Several people still question why the concern over the minutes being pulled from the newsletter. While this is my first concern, fiscal responsibility associated with the newsletter is also a major concern.

I feel that the minutes are extremely important in the newsletter because it puts them in front of the entire neighborhood where they are more likely to read them. Making them available on the web means only those of us that have computers and visit the website can read them. Making them available via snail mail from Association Management means that we have to make an effort to get them and it introduces an additional cost to the association. Let?’s face it, as a culture most people will not go out of their way to call AM for the minutes; however we will read them when presented to us.

The minutes were supposedly removed from the newsletter to reduce costs, considering that, here are the questions as I remember them, and I respectfully ask the board to answer thoroughly.

1) Who on the Board has direct oversight of the Newsletter, and is ultimately responsible for its content?''
2) Why is it that one person (the NL editor who is not a board member) can determine how the newsletter money is spent by printing meaningless articles and wordsearches? (Even though 2 pages in the last newsletter were free, there were several other pages of useless articles and word searches.)
3) Why does the president?’s letter repeat most of the information from other sections of the newsletter?
4) Did the Imaginarium pay for their quarter page advertisement in last month?’s newsletter?
5) Why was it determined that the meeting minutes are not useful to ALL the residents of the community?
6) If reducing cost is a high priority why not find other means to do so rather then eliminate the minutes? Were other means of reducing cost of the newsletter considered prior to eliminating the minutes? Some ideas would be to eliminate the fancy boarders and fonts, eliminating unnecessarily large/bold fonts, limit unpaid ads in the line ads section to 6 single spaced lines or less, don?’t duplicate anything but the most important items in the presidents letter, etc.
7) Once the decision was made to eliminate the minutes in order to reduce costs, why did the annual budget for the newsletter actually go up? (it is understood that there are constantly new homes in the neighborhood, but one would expect this to at the most offset the 15-20% savings of eliminating the minutes.)
8) For the 2004 budget was the printing of the newsletter put out to bid as other expenses of the association are? If not, why?


By Penny Pincher

Newsletter

Thank you for the professional way you have presented your concerns. I am the person on the board who oversees the newsletter, therefore responsible for the content. Cathy has been a dedicated volunteer who has put the newsletter format together for many years and we really appreciate her efforts.

This fall, several homeowners came forward and wanted to form a committee to make some improvements to the newsletter. This was much appreciated help. It was brought forward that while the President's Corner summerized and clarified the minutes, both were possibly not required. So, as a fiscal improvement, we took the minutes out. This step is now being reviewed.

The cost of the newsletter goes up yearly as our community grows and subsequently, our circulation. Our cost increases are ''number of copies'' driven, not other costs. We have a printer in our neighborhood who prints our newsletter at the same cost for the last several years. They are great and work well with us because this is their newsletter too and they are very proud of it, as we are.

As for the Imaginarium ad, I missed that until you brought it up. We are provided front and back cover pages at no additional cost where this ad appears, however, it doesn't appear to be in line with our policy so we are checking into it further.

Again, Cathy does a tremendous amount of work on our newsletter - we are proud of the newsletter and of her. I am sure she would welcome any contributions to the content. Thank you again for your concerns.

Thank You

Thank you for taking the time to address some of the concerns. I am especially happy to hear that decision to review the minutes is being reviewed and am obviously hopeful that they will be returned to the minutes.

You neglected to answer questions 2, 3 5 and 6. Possibly there is another board member that can address these questions?

Thank You.

By Penny Pincher