Hello and welcome to everyone!

This is just a quick note to provide more information on the goals (both near and longer term) of the organization, and to outline ways in which you can participate.

Some of you have asked “who are you?”. A group of about 15 homeowners met a couple of weeks ago to begin organizing a response to the recent actions by the HOA’s Board aimed at overturning the results of the last election. You can find some of the group members on the website (https://gca-residents.com/committee). This mailing list is one result of those efforts, as is the establishment of a web site (https://gca-residents.com) to help inform and provide a place for collaboration.

We are also looking at an extended effort to increase community interaction. At the moment, the Board controls the only community-wide messaging channel and it is a rather limited one - we would like to provide a more interactive channel amongst the membership. So beyond just responding to the lawsuit, we’re looking at providing a place where volunteer opportunities can be posted and volunteers coordinated, ideas about how to improve the community can be circulated, etc.

Our immediate priority, however, is to respond to the lawsuit.

The email distribution list has now grown to over 120 people, with more continuing to trickle in each day. Some actually voted for the revisions, but are concerned by the Board’s response to the election results. The HOA consists of approximately 700 homes, so we need at least 250 participants (erring on the safe side) to the petition to succeed in our challenge. If each of you signs the petition and gets 2-3 of your neighbors to sign, we will meet or exceed our objective. This appears to be within reach.

We are working to prepare the petition - need to ensure we have all the proper legalese in place and that the signatures are properly gathered. I’m told that we should expect to have things ready sometime next week, so we should be able to begin gathering signatures at that point. We will work out the logistics of collecting the signed docs (probably a cover page with one or more signature pages) from each of you. We want to avoid having individuals send in the docs as each filing requires a $222 filing fee - combining the docs allows us to file all of them for a single fee.

To be clear, we appreciate and respect the Board’s efforts to revise the HOA’s covenants, and their efficient upkeep of our beautiful open space and other common areas. It is a difficult and time consuming task. We just feel that the Board’s subsequent response to the failed election takes us down a path that is not in the best interest of the community. Instead, our objectives are to:

(1) get the lawsuit rejected

(2) work with the Board to reengage the community to hammer out compromises that will allow the revisions to pass the HOA’s election process

In support of that second bullet, we are seeking your input on the specific things in the proposed revisions that you would need to see altered to gain a “yes” vote from you. You are welcome to simply email us with comments. Alternatively, we have posted Word versions of the revised covenants and the current rules/regulations on our web site. You are welcome to download those and mark them up with comments and/or suggested specific changes you would like to see, and then email us with the marked up documents.

The revised covenants are not in sync with the current rules/regulations, so we will ultimately need to address both to get things to make sense. Our goal is to be able to better communicate to the Board the specific issues standing in the way of approval. Your input will allow us to identify those areas needing attention, perhaps setting up homeowner committees to work on compromises that can be suggested to the community.

So to summarize, we are asking you to:

(1) assist in gathering signatures to oppose the board’s petition. Those willing/interested in helping - please indicate that to info@gca-residents.com; and

(2) provide input on the specific concerns that prevent you from voting to approve the revisions

Thanks again for your involvement!

Sincerely,

Ralph
Concerned GCA Residents