1. Abby Tucker (secretary, non voting) and John Poremba (married to Abby, Director at Large of SkyRanch HOA), are passionate about having a private tennis court for SkyRanch. They are arguably the driving force behind rebuilding tennis courts. There are many people who voted yes for the assessment and rebuilding because they wished to either support the board’s initiative, or were encouraged by board members on the grounds that it was the best/only option. There are, in fact, very few who have indicated that they feel tennis courts are a good idea for SkyRanch. In addition, with nothing but a $1,500 assessment to consider as criteria, many actually don’t have an opinion, so they voted yes when encouraged to do so.

2. With two failed attempts to get support for an assessment for the purpose of building courts, we believe that the board’s next likely move is to use the HOA’s reserves to rectify the tennis court problem. According to legal counsel at the board meeting, the board can do this with no approval of the homeowners. Jessica also stated that the courts could be demolished without an amendment to the CC&Rs. She later confirmed this in an email to the board.

The impact of the board using reserves for rebuilding a tennis court and fixing what’s left after demolition is profound. First of all, under the current plan, they would spend $91,000 of our current cash reserves of $205,000 (roughly, December 2014 financial statement). In addition, the reserves would subsequently have to be replaced which can only be done by either raising dues (this will be difficult, because there is a formula that allows for a maximum dues increase relative to the CPI) or with an assessment. As you know, our dues are very high already, and building tennis courts would require them to be raised every year going forward, as high as is allowable in order to fund the ongoing maintenance of the tennis courts and rebuild the reserves.

We really have only one option left to pursue if we wish to convince the board that our membership is largely opposed to the rebuilding of the tennis courts. If we can get a 67% majority of homeowners to sign a petition stating their opposition to rebuilding tennis courts, we can make a case that the board has a responsibility to act in the interest of the community as opposed to acting on the wishes of a few who wish to play tennis. As it stands now, the 64% response in the affirmative to assess for new courts is enough justification to allow them to move forward with spending the association’s reserves.