2023 Updates

June's meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, June 7 at 6pm at the Village Hall on Flaggland Dr.

Agenda:

• Financial update
• Decide on park updates
• Discuss pond maintenance (new vendor and other options)
• New President Needed

We set a budget of $10,000 for park updates to include:  patching and sealing the basketball and tennis courts, adding a pickleball net adjustment to the tennis court, and beginning the process of putting in new borders and 1/2 mulch for the playground with doing the other half in Spring 2024, along with new playground equipment to be determined at a later date.

We approved a new pond maintenance company that will be applying treatments twice per month at a yearly rate of $1775.33.  The previous company was $1404 per application, twice per year ($2808 total).

With the updated covenants not requiring monthly meetings, we have set the next meeting to be September 13th at 8pm at the Village Hall.

May's meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, May 17 at 6pm at the Village Hall on Flaggland Dr.

Agenda:

• Vote on covenants update (proposed updates are available for download above - anything added or removed is in red - ARC document has been included in Covenants instead of being a separate document)
• Financial update
• Decide on park updates
• Discuss pond maintenance (new vendor and other options)
• New President Needed

New covenants were approved.  They have been posted to the website.

The meeting was cut short due to Williamsville Junior High having an emergency PTO meeting, so one of the Board Members had to leave after the approval of the covenants was done.  Some topics will be touched on again at the next meeting.

April's meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, April 12 at 6pm at the Village Hall on Flaggland Dr.

Agenda:

• Vote on Combining 12 Additions into 1 to aid in future covenants vote
• Financial update
• Setting a budget for updating the playground

Also discussed:  HOA will need a new President soon as current President is moving out of Flaggland.  He will stay on for as long as possible to help in the transition period.

March's meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, March 15 at 6pm at the Village Hall on Flaggland Dr.

Agenda:

• Accept New Treasurer
• Financial update
• Future dues discount for providing an e-mail address
• Covenants
• Setting a budget for updating the playground [not discussed due to time]

Discussed:

• Hiring an accountant for tax return - checking on who did it in the past.
• Hiring an accountant if treasurer position can't be filled.
• Future dues discount for paying by check and giving e-mail (e-mails will save HOA money over the long run).
• Need to put budget and expenses on website (awaiting treasurer or accountant's help with this).
• Putting out a one-time mailer about utilizing the website for communication.
• Reaching out to DNR for help with the ponds.
• Covenants - trying to get them ready for review at March meeting.

February's meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, February 8 at 6pm at the Village Hall on Flaggland Dr.

January's meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, January 11 at 6pm at the Village Hall on Flaggland Dr. 

Discussed:

• Lawyer meeting for covenant updates set for January 17th.
• Looking to come up with solution for trash cans to be emptied on a more regular basis (possible Eagle Scout project)
• Playground updates discussed - will get new quotes.  Budget for project will be set in March after HOA dues are collected.  Plan would be for an April/May refresh on the playground.
• Volunteers needed for board positions and for help with playground in the Spring.

We encountered a slight roadblock in updating the covenants, due to how the original covenants were set up.  We are reviewing options with a lawyer to see how best to handle this, but we do expect to be able to resolve the issue and combine the 12 versions of the covenants (one for each land addition made to Flaggland Parks over the years).  Once we resolve this, we'll be able to set a date for all Flaggland Parks homeowners to vote on the updated covenants.

We have successfully collected dues from several residents on the list of unpaid dues and have turned over to collection several people that have yet to make contact or pay their dues from past years.  We discussed that we would turn over to collection the remaining unpaid dues from residents by the end of the month after several unsuccessful attempts at making contact.

We have decided to pull away from the unofficial Facebook group for Flaggland Parks and update residents strictly from the official website (www.flagglandparks.org) and at official HOA meetings.  Going forward, these will be the 2 methods of communication.  We may expand those in the future if more residents volunteer as board members to help spread the word.

Current board positions open:   Treasurer, Vice President, and Secretary.

After feedback from residents and further review of the bids we received, we voted to keep our current mowing company (KLC) and accepted their bid.  We did not receive a cheaper bid that included the same additional services that they will provide.  They will also take down the broken playground equipment at no additional charge.

KLC is offering a 20% discount on their services for residents of Flaggland Parks.  If you're looking to save on your personal mowing expenses, please contact them for a bid.

After reviewing our current mowing expenses compared to the upcoming mowing expenses and listening to resident feedback at the meeting, we have voted to raise dues to $215 to cover the increased expenses (if paying by check, a $10 discount may be taken).  Fortunately the increase in expenses was not as high as originally calculated, allowing our dues increase to be kept to a minimum.

With feedback from residents, we are going to add an option to lower the net on the tennis court to be able to play pickleball.

We are in the process of hiring a lawyer to review the covenant/bylaw changes to provide a more concise and readable document.  Once we have the documents finalized, we will present them to be voted on.

Finally, we would like to remind everyone that campers/trailers need to be removed by November 15.  Please let us know if your arrangements cannot be done by then.

According to the current by-laws, an annual meeting is to be held each November for the purposes of elections and updating everyone about the upcoming new year.  We would like to encourage anyone willing to serve to put their name in the hat so-to-speak.  

We would like to replace our Treasurer, as she would like to step down (she will remain to help the new treasurer get up to speed).  We also have the following positions available:  Secretary and Vice President.

If anyone would like to join, please e-mail president@flagglandparks.org.  We also welcome any "write-in" candidates to show up on the day of the meeting (November 9th).

Thank you to the residents that came to tonight’s HOA meeting. It was helpful hearing from you, and it looks like we’re on track to getting things worked out to everyone’s satisfaction.

As a recap, we had received around 8 bids total for the new mowing contract and decided the rate increase based on the lowest bid we received. While we were hopeful to be able to fund a few resident requested projects by adding onto the necessary increase, it was determined at tonight’s meeting to forego that and simply increase the dues based on the exact contract increase and then do some kind of special fundraising to do other projects. 

As we discussed at the end of the meeting, we will keep the bidding process open to allow for more bids to be received to hopefully keep the dues increase to a minimum.

As discussed, we want everyone to prepare for dues to increase to $225/year (from $170/year) in the event that we do not receive any lower bids. All residents are encouraged to seek out bids from other mowing companies to this end.

At the conclusion of our meeting, we received a verbal bid that could make the dues increase quite minimal. We will await the official bid and any additional bids before making a decision. 

We would like to vote on this at next month’s meeting, but we stated we could keep it open until December’s meeting and make a decision at that time if we don’t receive enough bids. 

If you have any feedback, please e-mail president@flagglandparks.org

We are working to digitize and consolidate the 8+ additions of the covenants (new additions were added over the years when new sections were added onto Flaggland Parks), as well as update restrictions based on resident feedback (e.g. bigger sheds, parking in the street, etc.).  While the covenant restrictions made sense decades ago, the demands of life today are different than what they were back when these were created, so we're hopeful to be able to make everyone's lives easier, while still keeping the neighborhood looking good. 

Moreover, the current covenants are a bit outdated and can be hard to find what you need to know, because much of it pertains to the building of property, which is not applicable to most of us.  While we won't remove the building restrictions, we're looking at moving them to a separate section, so it's easier to understand what applies to most of us today and what could apply to someone should they have to build again.

We are also working on condensing and simplifying the bylaws that govern the administration of the HOA Board.  There's a lot of language about committees and director positions that haven't been applicable to the Board in decades.  We also want to update the language to include modern-day digital communication as a viable means of communication.  There're also requirements to have "monthly meetings"; we feel this is unnecessary and may be a hindrance for some people to volunteer their time for a board position.  We are going to update the wording to allow for "regularly scheduled meetings" without a specific number required to allow for flexibility in the future.  Likely, we will change to quarterly meetings at the most.

We will make our revisions, consult a lawyer to make sure all is well, and then present it to everyone to vote on at an upcoming meeting to be announced.

If you have any feedback in the meantime, please e-mail president@flagglandparks.org.