WHITE BIRCH LAKES RECREATIONAL ASSOCIATION

BOARD MEETING MINUTES

Unapproved Board Meeting Minutes Of

March 12, 2005

CALL TO ORDER

The meeting was called to order by President Marv Richardson. Present were 1st Vice President Brian Kozlowski, 2nd Vice President Scott Hayer, Directors, Marv Frayer, Al Isaac, Don Papesh, Marty Perkins, Treasurer Priscilla Moore, Secretary Donna Forman. Manager Gail White was absent. The meeting opened with a pledge to the flag and a prayer by Brian Kozlowski.

ADDITIONS TO AGENDA

Marv Richardson called for additions to the agenda and stated that he had been in touch with Robin Frisbey of Century 21 Real Estate, she was told that she would be added to the agenda at 10:00a.m. to plead her case for her seller regarding contiguous lot status, also stated that just before the adjournment, the Board would be going into closed session for some legal updates.

APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES

Brian Kozlowski moved to approve the February minutes as written. Seconded by Martv Perkins. Motion carried unanimously.

TREASURER'S REPORT

The treasurer noted that this was titled “preliminary statement” because February is the end of the fiscal year and there could be some changes, total income for the month of February was $10,605.13, expenses were $27,041.86 and the ending cash balance at February 28, was $127,926.81. Don Papesh moved to accept the treasurer’s report. Seconded by Marv Frayer. Motion carried unanimously to accept the treasurer’s report.

PRESIDENT'S REPORT

President stated that regarding the road graders that we had bid on, unfortunately there were some disgruntled people who showed up at the board meeting in Lansing, there were some questions about the bid specs so the board in Lansing decided to throw out all the bids and requested that we re-bid on them and Gail has bid on them again. It will probably be another week or two before we will find out whether or not we will get one of the graders. The President also commented about an email sent out by Gail regarding Mike Turner of the Gladwin Soil Conservation District, he has approximately 125 scouts who need to do community service. They are interested in coming into White Birch and working with our members to do whatever projects that we would like to have them work on. Al Isaac will be getting in touch with them because of his involvement with environmental issues. He will get back with Mike Turner and tell him that we welcome the help from the scouts, we are going to get a plan together of what we want to do. The project would probably be sometime in June. Dave Peterson, Superintendent of Farwell Schools is scheduled to be here at 9:30.

GUEST SPEAKER

Dave Peterson, Superintendent of Farwell Schools came to speak to the Board and members in attendance about the Bond election coming up on May 3, 2005. He passed out an information sheet to everyone present. He stated that back in February the Board of Education took a vote to go for quite a comprehensive plan to improve our schools and the total bill is $11.5 million . The total millage they are asking for is 2.75 mills. The Citizens Committee asked to shorten the length of the bond from 20 years to 15 years, saving the taxpayers $2.2 million in interest. There are a lot of needs, the buildings are fairly old, there will be two additions, one will go between the middle school and high school it is a new cafeteria/auditorium it is a dual purpose room, which will include a new gymnasium, the other addition will be two new kindergarten rooms which will be built onto the grade school. There will also be a new bus garage approved by the citizens committee. There will also be numerous improvements and updates to existing areas. He stated that they are confident that they have a good plan and don’t see going back to the voters in the next 15 years. Dave finished his presentation with questions from the Board and the members present. He left a drawing with the Board so that anyone interested could take a look at the plans and see what was going on.

CORRESPONDENCE

The President reported that there was correspondence, but he wanted to save it until the Board went into closed session.

MANAGER'S REPORT

In Gail’s absence, there was no report given.

ACCOUNTS PAYABLE

Scott Hayer made a motion to pay the bills. Seconded by Marv Frayer. Motion carried unanimously.

COMMITTEE REPORTS

CAMPGROUND - Gary Cheadle reported that we have had some winter campers, and they are required to make out a slip so that we will have a paper trail.

ENTRANCE – Greg Herndon was not available to give a report

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION COMMITTEE – Chick Witchell thanked Tina Hayer for taking over for her while she was away. There was an approval for 3 trees to be removed for Gail White, 10 trees approved for lot #152. She reported that there were new application forms for building and a new form for accessory buildings.

SEEDLINGS/SAPLINGS-Chick also gave the report per Tina Hayer on this committee, the kids had a blast at the Valentine party, they made cards and cookies to give to some of the members who may not get out as much with this depressing weather, there was also pizza and pop for the 20 children who attended. There will be no meeting today (3/12/05) because Tina is gone. The next upcoming activity is the Easter Egg Hunt on March 26 at 11:00a.m. at the clubhouse. There is still a need for the plastic Easter eggs.

FUTURES –Tom Crook reported that the committee had discussed at length about the Gladwin Conservation District, and it sounds like the Board is moving forward with that. They are curious as to how the “new” Environmental Committee has evolved. Marv Richardson suggested that there could be a meeting on Thursday March 17, involving all the chairpersons from the committees. He mentioned a website, www.arborday.org, which tells about tree planting, trimming, pruning and things of that nature. Under association investments they continued discussion on the property in the middle of our association. Another item being looked at is our boating, trying to see where we are at down the line, we have some nice boat storage that was built out of white birch, there has been various discussions from people involved in that area. He stated that Anne Hobart has been extremely busy and she sent a formal resignation which was accepted by the committee. They are currently looking for new members, and welcome anyone that is interested to contact him or a member of the committee. Marv Richardson suggested that he write an article for the birch bark and submit it to Pat Graham. Communication between the committee and the board was discussed, the question came up as to whether or not there was an active scope of work for the board that once a committee brings an idea up and it is put on a list, is it accepted, rejected, round filed or sent back to the committee for future reference. Brian Kozlowski acknowledged that the Board has to look at some type of mechanism to review the decisions that are made and to determine what action was taken.

NOMINATING – Marty Perkins stated that he has formed a committee and a meeting is scheduled for sometime in April. He also mentioned the new term limits as set forth at last year’s annual meeting and covered this in an article for the birch bark.

SECURITY – Fred Witchell reported that things have been pretty quiet, no major problems or break-ins since the last arrests. He has received five subpoenas to appear in court on April 13 regarding these arrests. Fred stated that he plans on getting together with Tom Forman on Monday to go over the progress so far on the neighborhood watch.

COMMENTS FROM THE FLOOR

President reminded everyone to state their name and lot # and allow Brian Kozlowski to check the records for membership status. At this point, Marv Richardson introduced Robin Frisbey from Century 21 Real Estate representing the Nadeemullah’s lot #754/755 which is a contiguous lot, the house and lot were listed as one unit, but the owner is trying to sell them separately, since this time, Rose Mayfield has brought a buyer to her. Through this process she was informed of the contiguous lot status. If the properties are sold separately, the owner will be required to pay the back assessments with interest from the date he purchased the property. She is here to ask the Board to consider waiving the back assessments. Marv Richardson asked Chick Witchell to provide a copy of the contiguous lot status application and a copy of the Board resolution of 12/7/85 regarding this topic, copies of both were given to Robin. There was much discussion and opinions from the Board members and from members present. Chuck Hastings, lot #78 stated that there was some misunderstanding, this is not set forth in the By-laws, it is referenced in the covenants and restrictions where it stipulates that the EPC is authorized to grant contiguous lot status. The EPC has reaffirmed this policy three times, in 1985, in 1993 and in 2000, in each of those cases it is repeated that contiguous lot status can be granted to only one lot to members in good standing and that if that contiguous lot is ever broken up, there must be back payment of all missed assessments. He stated that we have every reason to insist that back assessments be made back to 1999 when the current owner took possession of the property. A motion was made by Marty Perkins not to grant exemption on contiguous lot status for lot #754/755, seconded by Scott Hayer. Motion passed by a vote of 5 to 2. A motion was made by Scott Hayer to waive any interest due on the back assessments, seconded by Don Papesh. Motion passed unanimously. Marv Richardson informed Robin Frisbey to let the seller know that he will be responsible for the back assessments without any interest being added on. At this time a 10 minute break was called. Scott Hayer was excused from the meeting at 10:50 due to a prior commitment. Pat Zakalowski, lot #1305 asked Marty Perkins for the names of the people on the nominating committee. Matt Lucas, lot #405 had a thought about the contiguous status controversy, we need to look into the future and ask ourselves what should White Birch look like, he feels the action has to be taken to uphold the contiguous lot status. Mary Rack, lot #647 stated that she has the “front page” program and she manages a website, she is retired but spends most of her time on the website, her term of office is over the end of June and she stated that she would like to volunteer to be on a committee to upgrade the current website for White Birch. Tom Crook, lot #518, wanted to know where “front page” is going, where is it going to reside, what access is it going to have. He stated that we might want to think about having access in the clubhouse.

CLOSED SESSION-Motion was made by Brian Kozlowski to go into closed session, seconded by Marv Frayer.

BACK IN SESSION- Meeting was called back into session at 11:45a.m.

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

EPC Forms-A motion was made by Marty Perkins to approve the EPC forms, seconded by Al Isaac. Don Papesh brought up an issue of reducing the from from 3 pages to 2 pages. Chick thought the form should go back to the committee; the Board did not want to take this action since it had been sent back once. An amendment was made to withdraw item “f” from type of structure on the first page, to remove the heading on the third page and to delete “fence, kennel, etc.” from item #6 on the third page under site plan. Motion carried unanimously.

Accessory Buildings-A motion was made by Marty Perkins to accept the Accessory Building regulations, seconded by Don Papesh. Motion carried unanimously.

NEW BUSINESS

Mileage increase to State and Federal guidelines-Marv Richardson stated that up to this point we have been paying the rate of $.375 the State and Federal guidelines have gone up to $.405 and it seems only fair in light of the increase in fuel, that if we are expecting people to do a lot of driving for the Association, they should be compensated accordingly. A motion was made by Marv Frayer to increase the mileage to $.405, seconded by Don Papesh. Motion carried unanimously.

Anne Hobart Resignation-Marv Richardson stated that the Board had received a letter of resignation from Anne Hobart from the Futures Committee, since her resignation has already been accepted by the committee there is no further action.

ADJOURNMENT

A motion was made by Marv Frayer to adjourn, seconded by Al Isaac. Motion carried unanimously. Meeting adjourned at 12:10p.m.

Respectfully Submitted,

Donna Forman

Secretary