PRESENT

Rachel Dretzin, Susan Krim, Miri Navasky, Alfred Souza, Eva Thaddeus

FINANCES

Susan Krim reported on the community finances as follows:

On deposit in bank	$24,585.20
Dues to be paid	$2,400.00
Total	$26,985.20
Outstanding bills
Tom – barn management	$12,000.00
Tom – septic management	$1,514.70
Bill Bradway (?)	$1,362.00
Total	$14,876.70
Septic system expense
Bill Baldwin	$1,944.00
Bill Bradway	$1,362.00
Tom – septic management	$1,514.70
Total	$4,820.70

NOTES : Bradway had close to 1500 bill that Debbie paid. We need to clarify who is reponsible for that bill. Also we owe Carmen 1200 monthly now because of snowplowing.

SUMMARY: we have about 14,000 after everything is paid.  We’re paying close to $2000 a month for Carmen plus any additional funds for sanding. So essentially, the capital fund is at zero. We don’t get income till June again. Susan usually assigns money to thecapital fund as a percentage of what comes in in Jan and July. But at this point we’re spending it, so she can’t assign it. We’ve spent it on the sewage and the barn.  Susan is anticipating we’ll be able to start spending again after this half of the year. 

SEPTIC

Debbie had to leave her house because the septic was backing up. Tom got people in very quickly to deal with it.  The ground wasn’t frozen and they were able to take care of it in about three days, but it was a lot of work because they couldn’t locate the blockage. Finally they found the blockage right outside the kitchen: shrubs planted right outside the house had gotten into the pipes. Its fine now but we’ll need to get shrubs removed in the spring. Tom also found that one pipe was pointing up instead of down, and they’ve replaced that pipe at another angle. He told Eva the septic system is fine now and we won’t need to spend any more on it. Susan says the issue is that we had a whole new septic system put in about 7-8 years ago. The septic system itself is fine, the issue was the pipe from the house to the septic system. One thing Tom feels we should still do is pop out the septic system which you should be doing every 5-10 years and it hasn’t been done. That would be 300-500 dollars and should be done soon. The other thing is around the barn its very wet. The reason is that there is a hidden stream just near the barn. Apparently, the year before last we were 7 inches below the water table and last year we were 16 inches above the water table, which is why there was so much water. At some point in the near future we should put in a drain around the barn, otherwise the foundations of the barn may have a problem. Dig deep, put in some stones and a pipe system as Wendy and Susan did in their houses. The figure for that is $5-6k. Tom feels Carmen has the equipment and can do it for closer to $3k. Tom will get a price for us. We’ll need to do that in the next year or two., Susan thinks it’s prudent to keep it on the front burner and deal with it sooner rather than later. Susan’s going to put a diagram of the septic system up on the website.

ROAD

The road issues seem to be quite acute. Susan says at the bottom of the road, we’re down to bedrock by the barn. Eva says there’s a deep gully in the road that’s only going to get worse. This could be a bigger problem during the muddy season than it is during the frozen months. Paving the road is cost prohibitive.

Eva went back to Erik Schnackenberg for a better estimate to crown the road and also snowplow. (we assessed it was a good idea to have the same person do both.) Erik says he can’t be the person to pick up our snowplowing job since it’s too big. He stood by his original estimate of 60k to crown our entire road, which could be done over several years with him starting at the top of the road and working his way down. He says the time of year to do this May or June, and he could start this spring, but we’re not in a position to do that financially. 

We discussed getting another estimate. Erik suggested we talk to Brothers in Craryville about doing both snowplowing and plowing. Eva says she will ask Brothers for an estimate. Miri suggested we also talk to the guy who does work for Megan and Dmitri. He can’t do the road but can do the plowing, but he gave a much higher estimate. She is going to discuss the road work with him. 

While Carmen is much cheaper than anyone else we will find for plowing and we want to keep him as long as we can, here is concern about whether Carmen might undo the road work with his snowplowing, since his equipment is old. Also, there is concern that if we hire Eric to crown the road, we might offend Carmen and he might not want to plow for us anymore.  Eva will call Eric again and ask him if he knows about Carmen’s equipment specifically or if it’s just a problem with snowplowing in general.. 

Financing the road work: Funding a 60k project will mean an assessment over two years or a making this a three to five year project. That would be five years at 12k, which is 1k from everyone for five years. 

-We discuss starting the work with Judy’s hill to buy some good will. 

-Everyone agrees we have to present this to the whole community

-Alfred thinks spreading this over five years seems too much of a spread. Feels like a long time to have ongoing construction. The good thing is if you start small,  and there is damage, we’ve only spent 10k or so before we know we have a problem. 

OTHER NOTES 

Rachel suggests we gather community wide resources like plumbers and electrical to cleaning people and exterminators and put them up on the website for all to share. We discuss getting a volunteer to head that effort up. 

Eva mentions that we don’t have a plan in writing for expenditures into the future. What’s going to need doing when and rough amounts to budget for these things. Like remembering you need to clean out a septic tank every five years or repaint a barn every 25 years etc. We need to find a way to record that somewhere. 

The meeting was held remotely by video. Minutes submitted by Rachel Dretzin and Miri Navasky.