because we have too many. We have three children, they bring their friends, so all of a sudden we have a group of 8 now. What’s the difference if we come over and decide to stay once or twice after golfing and want to go in the pool with them to somebody who lives closer and might use the pool facilities three times a week and they’re just using it for themselves or with a friend? Usage wise we’re using it a lot less, but we’re denied because the once or twice we’re using it we want to use extra people with us. So just another point to look at when you’re reviewing that.

 

Joe: Right, no I think there’s no doubt from all the comments made that the board, we need to sit down and come up with a happy medium that can accommodate more of our owners. I think that’s pretty clear from all the comments here.

 

?: And my other point was, I just wanted to say that we did attend the wine and cheese gathering last night. It was attended better than the previous one was. I’m glad that we did bring that back and we got to visit with a lot of different owners that we haven’t met before. It was nice gathering and getting together with them so I want to thank you for bringing that back. (Applause)

 

Joe: Well, and again we brought that back at the direction of some of you last year. As you said, it had been getting pretty sparsely attended, people weren’t using it very much so the decision was made not to do it because, and I think this year we actually got that donated so it wasn’t even an expense to the association. So it’s even better if we can do things for the association when there’s no cost. That was one of the reason that board decided not to do it a few years ago because there were so few people there and even if we only charged cost of the wine and cheese, it’s an expense and it wasn’t being utilized. So if you get a lot of people there and they use it that’s great, and we’ll continue to try to find low cost alternatives like we did this year. Ma’am

 

?: Yes, I have two things. One is I think that maybe we need better communication between the board and the owners. For example, the cards. We’ve had our cards forever and we had no idea that there were updated cards. So I don’t know, it seems to be just from the comments that I’ve heard that we do need a better communication between RCI board and RCI owners. I think that would help clarify a lot of items. Then if people have questions they have somewhere to go. I mean we don’t utilize the pool at all, but I can see the questions and concerns people are bringing up. And maybe there needs to be better clarification, maybe some opinions, you know maybe some poll done. Something so we can get our voices out there also.

 

Joes: I agree. Vicky just said, the information about the cards over the years has been in newsletters periodically. Not everybody always reads them cover to cover. Who knows, they go out bulk mail. Was everybody even always getting one? It will be on the website now and with the technology we have today as far as you can email back or email board members or call. Good communication is always, you know nobody can get anywhere in the world without good communication. So it’s a good point.

 

?: My other comment is, I’d like to no what caused us to lose our status as a silver crown resort? I know that it has to do with the questionnaires that are filled out. You know if we’re filling them out, and we’re saying we don’t like this and we don’t like that, yes it counts towards it, but what was it in particular that caused us to lose that silver crown rating?

 

Joe: We were 1/10 of a point low in unit quality and 1/10 of a point low in housekeeping.

 

?: And that’s in the units? (Joe: Yes) Okay Alright. I was just curious because we’ve been to so many different resorts, we exchange quite often, and I have to say that when I look at our resort compared to others, I can’t see where we’re lacking, I don’t see the difference I suppose so I guess that’s the big question. Is there something besides that, that is causing that?

 

Joe: Well, the scores we’re happy to show you. I think part of, there’s several issues and people who have been here a long time have heard me say this in the past. When we look at the scores, and it tells, when we look at the scores and it tells if you traded in from Grand Geneva or you traded in from Christmas Mountain or you’re a Fox Hills owner. Nobody rates Fox Hills worse than the Fox Hills owners.

 

?: Yes and we need kind of realize that. (Joe: Always) Yeah, and we kind of realize that because we’ve been to Lake Geneva and we’ve been to Christmas Mountain and I have to tell you that compared to our units, they have nothing over us so that’s the thing. So maybe Fox Hills owners also need to realize that when you fill out those comment cards you’re kind of hurting yourselves. So maybe instead of filling out the comment cards, maybe what we should be doing is coming to the board (Joe: Exactly) and saying this is what we need to do. (Background applause) Don’t fill out those comment cards. Go to the board and tell them because we’re losing points by us filling out things and saying this isn’t good and this isn’t good. It’s not necessarily getting fixed that way. It’s causing us points. It’s causing us our rating, so maybe what we need to do is instead of filling out the comment cards is go to the board or go to whoever it is you talk to so we can keep our rating.

 

Joe: The management company, the board. We don’t want a free pass. That’s a very good comment, thank you. We don’t want a free pass. We want to know if things are goofed up. Just like the gentleman before who couldn’t get in. We can’t fix it if we don’t know. If you leave the unit and there’s something wrong with that unit and you don’t tell us. Say, I don’t care if somebody accidentally broke something and you say it was like that when you got there because you’re worried about being billed for it or something. Just tell us because otherwise the next two people who come in there if nobody says anything then we’ve got three bad scores in a row and we don’t know it. You know we don’t know it if you’re not getting enough hot water out of the shower or if it’s coming out too slow or whatever. So do it. We don’t want a free pass. Come down and chew on me or chew on John if we aren’t doing our job right. Call your board people and have them chew on us, but don’t give us a free pass. But don’t go giving us terrible RCI scores because our owners and we’ve talked about this here and we’ve had it in the newsletter, our owners give us the worst scores of anybody. And the other thing that has happened is three years ago RCI went to a total new rating system. Most of us in the resorts are not very happy with that system at all. RCI has not been very good at listening to it. Some of you know, maybe some of you don’t. It was in the newsletter. There was a class action lawsuit by owners like yourself against RCI for them not letting people know what was available to trade and RCI didn’t admit they did anything wrong but yet they settled the suit and agreed to pay a pittance, but they have now at least agreed to make it so people can see what available out there, they’ve changed their policies. I’m hoping through things like that that we get them to listen a little more. We were international distinction, which is now silver crown, five, six years in a row until they changed the scoring. I don’t see where anything has changed drastically on our end other than we’re putting in newer fireplaces, trying to make the place better, and yet the scoring structure has changed. We continue to complain about that as many other resorts do I know and we’re hoping they’ll finally start to listen. Ma’am

 

?: With today’s economy, everybody’s either losing their jobs or like the retired people have lost a lot of their money out of their IRAs. Isn’t there a possibility of us having a couple more payment options regarding our maintenance fees like spread it out between 12 months instead of 6 months?

 

Joe: That’s definitely an option the board can look at. I can tell you why it wasn’t done in the past. It was brought up in the past. When the association had huge liability, obviously delaying it even if you did it quarterly, you’d pay interest for that next quarter. You know the association was accumulating interest versus being able to pay those loans down at the beginning of the year. They’re in a different situation now so it’s probably time that the board looks at that. 

 

?: Alright and it’s a lot easier to pay in a 12 month time than a 6 months and with the way that the economy is right now you know there’s jobs being cut, my job’s being cut, you know, (Joe: It’s a good point.) you know it’d be a lot easier to pay in a 12 month time than 6 in months.

 

Joe: Yeah, and like I say it was discussed at the time, in fact that’s why the board moved, you remember a number of years ago, it was twice a year and they moved it all to the beginning of the year because I think the calculation back then was going to save like $75,000 a year in interest by having that money six months sooner, back when the association had more liability than they do today. So it was purely an economic decision made by the board back then, but that said, it’s probably time to revisit that.

 

?: Another thing I wanted to be brought up and I brought this up at the meeting last year was the bathrooms in the units. The grout has not been ever cleaned every time that we come to the units. (Joe: The grout?) The grout in the bathrooms. (Joe: Alright) Take a toothbrush and clean them. (Joe: Alright . . . thank you.) Yes sir?

?: Just a suggestion on your inventory of timeshares you own. (Joe: Yes) I was at a place in Florida several years ago, when I checked in I was given a sheet, no high pressures, these are the weeks we have available and a price on them. It was a reasonable price. I bought one. (Joe: That’s a good idea.) I was in Hawaii two weeks ago. They had a quick presentation. They were very reasonably priced. I did it about an hour before I left. If I would have had some to think about it I probably would have bought one there also. The other thing I was going to say. As far as the pool, I think it’s restrictive, but one other thing I’d like to say is they’ve done a good job of cleaning up down there. It was filthy down there five, six years ago. I had an opportunity to go there a couple months ago and I was really pleased with the way the place looked. With that, thank you. (Joe: Thank you. Some applause.)

 

Joe: Yes ma’am.

 

?: Hi. You said we should bring up concerns here, so here it goes. You put in some new hot water heaters. (Joe: Correct) We’re staying in a condo this weekend and we could not get any hot water in the kitchen. (Joe: You are staying in which unit, 1B?) Yes (laughter). Word has gotten around, huh?

 

Joe: I had a discussion with the maintenance man this morning actually, because that’s my project putting those in. I don’t exactly, we have 8 of those in. That unit there’s three chambers to that unit. One of them was bad when we put it in. I just got a replacement part last week and we installed it. I don’t know if there’s still a problem. It was all under warranty and when I came in this morning the maintenance man told me about your trouble. He said, and it’s a very strange thing obviously because you have hot water in the bathrooms, so we will be looking at that. I really appreciate the feedback. The first one went in in November, a couple in January. We’ve had plenty of people stay there and no issues. I’m not quite certain what’s going on in this one. It seems pretty strange to me that we have hot water in the bathrooms but not in the kitchen. I don’t know if somebody accidentally turned a valve off somewhere, but we will get back to that. Gary, the maintenance man, informed me of that this morning. (?: Okay, thank you.) Thank you; and this is the place to bring that stuff up by the way. 

 

?: I have a question concerning, if we purchased time in the past from Fox Hills and then we were to purchase time lets say from another private owner, how would that work as far as being able to trade that with RCI?

 

Joe: If you, and I’m going to say this and then I’m going to look to Vicky and make sure I say it right because I am not an expert here. If you are an RCI member, is there an add-on fee Vicky, for multiple weeks? He’s asking if he buys another week? No. Are you points or weeks. (?: We’re points right now.) Points? (?: If we wanted to convert it to points it would be an additional fee for that?) So you acquired another week; if you acquire points week already that that person’s already enrolled in and I’m not sure what the fee is if you have to pay the same fee annually or if there’s a discount if you have two weeks in points. If you have multiple weeks in weeks, you pay once per year no matter how many weeks you have correct? (to Vicky) But he has one unit in points already? (?: We bought one from Fox Hills and I’m thinking about acquiring one from somebody else.) She’s (Vicky) telling me RCI has a one-time fee to roll that week into points if it was a weeks week; if it’s a points week already I don’t think that would be an issue (?: Okay), but if it’s a weeks week RCI still wants to charge you to put it into points. (?: And how much would that be?) She believes its $1,500 but we can check on that for you. (?: Okay) And that’s not our fee, that’s RCI’s fee. (?: Okay, I understand, thank you.)

 

Joe: Those kind of questions, I’ll be honest with you I’m not the expert, I trade once in a while, but I go to the gals that work with RCI all the time because I don’t feel comfortable answering those questions, it’s not my expertise. Yes sir?

 

?: We bought our timeshare about 11 years ago and I would not have been to Panama or to some of the Bahamas and things if I would not have and that’s one of the reasons we did and we stayed a couple of weeks here, but we would like to get rid of our timeshare. If we transfer our timeshare, is their a transfer fee that your association assesses us?

 

Joe: Okay. These are deeded properties, we don’t have a fee. Vicky can help you . . (?: No they’re not deeded properties they’re deeded timeshare in a certain property.) Right, right. But you actually have deed. (?: Yes) Right, so that has to be transferred at the courthouse. Our people can help you with that on how to do that. We have the paperwork. There’s a small fee for that which is the Manitowoc County fee; we do not have a fee. (?: You do not have a fee?) Correct And by the way you’ll remember a few years ago at the direction, well I thought it was fair, but at the direction of the ownership group here, the bylaws used to say, not bylaws, our rules used to be that we inherited that; if you sold it to anybody, all the rights didn’t go with them. They could stay here but they couldn’t come in and use the fitness center and all that except when they were on property. I rescinded that a number of years ago so if you want to give one to your children or a friend or whatever or will it to somebody or sell it to somebody, the reason the previous ownership had done that is they wanted people to buy it from them. Not through the secondary market because you couldn’t get as much; as many rights. We changed that so all of your rights transfer when you transfer that week. Most of you know that. I just wanted to reiterate that in case anyone had forgotten. 

 

?: Then you do not have a fee. We have an organization coming through Green Bay that’s offering to take the timeshares off our hands for $2,900. We give them $2,900 and they will take it and the reason for them not taking certain timeshares is because there is a transfer fee and he said some fees are as much as $750 and that’s the reason for asking.

 

Joe: Well, there may be some places that a transfer fee, but we do not. 

 

?: The only fee is the courthouse fee? I think it was $15 or something last time, registered.

 

Joe: We’re going to get some commentary on this situation from an expert.

 

Vicky: This one I’ll answer because it really bothers me. This company that’s doing that, some of our owners have actually done that. (?: Oh yes, many people are.) And they’re finding out that after they pay the $2,900 they still own their timeshare. So if you’re going to do that, please be very very careful. Check this out. They don’t actually have you sign a deed, deeding your property to them, so a lot our owners are paying that fee and they still own their timeshare. So please be very careful. 

 

?: We had some people that did and one person had three timeshares and he sold them all to him, at a reduced rate, first one big cost then it worked down of course. But many people are, and I guess, my wife wanted to and I guess I’m almost willing to give my timeshare away like the other lady that was just here rather than costing me $3000. The only advantage to the $3000 is I can write it off on my taxes later on plus the $5000 I paid for the unit in the first place. Is anyone else having any problems with getting rid of their timeshares?

 

Vicky: It’s not true that you can write that off. Just be careful of what they tell you because they will tell you a lot of things that aren’t true. Always talk to a tax advisor. Don’t take the information they give you as the truth. They will tell you (?: Well then you can look at any person and say what they’re saying is not necessarily the truth.) That’s why, check it out. Lot of times they would send things out saying they’ll buy them from you and they’ll make you have an appraisal. You’ll get the appraisal done and they will never take it from you. So just be very careful with these resale companies. A lot of our owners have been taken by them and I’ve been here 17 years this year and I’ve heard every story there is, so just please be careful. 

?: Does the board have a policy of helping owners get rid of their timeshares; does the board accept timeshares? Do they buy them or accept them?

 

Joe: No, the board presently does not, but as I said next month with the new board seated we’ll be discussing now to do that because many of you have brought this up. So watch the newsletter. It is something we’re going to be talking about. I can’t speak for the board now because it is on the agenda, we will talk about it, but something should be forth coming on what the policy is.

 

?: You said you’re going to have communications from the board shortly after our meeting here.

 

Joe: We have a meeting scheduled in May because we won’t know until after the meeting who was elected and we count the ballots. The next board meeting will be in May so next month and then after that the newsletter will go out.

 

?:  No I’m not concerned about who’s on the board, I did vote for three, but my question are the questions we are asking today are they going to be addressed in your newsletter.

 

Joe: Well they will be addressed at the next board meeting and once the board has acted or not acted and taken a position, then they will be addressed after and we can get that information out in the newsletter after the board has had a chance to meet. (?: You will be answering the questions that are being asked from the floor on the next communication letter you send out or email or internet?) I can’t guarantee if we communicate before the next board meeting that’ll be there but after the next board meeting, the next communication that comes out we will share this information. I don’t know that it will be the next one because there may be one prior to our board meeting, but as soon as the board meeting is over the next communication will address the concerns, yes. (?: The questions that are being asked at the floor?) Correct (?: Okay)

 

?: Will there be a maintenance increase?

 

? (Someone from the board?) I’m going to retract that, sorry Joe. But the next board meeting is the 2^nd week in May. We don’t know who those members are yet and at that board meeting then maybe we’ll set up committees to look into the questions that are being brought up today. So I don’t know what the time schedule is of the newsletters so we can’t say when it will be communicated but as timely as possible, but we have to leave it up to those new board members. Is that better? Sorry, it’s not an answer, but I don’t want to set you up and say that those board members can get you an answer in that next newsletter when they’ve only had one meeting. I don’t want to put those new board members at that kind of risk. We will be discussing them, we’ll set up committees to discuss the items, I’m making notes of every one of these items.

 

?: Is it possible for the ownership members to get the board minutes?

 

Vicky: They’ll be added to the website just like the newsletters are now added on the website, the board minutes will also be put on there. (?: They will be on the internet.) Also the minutes from this meeting will be on the Fox Hills website. 

 

Joe:  And you asked about the dues increase? There is no dues increase. We have, it’s been 7 or 6 years or something we didn’t contemplate one or discuss it. Dave, one of your other board members, would like to make a comment.

 

Dave: On getting rid of your timeshares, there’s several companies out there will say we’ll sell your timeshare and they’ll say it’s worth $8000 and you’ll say oh boy I only paid $5000. (?: And charge you $400 like they did me, yes.) Correct. They’ll just take and take your money and say they’ll put it on the market and they’ll sell it for you. (?: It’s a scam.) They say they’ll list it ‘til they sell it, but they don’t even try, so be aware of these listing companies out there.

 

?: Don’t call anybody in Florida because if you do they will guarantee they will sell it, but then all of a sudden the telephone numbers disappear. And I’m standing and saying I did that, and I would bet there are many, many people here would raise their hand and say they did it too.

 

Joe: We hear that and sympathize for people who want to get rid of them and that’s why the board is going to address it, but we hear those stories all the time from people like yourself who gave somebody $400 or $500 and the place disappeared or closed up and that’s why, we’re not saying if you check it out not to do anything. We’re just saying to be careful because probably for every legitimate company out there there’s a lot of scams out there.

 

?: And that’s why I was referring to the possibility of the board helping the ownership. I said I’m going to give it way, some people right here said let me have it. Could that be addressed in your communication to allow people, other owners who use it correctly, or want it for someone else, to be able to get it from another owner and helping the owners because we are basically all in partnership.

 

Joe: Well that is, the woman earlier asked if she could put that in the newsletter now, an advertisement. Vicky just told me there’s a classified section on the website so if you’d like to put your unit on there or anything on there, email Vicky and she’s in the credit department, call her, email her, and she can help you get that in the newsletter.

?: I think several bulletins or communications ago we had people listed and they were willing to sell their timeshare for whatever it was, $1000 or whatever it was, and I called and it’s not going to be put in the communication anymore.

 

Joe: The communication is now on the website and it will be there.

 

?: I would ask a question, and maybe it’s technical. How many timeshare people were taken to court for non-payment last year? Someone has to know.

 

Joe: I just asked her. Fifty she’s guesstimating.

 

?: 50? Okay Then whatever they decided they decided.

 

Joe: Yes, sometimes we get what we consider fair relief from the court system, sometimes we feel that we don’t get fair relief but it is what it is. The judge makes the decision so. (?: Someone else?) Thank you sir. Yes sir?

 

?: Did golf course have anything to do with the expenses and stuff that we have here?

Joe: They do not, it’s totally separate.

 

?: Are they still with us; is it a separate .

 

Joe: The timeshare, the home owners association you all own a week or some of you multiple weeks in the timeshares over there. Your dues go to maintain those grounds, those buildings, the swimming pool building over there and that’s what your dues and stuff go to pay those property taxes and that insurance. The hotel, the conference center you’re in now, and the golf course is a separate entity and you get reduced rates in those entities, but no none of your money goes to fund them or subsidize them. I should clarify that though. I believe there is a (discussion in background) there is a ? board and the owners in this group about five years ago voted to contribute, I think it’s $10,000 a year or something to, like when we bring in the fireworks in on New Year’s Eve and bands and the ownership said we wanted more entertainment then what’s going on so that’s the only thing that is subsidized. Everything else from your dues strictly goes to maintain those buildings and those grounds. They tell me that my microphone is cutting in and out, so if we have no other questions should we get on to the beverages and to the food? Do we have a motion to adjourn? Oh wait, wait. John tells me has to do something yet. 

 

John: There are a couple of things. Just make sure everybody votes if you haven’t and then next year’s meeting, it’s on your agenda, April 17, 2010. And then now we need a motion to adjourn.

 

?: Someone made a motion.

 

John: All in favor, or first a 2^nd. All in favor? All opposed? We need a name who said it. Just come on up here. Thank You

Fox Hills Resort

Owners Association Meeting

April 2008

 

Meeting Minutes

 

 

John Holzschuh: Good afternoon again, welcome, I would like to call the annual Fox Hills Owner Association meeting to order. I’m John Holzschuh, Vice President of the Resort and current president of the association. I would like to cover a couple things before we go any further. Everyone should have handouts or have access to handouts. On them we’ll have budgets and agenda. One other issue we should cover before we go any farther. We have a quorum to run this meeting and the board and myself agree that we do. The second thing, that by the rights and bylaws we had to inform you there would be a meeting this year, of which we did last year in the newsletter and then last year at the meeting. So, with that in mind, I would like to go down the rest of the agenda. I’d like to make some introductions here shortly, some announcements, some 2007 improvements and 2008 improvements, and Joe, a member of the management company, will talk about the P & L and budget for 2008, then we’ll do a question and answer session and a normal adjourn. With that in mind, I’d like to introduce the rest of the board, and the other folks up here. Dave Patoka, Ann Francis, Joe Jacobson, Vicky Stangel, Mike Mlezvia, and Andy Farrah. With that done, I’d like to make a few announcements. There have been some issues, some customer service issues we’ve had to deal with and we believe we have them under control. We’re ordering a new phone system for the resort and the association . . . folks have experience. The second thing we’ve had some software issues and we believe we’ve corrected those problems. We also have two additional employees working down at the rec center for Vicky. One other thing, parking at the rec center. In order to be safe, there’s going to be some additional marking or labeling of where to park, but there’s a lot of close parking right in front of the rec center. We usually have that somewhat partitioned off with logs, but you’re kind of blocking the rec center and it’s really not safe, especially with the little children, so be very careful when you’re down there. There are appropriate parking spaces and we’re going to work hard to make sure that all works well. One other issue, we are now looking at, have been working on Focus on Energy regarding energy costs. We are in the process of putting in 32 electric fireplaces and removing the old inserts you had in there in eight buildings we have half of them done. The purpose of this is to be the most energy efficient we can be and control our costs. We’re looking at dealing with Focus on Energy for a number of energy issues. Anywhere from pool covers to you name it so we can control the expense. Another issue we’ve had is pool passes. Some people have talked about what is the current policy. For every membership card you have you’re allowed one guest. The board has discussed it and we want to keep it that way. This does not apply to anybody here who’s on vacation and it does not apply if you’re calling in for a birthday party or any of those things you talk to Alissa Repinski about. This is just for daily walk on, transient kind of folks that come to use the facilities. If you have any questions about this, you can talk to us either after the meeting or anyone of us or board members or the management company would be glad to talk about it. One other thing we’re doing is villa 12, we’re doing handicap access to units A & B. The main focus will be the main entrances obviously and the bathrooms, so we really want to get that done. We’ve had some owners talk to us about that who have some handicap issues and we intend to complete that this year. Also, next year you’ll be getting a newsletter talking about voting for officers and with that I’d like to turn the meeting over to Andy, he has something to say.

 

Andy Farrah: Under election and term of officers I want to make a motion as John is going to read it so if you’d go ahead and read it’. 

 

John Holzschuh: Thank you . . . Based on the by-laws, we the board are recommending to the ownership that the last year’s vote of the three current board members, by the ownership, does comply with section 43a2 on page 38 of the by-laws, meaning your vote satisfies the election of these owner representative so I would ask for any discussion on this issue right now, but the board recommends that we accept it. 

 

? Basically I want to thank everybody for electing me last year but in reading the election term of records I’m off the board today because it says we were elected for a one year term so it should have read two year term, so that’s what we need to adjust. It’s just a formality and actually I noticed it when I was reading it. So then next year there will be an election for two more. Then there will be every year an election for directors. That’s the way it should work. OK. So there’s just a misprint in your books, it says one year, and the three of us you elected last year should be on the board at this meeting. Any other discussion . . .

 

? Is this the first time that this came up, wasn’t that always in there, for one year term.

 

John Holzschuh: Well, because of the transition, and maybe Joe would want to talk a little bit about that you know you had the transition last year away from . . ?

 

Joe Jacobson: One thing if people don’t go to the microphone to ask your question, I know it’s a pain, but then you won’t get you comments in the minutes and we’ll end up with dead spots in the minutes. That’s the only reason we ask you to go to the microphones even if you have a powerful voice is you won’t be in the minutes. If you all remember there’s triggering events that would turn control of the association from the developer to you the owners. That trigger happened last October after we did the annual meeting. Previously all board members were elected for two year terms. We elected the three board members last year. I instructed Vicky to have three ballots put out knowing this triggering event was coming. In the disclosure book, it says after this event happens that you the owners take over control of the board, it says three members should be elected to a one year term. I missed that. It should have been a two year. And quite honestly, the way it’s written in there, if we would have done three to a one year term and two the next year to a two year term, all five would be getting done at the same time, if we follow that. Not a good situation. You want some continuity in your board members now that you have all five. So the five of us sat down there, actually the six of us because I’m not a board member, for the last hour trying to figure out the easiest way to remedy this and what the board came up with is instead of the three being on a one year term, if we made this a two year term from today we elect two more next year you have all five of your board members and they’re on alternate terms. So, the way it’s written they would have come up at the same time. We would have done an election again but then we would have done an election in two years for all five of them and it didn’t seem to make any sense to us, so that’s what this is all about. We do have it up here if anybody cares to look at it afterward. It’s just simply trying to fix that. So if there’s any further discussion go to a microphone and otherwise if someone would stand up and make a second to that motion at a microphone. 

 

? I second it.

 

John Holzschuh: Thank you. Yes we need a vote, so one per unit all in favor?

 

Aye

 

John Holzschuh: Any opposed?

 

Silence

 

John Holzschuh: Motion carried. Thank you. (Pause) 

 

2007 improvements we reroofed three villas and one golf villa (Pause – owner comment “talk louder, we can’t hear you”.) Villa 2, Villa 20, Villa 12 & Golf Villa 2. Installed an automatic bromine feeder in the whirlpool; repainted golf villas 2, 3, 4 & 5; installed fascia in condos 1, 5, 6, 7, 14 & 15; replaced p-tech units in 10 of the units; DVDs in all 104 areas; 10 new dishwashers; dining room chairs in presidential units 2b, 3b, 20b & 36 (?); ceiling fans are about half way complete putting fans in, replacing the old chandeliers; it’s a light fan & fan, I think a lot of you have seen some of them, we started a year ago on them and we should be finished very shortly with all of them. Any comments about that? (None)

 

2008 Capital – We are once again working with Focus on Energy and replacing / putting in 32 fireplaces, we have 16 of them in. We are going to go to a card system instead of keys, the keys will be gone within about a month, so you’ll be getting cards when you check in and will be like a regular resort so to speak, you’ll be finished with keys. Water heaters we’re looking to turn over about four of them; painting we’re going to do three buildings again; the dehumidification system in the rec center we want to move on that at the end of the year and update that; we’ll continue to put in dishwashers, we’ll put ten more in and we’re going to do a number of mattresses and we’re targeting two to three additional roofs to do, and we want to replace pool covers and put in a new robot to clean the pool. And once again the pool covers are Focus on Energy savings, because when you get that on you save a lot, a lot of energy. Then we have a couple other things, some valve work, etc. and there’s another issue we’re going to be changing some of the other covers and things to comply with some OSHA standards we have to meet in 2008. Ok, any questions about any of the expenditures? Yes sir.

 

Owner ? – With this Focus on Energy, my question is, with the water heaters that are being replaced now I believe that’s natural gas, am I correct?

 

John Holzschuh – Some are electric, there are a few gas ones but they aren’t natural gas and we are looking at that with WPS.

 

Owner ? Continued – OK so that’s being addressed with Focus on Energy. And then has the on-demand water heaters been looked into vs. the central?

 

John Holzschuh – You’re talking right out of our book, we’re definitely looking at that also.

 

Owner ? Continued – OK

 

John Holzschuh – That’s why we really don’t have, we’re in the process of that right now, we’re working with WPS, Mike Vileskie , and we’re working with a gentleman, Tony, I can’t remember his last name, from Focus and then we’re going to walk around and exactly measure off with these folks how we bring the pipe in and take a look at that and then how would we plug the meters in, and we want to get the best energy efficient piece of equipment we can possibly get in here.

 

Owner ? Continued – And so to date, what has been the efficiency looking as far as the on-demand water heaters vs. the central?

 

John Holzschuh – Joe is in contact with Design Air and he’ll talk about that. 

 

Joe Jacobson – John and the staff here have been working with WPS and the people from Focus on Energy. I used to be a sheet metal worker, so I have a little background as a heating contractor, I have an engineer coming out from Design Air in Kimberly next week who walked the property with me, not that I don’t think that WPS knows what they’re doing, but I figure the more ideas we can get on this the better. We’re going to be looking at on-demand as you say; I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but the U.S. is basically the only place in the world they use water heaters with tanks. Everybody else uses on-demand, so you only heat the water when you turn the hot water faucet on. Nobody else heats it 24 / 7, 365 days of the year in these tanks. They do cost a little bit more so we’re going to have to do that analysis with the engineers and with WPS & Focus on Energy and look at what makes the most sense. I’m assuming the on-demand will. Currently, I think all of your villas except for four of them are heating the hot water with electric, which is not the most effective way. Twenty years ago when they were built it was. WPS is also working and looking at what it takes to bring the natural gas in to each of these villas. We should have that price in a week or so. So the units we put the fireplace inserts in, the old fireplaces had eight inch open vent, basically all the time an eight inch hole out the wall in each unit. They’re coming in doing a blower test on those units vs. units that have not been changed. That’ll tell us how much we saved by that and may also qualify us for, they typically do not give you any money if you switch to an electrical appliance, but in this case, if it’s savings, they will, but they need to do the blower test and see the actual savings. Blower test will also tell if we have leaky windows, if we need to caulk anywhere, seal in the attic. Those are all the kinds of things you can do fairly reasonably to save energy and as we all know at home I don’t see it getting cheaper in the foreseeable future until they figure out an alternate source and that may not happen in our lifetime, so we need to figure out ways to use less.

 

Owner ? Continued – Thank you, and in addition, I’d like to know if you’ve had any estimates on the time of length of the payoff on the potential of this changeover to the on-demands.

 

Joe Jacobson – Well that will be part of the whole thing we’ll have to analyze once they look at it, we’ll have to prepare that and look at that and make the prudent choice at that time.

 

Owner ? Continued – And then how is the channel of our knowledge of that survey going to be to us?

 

Joe Jacobson – We as the management company bring that information to the board of directors you elected and they give me direction. I don’t spend your money without your board of directors approving it on capital projects.

 

Owner ? Continued – Correct. And then is there a web page or something where we can find these up-to-date pieces of information?

 

Joe Jacobson – There presently isn’t, but that isn’t a bad idea. The owner’s association currently does not have a web page, to my knowledge. Correct? They are working on it Vicky says. 

 

Owner ? – There’s a lot of roof space on all the villas, are you guys considering solar power?

 

Joe Jacobson – Well that’s interesting. When I was talking to the engineer yesterday at Design Air he said they just looked at a brand new line of solar that is much more efficient and reasonably priced then what the old units were. They just looked at it, but it’s one of the things he wants to talk to me about when he comes out here next week, so we’ll turn over any stone.

 

Owner ? - I got a question about the key cards. I work in a company where their identification badges are also the timecards. Is that going to be where your association cards are going to open the villas?

 

Joe Jacobson – No, they’ll be coded to open the villas when you check in, just like in a hotel because they’re done for a certain stay if you’re going to be here for a weekend or for a whole week, they expire then at that time so nobody can reenter or do anything. That’s why they are coded like that because you don’t want anybody, that’s one of the issues quite honestly when we bring the insurance companies out here each year to quote our insurance what they don’t like about the old metal keys, if someone leaves with one in their pocket we cut a new one so the next guest can have one, but how many of those old ones are out there floating around. 

 

Owner ? – That wasn’t my question.

 

Joe Jacobson – Yeah, these expire, you know, if you check in today and you’re leaving tomorrow, it will get you in there until tomorrow at 11:00 and then the thing doesn’t work anymore. We have to recode it for the next guest.

 

Owner ? – Sorry sir, but that was not my question. My question is talking about cards. Are you going to have to go up to the counter to get a card like you get a key, or are you going to be able to use your identification association card, which is going to by a computer, say you got this week for that time then the computer . .

 

Joe Jacobson – Your ownership card would still, number one I don’t know what the ownership card looks like, so but it would have to have a magnetic strip and it would still have to be run through the programmer to program it to do that so you do have to go to the check in counter anyway so your answer is no, you’ll get a card at check in because it has to be programmed at that point.

 

Owner ? – Thank You

 

Joe Jacobson – If you’re asking about, OK, OK, that’s fine . .

 

Owner ? – My question is, are you planning on upgrading your television sets to high definition, flat panel LCD? (Background laughter.) John Holzschuh responded, owner comments ‘can’t hear’.

 

Joe Jacobson – John said that every new television set we have bought, that has been done with as we replaced them. If you’ve been watching the cable commercials just recently, we do have cable out here so the tv sets will all work. Cable is now advertising every television will work no matter how old it is. But we aren’t silly, so as we replace them we are replacing them with the newer style flat panels and so forth. We’re also wise with your money; we’re not throwing away working televisions that still do the job for us. OK?

 

Owner ? - OK, thank you.

 

Joe Jacobson – As long as, one more question, then we’ll go to the financials after this.

 

Owner ? – There’s a lot of resorts we’ve been to know they’re putting in safes in all the units, have you guys considered that?

 

Joe Jacobson – Not to my knowledge, but it’s something we can take note of and talk about at our next board meeting for some place to spend the money. (Some laughter.) If people want them, let your board members know and make some recommendations and we entertain any ideas people have.

 

Owner ? – I’ve been in every meeting since I’ve been an owner, and about three years ago you told us you were going to put hairdryers into each unit at a cost of $15 - $18 a piece and I haven’t seen one yet. In fact, when I came the next two years, I never brought my hairdryer because they were supposed to be here.

 

Joe Jacobson – Vicky is saying we have ones you can use, but I do think I do remember it was on the list of things to get done at that time. I don’t know why it wasn’t done, why we didn’t get to that. Is that something, just a show of hands, people want in the units? Hairdryers?

 

Owner ? – If ? spend the money, I think we should have them.

 

Joe Jacobson – That is correct that you say that, but we put this list out here and sometimes other things happen that necessitate that, we also don’t have a magic ball, if something breaks that costs a lot of money or there’s a wind storm or something like that and you have to do some repairs we don’t necessarily put the association in a deficit position either. I don’t remember why they weren’t done, but I do believe you are correct they were on the list. Amy?

 

Owner (Amy) – I just want to say when I stay in a lot of the resorts, they have the hairdryers not in every unit but they have them and you call or when you check in, and say I’d like a hairdryer and they immediately bring them to you. Maybe that would save a little money not having them in every unit but yet having them there available, just a thought.

 

Joe Jacobson – And we do have that now, but we should maybe have a better, maybe the information should be easier to see in the unit or something. So we do have them. And if you want them in every unit that’s something we clearly can do.

 

Owner ? – I understand that the timeshares are no longer being marketed and I’m curious as to why the owners were not notified of this decision?

 

Joe Jacobson – Well the owners association never marketed the timeshares, the developer marketed the timeshares. So we quit selling them, and I think you were made aware of it, we quit selling them a few years ago then we had a company called Roman come in, I introduced them at the meeting a few years ago, they sold them for awhile. They decided that they were getting out of the timeshare selling business. Since the advent of the no call list, it’s become cost prohibitive.

 

Owner ? – How do we expect to generate income?

 

Joe Jacobson – You mean for the association?

 

Owner ? – Well, to maintain the property?

 

Joe Jacobson – Well, first of all the existing owners are out there, they pay their dues.

 

Owner ? – That’s my other question; I’m hearing from various sources that there are many owners who are choosing to not pay their dues. Are we expected to absorb those delinquencies?

 

Joe Jacobson – I’m going to be going over the financials shortly and that’ll be in there. 

 

Owner ? – For the handicap accessible condos, how about putting shower chairs in one of the showers and also hand held shower heads that would be easier for people to take showers.

 

Joe Jacobson – Are you talking about in the handicap units. 

 

Owner ? – Yes

 

Joe Jacobson – Yes, we actually brought an architect in to design those so they were done properly and I believe that is the requirement. Yeah, John has a copy of the blueprints and we didn’t just decide to do that. We felt we’d bring a professional in and make sure it was done properly. Yes Mam.

 

Owner ? – I had a concern about smoking and non smoking units. I thought I had heard at a previous owners meeting that we were going to non smoking units.

 

Joe Jacobson – I believe what you heard was we cut the number of smoking units, is that correct Vicky? We cut the number down; I don’t think it’s going to be more than the next season where the states going to tell us what to do in that regard anyway.

 

Owner ? – I have a big concern with that. We were placed in a smoking unit and it was bad, it was very bad and I’m concerned with having any smoking units with the excess cleaning that’s involved and possible damage with burning holes in carpet.

 

Joe Jacobson – Your recommendation would be that we do not the smoking units.

 

Owner ? – Right, if people want to smoke they can go outside on a patio or whatever. We’ve been to plenty of other resorts where they are not smoking and they just provide ashtrays for the patios.

 

Joe Jacobson – Ah, what’s the feeling, one of your board members just asked it would be interesting to see a show of hands so the board had an idea what you feel. How many people would like to see 100% smoke free? (Some laughter.) That looks pretty strong. How many would like to leave it the way it is where there are a few smoking? (Some laughter.) I’m sure your board of directors will take that under advisement. That’s their call.

 

Joe Jacobson – OK, if you turn to the back page of your financial. There’s a couple of things here, if you look under the 2008 budget numbers, you’ll see under the third line down, late fee income, there’s a zero. Later on if you look where bad debts is it’s down about eight or ten lines you’ll see a zero. That was done at one of our board members suggestion. Really what we did in the late fee income in the association and what we have to right off in bad debt due to a bankruptcy, a death or something that’s uncollectible we never know until the end of the year. We used to basically take a guesstimate every year so what the suggestion from your board was is that we not budget for those because it’s an unknown factor. At the end of the year we have what we have, that’s what we end up with at the end of the year. So I just wanted to make it clear why those are zero. And you’ll see if you look at late fee income 2007 budget and actual income you’ll see why they chose not to budget that. We took a guesstimate based on previous years of $108,000 and more owners paid timely, to get back to that earlier question, we had much less late fees collected last year so that makes a paper difference only in income, the budgeted difference in income. But it makes your income look less, when in reality that was just kind of a number picked based on previous history. So that’s why those two, there’s not a mistake there, we just decided not to budget those. The things that are written in your rider are some, we’ll go through some of those. There’s some differences there and we’ll go through why. I want to start up with on the expense line, well let’s go up to revenue. Can you see your revenue is very close to budget. You can see that your interest income is very close to budget, and then of course your late fee income is down and as I said, late fees, we don’t know if people are going to be early or late so that’s a guesstimate. So revenue is down only in the budget, simply if we worked out an actual cash it was down in that estimate of late fee income. You go to wages & salaries, we are over budget last year in wages, you go over to the right hand column you’ll see in 2008 we are budgeting a substantial decrease. The actual of 2007 is less than 2006, we budgeted a bigger decrease than we got. We thought we would be checking in people down at the rec center by June, we thought the implementation of the new computer system that John spoke about earlier would go easier than it did, we had to move everybody, all 5000 owners, from the old system to the new, check that data. It just didn’t go as smoothly as we thought, so we didn’t get the front desk moved down there until October and didn’t realize all the anticipated savings we thought we would. Even though it was a decrease from 2006. You see we’re budgeting $555,240 this year. First quarter we’re actually $5,000 under budget on our labor for the first quarter, so we should have no problem hitting that budget number and actually exceeding it, and that comes from many of the changes we made. We just took longer to get the changes done last year and I apologize for that, everybody worked hard, but it didn’t go as quickly as we thought. You go down a few more lines, if you go the right where the writing is it says premium increase. There’s two things there, its group health insurance. We did have a big premium increase, we also had more people participating. That’s always, apparently we have to offer it to every employee, you have an employee / spouse that splits up or something and now that spouse normally is covered by their other spouses, whatever reason, besides getting a little older, they need it, it’s out there, they’re offered, we had both more participation and we had an increase in rates. 401k, we had more participation. More people who decided they want to participate in putting some of their money away for retirement so that raised that. And ah . . (End of first side of tape; other side of tape blank.)

 

(Beginning of second tape; one side of second tape blank.)

 

Owner ? - . . . have nametags or something on to address them as staff to look a little bit more professional as we’re coming in. And yesterday after we checked into villa 14 we decided to go over and use the pools. On the way over I’m picking up little nails in the driveway on the way over, and I’m thinking, I just drove over these nails? I mean this isn’t making me real happy, so I picked an example of it up and threw the rest in the dumpster and took it in as we went in to go swimming inside and said I found this in the road, thinking maybe someone would go out in check or if we need to sweep or find, I don’t know if it was from doing the soffit (sp?) or what work had been done, but they were little finishing nails. And there wasn’t any addressed or anything applied to it when I told them about these nails, so we decided to go in and go swimming, and I saw they must have been doing some maintenance in the pool area that it looked like it was fresh stained or refinished and some of the metal plating had been repainted, the black looks really nice since we’ve been out here two, three weeks ago, but as we got into the pool, I mean there’s like rust or it’s dirty looking in the pool and the whirlpool. It’s not clean, fresh looking. And the water has been extremely cold so they must have drained or refilled it, you would think the pool should be clean going in. This morning we went over to go swimming, and as we’re getting into the rec center pool, there’s all little hard pieces of plastic broken throughout the pool. Well these are sharp edges, if you’re out there to exercise or walk in the water, you can cut your feet or poke this into your foot. So we picked up more than a half a dozen of these pieces and laid them up on the edge as we’re out walking in the water this morning. But I think we need to be a little more conscious of this rec center and maintenance and our physical appearance out there.

 

John Holzschuh – Thank you. The nails obviously came, we’ve had people working on the roofs and the fascia, etc. and probably some of the snow and hauling trucks in and out, but that is our problem to get it picked up. As far as the dress code, everybody should be wearing a nametag, and if they aren’t, you need to ask for Vicky Stangel when you’re here and she will address that and we can deal with the dress code that way. As far as the pool, you should have been able to go to the rec center attendant and ask for maintenance and they would have come and cleaned and picked up anything you want. You said you were there this morning? OK thank you, I’ll follow up on it myself.

 

Joe Jacobson – That brings up one of the earlier questions, that is one of the reasons that they did go to a seminar a couple weeks ago, a gentleman brought up bromine was basically sold to ? industry as something that was going to be way better than chlorine. We don’t feel it does as good a job. Even after you vacuum it and scrub, you need to do a lot of hand scrubbing it gives that dirty look eventhough the water is clean until you physically scrub it off. That’s one of the reasons to go along with the gentleman’s comment earlier, bromine was supposed to be the big new thing that you didn’t need to worry about storage and danger and anything and do the same job. It doesn’t appear that it is doing the same job at all and that is one of the reasons we’re addressing that, to along with gentleman’s question earlier. Yes?

 

Owner ? – You said you’re getting our cards down at the pool now? Did you do anything, I always brought up, two years ago about you were looking at parking down there, and now you’re going to have more cars coming down there?

 

Joe Jacobson – There is additional parking added already if you look along the side over there.

 

Owner ? – Yeah, but you’re going to bring more cars come and get their cards. I talked to your guy cutting grass and he said he don’t why they need all that grass. It would look nice if they would have parking and it would be easier on the snow removal and it would look nice for people to park and the people that are there don’t have to worry about their parking spot.

 

Joe Jacobson – Well that’s why we did add parking on the side, all the way, we took out a bunch of grass and added parking.

 

Owner ? – Oh

 

Joe Jacobson – You go down there and look and then let us know after you look if you still don’t think it’s enough but we added six stalls down there on the side. When you come up along the side, not out front because there’s not much room out in front when you have cars across from you backing out of those villas right at your cars, but if you came out the front door and turned left and take that little path out of the rec center, we added six stalls, they come out almost all the way up to the corner. So take a look at that and let us know if you think that’s enough or not, anybody, not just this gentleman.

 

Owner ? – Well I was talking with him and the first two you got coming, the first two hotel parking, you got a straight shot, and the guy that does your lawn and stuff, he said he don’t understand why they got to have these, somewhere out there you got a fire hydrant, yes, you got to have so much around. You put a tree there and it would be so much simpler to have it nice and straight as far as plowing snow, make it look nice, you can park more cars right in front of there. 

 

Joe Jacobson – So you’re advocating like over towards where the play area is we add another parking lot there.

 

Owner ? – Well on that side of the pool where you go into the entrance. If you had a straight shot it would be easier for plowing snow, and you’re cutting grass all the time there, that would be a lot less grass cutting and trimming there.

 

Joe Jacobson – Well and you also have the expense of putting in the parking lot too, and that’s not free, but we definitely will look at that.

 

Owner ? – Because people are coming, the people from the highway want to come down here and park and you’re going to have more cars. It was brought up two years ago I know we mentioned it.

 

Joe Jacobson – Yeah, and we did add some parking but if it’s not enough we can definitely look at that. I do know that is an issue when you stay out in the golf villas that you can’t walk to the pool. (Pause) Oh, and the other thing, mam, before, the plastic you found in the pool, that shouldn’t have happened, but throwing a rope out there that cleans it, I use one at home, hopefully that would solve that problem. It should have been vacuumed anyway, John will get to the bottom of that, but it’s vacuumed everyday so I don’t quite understand what happened there. Go ahead sir.

 

Owner ? – I don’t want to refute what anyone says, but I think you’re also entitled to hear something good about your organization. I only live fairly close here and my family and I take advantage of the health facilities and we play some golf when our sons from out of state are here and we get involved with a number of the wedding receptions, and some of my out-of-state friends really comment on how well they do these wedding receptions. They handled it quite well. I think if you on occasion come to a (applause) . . . I think if you come to some of their specials, I think you’ll be treated quite well and you know it’s a small town, we’re not glitzy, but they do a fine job, so I think you’re entitled to hear a couple of good points too.  (Applause)

 

Joe Jacobson – Thank you, not for me, but for the staff out here because they’re the ones that do all that. To go along with that, we did do over twice the weddings in 2007 then in 2006, we’ll be doing even more this year, and do more of this type of business with doing what this gentleman just said. You have to do a good job, people have to be well taken care of. You look where we used to sell timeshare, you see the chapel. A lot of good things taking place. A lot of great things taking place, so thank you, very much for the comment. I like to hear both the positive and the negative. We can’t get any better if we don’t hear the negative, but it sure is nice to hear the positive once in a while. Mam?

 

Owner ? – We were a little disappointed last night that you didn’t have the Wine & Cheese reception. We always enjoyed that as a way to meet other timeshare owners and RCI members and we wondered if you are going to have that again or if not, if you would consider designating a room where RCI owners and members could meet?

 

Joe Jacobson – Ah, I’ll take the flack for this one. The board basically looked at the cost and asked the people who worked it for the resort about the number of attendees and just felt for the limited participation, but it’s your dollars you the owners so if you want to give them a different message, if you want to give them the message you’d like to see it, you’re welcome to that. That’s why the decision was made by your board so again.

 

Owner ? – It was never large, but I think the people who attended really enjoyed it.

 

Joe Jacobson – Let me ask this question to the board. If the resort put it on and there was a small fee to attend just to cover the cost would you be interested in that or not?

 

Board ? – Sure

 

Joe Jacobson – OK

 

Owner ? – I have another question. I understand we have a new person in the timeshare office named Crystal, is she here today? 

 

Joe Jacobson – No she is not, they said she could not arrange babysitting.

 

Owner ? – You have a lot of grandmas here. (Laughter)

 

Joe Jacobson – Relayed a comment from an owner who couldn’t be heard. Owner commented he likes where the restaurant has been moved to. Joe: I will have to agree. We got sold that whole idea of moving the restaurant down below the bar a number of years ago by the guys who were managing for us at that time, but it’s still our decision. We have to approve it.  They had a really good concept, it just didn’t work out very well. I was an advocate shortly after of moving back, unfortunately we had to wait until certain bookings for those rooms that are booked sometimes two years out played out, but we quit taking bookings and got it all switched around and moved back and I think it works much nicer that way now. I think it works out nice for everybody, but again, feel free to give us your comments. That’s how we make this place better. You know, customer comments. Thank You. Mam?

 

Owner ? – I just wanted to say we did try out the Willow restaurant Friday night and we had excellent service and superb food there. It’s been a very nice addition to come out here for it and we also missed having the get together, the reception, for the wine & cheese and I think it is a good idea to have something like that or some activity especially on this weekend when a lot of the owners are out here, even if it’s just an informal get together in the rec center or something. I don’t know if it was the expense of having the three or four bartenders set up out in the hall and having to use space out here that added to the cost, I mean it’s something that could be set up as the other lady had suggested, in one of the rooms or rec center as a help yourself or get together to. But we were a little disappointed just walking in that there wasn’t anything for a packet when we checked in this weekend, saying anything for a get together for the owners. It’s something you look forward to meet everybody. It might only be the one time of the year you see some people out here and it’s nice to keep up the camaraderie and it gets people coming back out or meeting or planning to do things. 

 

Joe Jacobson – So you’re suggesting if we just designated a place to have a meeting and didn’t go through all the expense of staffing it as fully, but gave you all a place to meet and let you know where it was, that that would suffice?

 

Owner ? – Yeah, I think it’s just matter of having a designated time or location where you can join up or meet each other to see who’s out here for the weekend when we come out for the meeting.

 

Joe Jacobson – OK. The board is listening, I’m sure they’ll take that under advisement. Yes sir.

 

Owner ? – Yes, back on this wine & cheese. (Laughter)

 

Joe Jacobson – Seems to be the big topic today.

 

Owner ? – Yes it is because it’s very important to lots of people here. You have no problem spending all kinds of money for a couple handicapped people, we weren’t asked about that. (Groans from the owners.)

 

Joe Jacobson – That’s a legal issue, the association could get sued over that under Americans With Disabilities Act, but go ahead, go ahead.

 

Owner ? – I don’t know how much it cost, but you’re talking pennies per owner for wine & cheese and everybody enjoys themselves. That’s one of the reasons I come here for this.

 

Joe Jacobson – OK, and the reason I can tell you, I was sitting in the meeting when the board decided not to do that, they heard how many people attended and every owner pays. And you’re right it might only be pennies for every owner, but they felt at that time that with the small amounts of participation it wasn’t cost effective. Why don’t we do a show of hands here, just like we did before? How many people want to continue the wine & cheese on Friday nights if they allow us to do that? (Pause for show of hands.) OK. And how many think we should not do it and just give them an area to meet and get together? (Pause for show of hands.) Would it be fair to say as a board that we try to set some place up for people to get together and do something, have some type of event on the Friday night? All right. Yes sir?

 

Owner ? – Would you take a show of hands how many people were here last evening?

 

Joe Jacobson – How many people were here last evening? (Pause for show of hands.) We can take more questions or at any point we can take a motion to adjourn too.

 

Owner ? – I’ll be quick again. I think was it in the Fox Tails, but as far as the contact information for the board members, is it in the Fox Tails or how do we, email addresses?

 

Joe Jacobson – We’ll put it on the web page and in the Fox Tails.

 

Owner ? – OK And the web page address is?

 

Joe Jacobson – It’s not quite up yet. If you want their contact information get it up here, it will be in the next newsletter and also in that next newsletter will be the website when it’s up. Should be up shortly. Yes sir?

 

Owner ? – I have two questions. We used to have an RCI rep, would come to all the meetings. Is it possible to get one here next year?

 

Joe Jacobson – We’d get one here every year if they would come. Sometimes they have them available and sometimes not. They’re like, it seems like every other business, our rep keeps getting switched and they seem give them larger and larger territories. We always like it when they come to because if people have RCI questions, we’re really not qualified to answer most of those. We do the best we can, but we’re not experts on it.

 

Owner ? – Right, and that’s why I’d like to have someone here too. My other question is I’d like to meet with John after the meeting. I can tell him how to do the wine and cheese for free. (Applause from owners.)

Joe Jacobson – Well that’s good. I told you the best ideas come from out there. Free. There’s no better than free. 

 

Owner ? – There was an introduction in the beginning of the meeting from John, but I heard a lot about Vicky. Like what does Vicky do, what does each of the board members do, what are there positions and titles?

 

Joe Jacobson – John works here full time. He manages the property overall. He works for me as the management company of your association, he also works for me as the vice president of the whole property, so he oversees this whole property. Ann Francis is an accountant who works for me. She’s an owner out here at Fox Hills. She also is on your board of directors, she does your accounting, she’s a CPA. You remember a number of years ago we centralized accounting back in our office in Menasha where we do several of our businesses. Some of you with longer memories, we cut some wages out here, cut some accounting staff, not just for the association but for the resort as well, so that’s Ann right there. Vicky is down on the end here. Vicky is operations manager down at the rec center. And that encompasses a lot of things. We consolidated, you remember when Lisa Black was up here, as your owners rep. The check in, check out and owners rep have all been consolidated down there, so Vicky is in charge of everything day to day for the association, under John, but she’s down there day to day. Every day down at the rec center running things down there. She takes care of the owners rep questions, or her staff, as well as the check in and check out. The other gentlemen here, the three gentlemen on either side of me that are seated don’t work here. They’re the board members you elected last year and continue to serve you, they’re your board of directors from you the owners but both Vicky and Ann are owners as well.  Ann’s not employed here but she works for me. Vicky is employed here, but she is an owner as well and they each own units just like you do. And of course the other three have to own units to be elected to the board members. The other two were appointed by me when we still appointed members before you took over last October so next year there’ll be an election where you elect all five, two more board members so you have all five of them.

 

John Holzschuh – Are you looking for more personal information, do you want them to introduce themselves and talk a little bit? Otherwise you can meet with them after, they would be glad to. 

 

Owner ? – No, I was just considering what the balance is between the management and the owners, and it looks like there’s three to four. 

 

John Holzschuh – Three to two.

 

Owner ? - I mean because everyone is working for Joe. 

 

John Holzschuh – It will be five to zero. All for you.

 

Joe Jacobson – Personally right now the board is comprised of five people. The board tells me what to do. You hired me as your management company and I get my orders from them. For years and years, and a lot of you know this because you’ve talked to me, the developer controlled the board of directors. He got appoint three, you got to elect two. There was triggering things, many different things if you read your bylaws in your disclosure book that would have triggered us turning over control of the association. That happened last October, actually that’s why I had three elected last year instead of two, knowing that was going to happen. Since October you’ve had three board members to the developer two, but both of the board members that are left are owners out here, and next year you’ll elect two more, so if they want to run and you want to elect them, or whoever else wants to run, but for right now it’s a three to two, I don’t get to vote in any meetings. I get to say what I think would work for your association and help make recommendations based on John & I talking with Focus on Energy, when I bring out this engineer I’ll bring data with me and maybe bring the engineer to a meeting. I’ll make recommendations based on the work I do, but then they tell me what to do. Their really the bosses.

 

Owner ? – Three of them do collect their wage from you.

 

Joe Jacobson – No, two.

 

Owner ? – John?

 

Joe Jacobson – No, John’s not on the board. Not anymore. He was your president until; at this meeting, if you read your disclosure book, its official that you took over, the triggering event was last October at this meeting. I elected three early because I didn’t want to hear about it and besides it was fair anyway. I mean it was partially, it was going to happen last fall, so I took one of my people off last October when that happened, eventhough I didn’t need to yet, and seated three of your board members. That’s why we elected three last year. So John is the Vice President of the whole resort, works for me, he’s no longer president of the association, the boards going to have to elect a new one after today, the board will have to do that. So we have Dave, Mike & Andy are all members you elected last year. Ann and Vicky are left from when I appointed them, but they also are owners and next year we need two people to run for elections, so think about that. It will come out in the Fox Tails like always, asking for people to run. So, are they employed for us, yes, but they also are owners and you have a three to two majority. That’s your question, there’s three non-employees vs. two employees on the board right now, so you have an absolute majority. There’s a couple old board members in the crowd, even when it was three to two; Amy I saw back there, a few other people I’m sure that were on the board, there’s never ever, ever been a vote out here, since I’ve been involved, can’t say what happened when Ron Likus was here and up until when Don Miller was here, but since we took over in 1998 or 1999, we never had a vote that wasn’t five O, we’ve never rammed anything down anybody’s throat, it’s kind of counter productive. If we don’t all work together we don’t get anywhere. There was a number of years ago, I see some of you nodding your heads, some of you didn’t know if your timeshare would even be here by this time. It took a lot of hard work by all of us to get this done and we all have to work together. So, I don’t anticipate that changing whether it’s three to two, or two to three or all five that are owner elected, it really doesn’t matter, I’m hired as a management company as well, I used to be the developer and hired as the management company, I could have always been fired by the management company because that was what your board of directors did. And we all have to work together and continue to work together, so thank you. And again, anytime somebody wants to make a motion to adjourn so we can start to have a beverage and eat. (Laughter)

 

John Holzschuh – We have to do one thing first. First of all, if you take a look, we have next year’s meeting is April 18, 2009, and you’ll get information in the letter also regarding this. And then, with that said, I need to make a motion to adjourn the meeting.

 

? – I so move.

 

John Holzschuh – Second? Names? And we need to go to the mic.

 

Don Klinger –

 

Bob Bruekie – I make a motion to adjourn at this time.

 

John Holzschuh – Thank you. OK. So moved. All in favor

 

Owners – Aye

 

John Holzschuh – Opposed? Thank You