Amendment Votes Q/A
1/5/2019
Question: Why are we making changes to the covenant?
Answer: To Make us compliant with the State Statutes and to establish a voting procedure for changes to the bylaws.
Question: How much increase in road fees are being discussed?
Answer: The actual amount that the road fees will be raised is entirely up to the community to agree upon and then vote into the bylaws.
Question: What is with all this Legal talk instead of just quoting a set fee?
Answer: (Board President Response) Our efforts are to find a legal way to change our by-laws so that change can become possible. As it is now the only change that can be made is with a 2/3 vote of our 821 possible votes ( one vote per lot). So it takes 548 positive votes to change anything in our by-laws or covenants. Our road dues are spelled out in our covenants so the only change to that takes 548 positive votes (a near impossible task as we are discovering) . I can assure you that the current challenge we are facing is not due to your board ignoring its due diligence or not putting forth the effort to communicate effectively. We have spent many personal hours visiting lawyers, discussing at the annual meeting, getting input from the community, preparing, and writing draft after draft until the most simple and effective solution was agreed upon.
These amendments are not just some legal like rules we cobbled together but are based on the state of North Carolina planned community act rules that we must abide by. We cannot just change things without the legal system involvement . Not only would that be the wrong way to conduct business, we WILL be sued and all money WILL be returned that was collected over the 12.50 that is currently spelled out in our by-laws. This has happened to Crystal Beach in the past.
Due to the vast number of property owners in Crystal Beach the only way for us to gain feedback and inform our property owners is at the Annual meeting, once a month Board meetings, and our mailings. Please, please come to any of the once a month board meetings and voice concerns there, we need that.
So in conclusion, this vote is only to change the by-laws so that changes such as road dues can be voted on at the annual meeting or by mail for all property owners that cannot attend. Note that if we are successful in changing our covenants to provide us with a means to change things in our by-laws such as road dues it will only be changed with a majority vote of all property owners that return a vote either by mail or at the annual meeting and as you can see in the proposed change the amount that can be voted on for the road dues will have a cap of an amount of up to 12.50 as adjusted to inflation from 1960 to the present year” ( max that can be voted on at an annual meeting would be 12.50 x inflation rate of the year the vote takes place) or the CPI calculator on the us gov web site. This states 12.50 in 1960 = 106.00 today. But please remember this is a cap and only a cap and all fees (road and beach) must be less than this . The amount that will be put forth to be voted on will be what we need to survive and be determined by what is spent from the previous years and will be a data driven decision. ( as of now this would be less than half of this amount) and also to remember that whatever the amount put forth will be a suggested amount and only be effective with a majority vote of the property owners that respond either at the annual meeting or by mail.
However all this is mute and not possible until we get the desperately needed 548 positive votes to change our covenants to allow us to make a change to anything at all.
That is why the current change is only phase 1 and we cannot even discuss road fees or changing them if this is not successfully accomplished. We need 548 positive votes from a possible 821 and to date (11 Jan 2019) only 205 votes have been returned and 174 of them are positive. My frustration is that I feel like we have not communicated effectively enough for all to take this seriously.
Please join us at the Monthly meetings at 10 am second Saturday of each month as we try to preserve, maintain and improve Crystal Beach for our generation and the generations that will follow us. I know how important this is for me and my family which I plan on being here for generations to come. I feel like we all want the same thing for Crystal Beach, to survive, maintain, and even improve. So please help all of us, join in, vote, participate and lets enjoy Crystal Beach together.