TLPOA ANNUAL MEETING 2021

Meeting called to order at the driveway of Mona and Rockey Reeds’ cabin (Naughty Pines) on Saturday, July 3, at 9:12 am, by President Rockey Reed. Members of the board in attendance: David Lawrence, former member at large, now the new treasurer; Wendy Marcus, secretary. Rockey led the Pledge of Allegiance. Members in attendance: about 55.

In remembrance / A minute of silence
Helene Frakes, at 18 Buckeye Drive, Randy’s wife
Allen Ulm, at 77 Matterhorn Drive, Pat’s husband
David Dahl, at 44 Eagle Peak Drive, Greg, Jim, and Janet’s father
Ron Wike, at 176 Hunewill Drive, Kaden’s father

Welcome to new members

Karen and Ted Vournas, on Charley Day Drive. Bought about 15 months ago. Coming here for 31 years. We finally retired and bought a home. It’s our first meeting.

Millie & John Carlin, on Charley Day Drive. Bought a couple of years ago. We’ve also been coming up 35, 40 years. (Not new members; been on the roster. Maybe first meeting?)

Diane Winn & Craig Clancy. Bought Dar (Darlaine) Oleskiewicz’s cabin on Glacier Place in September. We’re full-timers up here now. (Already on the roster.)

Dana Rayburn, daughter of Janet Aird (who’s 95, owned her cabin since 1973 or so and has been a TLPOA member, on Parker), with husband Scott.

Spring and Art Venegas, on Matterhorn Drive. Pat Ulm’s neighbors. (Not new, though. Joined last year. Maybe first meeting?)

Cindy and Patrick Gaffney, also on Charley Day Drive. I’m not entirely new here either. I’m the son of John and Jean Quinn, who have had a place at TL for many years, so some of you might know them.

Sue and Ed Cohen. We might have the record for the newest members: We just moved here a week ago. They just bought Wanda and John Hicks’s cabin on Parker.

Rita and John Evasovic, on Twin Lakes Road. We bought the little green house off the highway right in front of Dave Lawrence’s place in 2018, and this is our first meeting.

Ginny and Pat Cates. We’re the new build on Lakeshore. It’s our first meeting, but we’ve been here for three years. Pat’s been coming here 60 years, and I’ve been coming for 49.

Rockey: Can I have all the new members stand please? Great. I’d like to make a motion for the new board! Is there a second? Meeting over!!

There were no community guest speakers this year.

TLPOA business

Minutes of the 2019 annual meeting

Rockey Reed asked for approval of the minutes of the 2019 annual meeting (we’ll email to all members within the month; we didn’t have time to review them here). Motion seconded.

Treasurer’s report for 2020

• New treasurer David Lawrence: I will read the treasurer’s report.

BALANCES June 30, 2020
Savings account	$18,480.45
Checking account	$3,953.70
Business directory account	$117.23
TOTAL BALANCE as of July 1, 2018	$22,551.38

INCOME (member account)
Dues July 2020 through Dec 2020	$2,360.09
Dues Jan 2021 through June 2021	$2,450.00
INCOME (business account)	——
TOTAL INCOME	$4,810.09

EXPENSES (member & business accounts)
Charitable donations	$1,250
Directors and officers insurance	$1,150
Website management (G. Dahl)	$1,000
Website hosting (Helene Frakes)	$361.74
Road sign materials (G. Eisele)	$213.46
Post office box	$76
Postage (John Hicks)	$11
Postage (John Hicks)	$8.75
TOTAL MEMBER & BUSINESS EXPENSES	$3,970.95

BALANCES June 20, 2019
Savings (certificate of deposit)	$18,480.45
Savings account (COD interest)	$92.76
Total savings (COD)	$18,573.21

BALANCES June 20, 2019
Savings (certificate of deposit)	$18,480.45
Savings account (COD interest)	$92.76
Total savings (COD)	$18,573.21
Checking	$4,792.84
Business directory	$117.23
TOTAL BALANCES June 21, 2021	$23,483.28

Outgoing board members

Vice president: Mona Reed (who stepped down in 2019, according to the 2019 minutes, but continued unofficially in that capacity in the absence of a new VP)

Treasurer: John Hicks

Secretary: Wendy Marcus

Member at large: David Lawrence

Rockey: We need a new vice president, secretary, and member at large. I really need volunteers. Between the secretary and the treasurer, my job is not important; those people are. Someone is going to have to stand up. If we don’t get new board members, we’ll have to put the association on hold. I can’t — and won’t — do it all.

Nominations for new board members (all seconded)

Vice president: Kim Marcus

Treasurer (filled before the meeting): David Lawrence

Secretary: Sue Cohen

Member at large: Sharon Cook

Rockey reminded us that this is his last year as president and encouraged members to consider the position.
“Looking ahead, this is my last year. Think about it. It’s a good job. As president, you get to meet everyone. Communicating, that’s it. … Trying to make everyone else’s life easier as far as communicating with government. I go to these RPAC and supervisor meetings, but you don’t have to. It’s nice to keep in touch in case there’s a little hiccup with a campground or something. The focus, more or less, is just what’s going to benefit our subdivision. The roads are a constant. … I’m in contact with homeowner Robert McClure; he’s a paving contractor, so we’re trying to work on the area around the bridge. As [District 4 Supervisor] John Peters would say, I’m his pain in the ass because I’m trying to get the county to work with us on Aspen, Lakeshore Drive, and Patterson. The public uses it almost more than we do year-round. … We pay a lot in property taxes. We’ll pay for the material. Give us a man or two for a day to grade out some of the rough spots. Simple stuff. Ongoing battle. … It’s my only goal for this year. If anybody else has any other issues with anything, please call me (818-266-8785). As far as contractors, plumbers, and carpenters — good luck. … I would wait to do anything until the end of the year or, if you can, schedule it for next year.”

Question: Are these contractors on our website, on our business list?

RR: We’re going to review that. No one has paid. So we might eliminate it for right now. The dues went up, so that will help offset this.

Discussion (highlights)

RR: Did we want to keep the donations at $250 each?

David Holcomb: I listened to the treasurer’s report, and we have a net gain of about $900. The reason you increased the dues is to have a reserve fund for materials and road maintenance.

RR: When can you update the history?

DH: I’m up to 2013, when I did it last. Mostly current issues. I live up on Parker. If anyone has any questions, you can always come by and ask me. You’re saying how the county is giving you grief and that you’re working on it and might be getting somewhere. We’re going to have a new president come in next year, so where will that leave us? The concern is that two times over the course of our history we’ve paid a lot of money to determine the ownership of the roads and who’s responsible for their maintenance. Both times it came back exactly the same: It always comes back to us.

RR: I spoke with Norman and got him on board. All he said is, “Rockey, I’m behind you 1,000 percent. I just want to be aware of when they do it so I can protect my hydrants and my shutoffs.” I figured it would be harder to get Norm on than the county. It’s the opposite. The road maintenance guy wants nothing to do with us. So I’m trying to do the back door.

Pat Cates: Who owns Patterson and Lakeshore and Aspen?

RR: Norm Annett. Twin Lakes Enterprise. The guy you pay your water bill to.

Ginny Cates: The original CC&R says the homeowners are responsible.

RR: Correct.

Pat C: If we’re responsible for maintaining it, if the county pulls a hard line, can we go and put a gate up?

RR: And Norm will take it down, because that’s already happened. Norm is not for it. It affects tourism.

Pat C: I don’t want it to happen. But can we put that as our line in the sand? If we’re responsible, we’ll take care of it.

RR: My first reply to the road maintenance guy is “How do you feel about your paid job, that you get taxpayer money from, which happens to be our property taxes?”

Pat C: And he said?

RR: No reply. I’ll go higher up.

DH: When the subdivision was subdivided, the final report on the roads was never submitted, so the county never accepted the roads. Twin Lakes Enterprises decided to keep it that way because they wanted to maintain ownership and keep the right of way, for the water lines. By the way, we did put up signs, one there and one up there. They lasted less than 12 hours. They got torn down by a group — mostly Norm. Don’t take it that I’m saying anything derogatory about Norm. It was more than Norm. We ended up having to go to court. That’s why there are nine public parking spaces along Lakeshore and on Patterson. As determined by a judge. We fought it hard, but we lost. We brought a judge out here and showed him. If you’ve ever done lakeshore cleanup, which I’m sure lots of people here have done, you can’t believe the amount of trash that’s left here.

Pat C: All I was getting at was, if they’re insisting on using the road but not maintaining it — I’m just trying to get the county to do their job.

RR: They would do it if they owned it. They say, if we take possession of it, no problem. But that’s not going to happen. So now it’s more “How can I get around individuals?”

Pat Ulm: What if all of us tell our supervisor, John, that we want this road fixed? We can send emails to our supervisor saying we need help with our roads from the county.

RR: Let me feel out John this week, and I’ll let you know.

Kim Marcus: Your focus would be this egress and ingress because of South Twin Lakes Road?

RR: That and Lakeshore Drive and Patterson. You’re looking at a one-day job. You dump the load. Get the heavy stuff over by the bridge and throw some base on top, roll it out.

Kim M: They’re probably thinking it’s a liability issue for them in the long term.

RR: I tried to get them out here to meet with me. They said, “We’re not doing it.”

Art Worthington: Doesn’t Norm have heavy-duty equipment?

RR: He’s busy. I approached him on that. I tried to work all avenues. Trust me. And Norm and I get along.

Art W: If we’re willing to pay for all the materials, what if we paid for Norm’s guys?

RR: I spoke with him extensively the other day, about these issues of economy. He’s says he’s down about 10 people now. Nothing’s going to happen this year with that part of it. I’m still trying to push for Robert [McClure], a homeowner here, to help us out, and I’ll get the grader — whatever he needs — and get the load, and knock out at least around the bridge, so it doesn’t puddle up, especially when we get the runoff. I’m dealing with the county on this, and Glacier is always usually a horrible hill to get up to.

Greg Eisele: Why don’t we just go micro, do it small, in small spots? Start at that bridge area.

RR: Once we have the equipment, I want to be able to do as much as we can.

Greg E: I’m looking at it as more of a labor deal. I’ve got a gasoline-operated tamper. And if you bring in road base, and we shovel it and drag it, I can come in and tamp it with that beast and pound that thing down.

RR: Greg, you’re already on two committees. Forget it. Robert’s a good guy. I trust his intuition, and we’ve had conversations about it. He says, “Give me a day. I’ll knock it out.” But thank you.

Bridget Koons: I was thinking the outfit Eastern Sierra Construction, which did our road recently, might be able to do it. I was so. They did a great job, and they did it so fast. Maybe they have a division of their company to do a small job like this.

RR: Give me their information, and I’ll check. Right now, for everybody in construction, they’re bogged down. Everyone has been in their houses trying to do everything they’ve been wanting to do. So these businesses have been active. Labor is a problem.

Mona Reed: All these suggestions are great, and we’re taking note of them. Rockey will look into it.

Diane Wilson: Maybe you can ask our supervisor where they got the money to do the Twin Lakes Road.

RR: That’s a bandage, at best, to appease us for now.

Diane W: Is that because they left us out here 11 days without plowing? Because a lot of things happened after that.

RR: It has nothing to do with that. It’s timing. It was already in the works a couple of years ago. And that’s just a bandage to what’s already there. They’ll fill in the gaps then come back.

Diane W: I thought maybe the road money was tied to that one.

RR: No. That’s emergency stuff. It’s a whole different pocketbook.

Donations

We donate $250 apiece to five organizations: Bridgeport Elementary School, Bridgeport Fire Department, Bridgeport Historical Society, Friends of the Library, Sheriff’s Search and Rescue. Are we still good with $250? Move to approve. Second? Moved.

Committee reports: What our association has done and can do to help the community

• Adopt a Highway

Co-chairmen: Therese Brady and Ron Vilarino are handling it. They’ve done it in the past with other associations. They did a drive-by. They’re going to walk it and take a class with Caltrans. A safety guy told them they needed to do that, to explain the commonsense stuff of picking up trash on the road and not walking in front of trucks and trailers.

• Lake cleanup

Chairman: Greg Eisele. Greg is handling lake cleanup. We’ll get a date and put it in an email.

• Road signs

Chairman: Greg Eisele. Greg, great job. Thank you very much for getting those speed signs and pointing in the right direction. Carlos Gomez supplied the signs. I want to thank him for that. (But he wasn’t in attendance.)

• Annual picnic

Board members. We’ll see how that goes. I’m hoping to have that. It’s a question about the food for the potluck for Labor Day. I’ll get back to you on that. It’s hard to get individually wrapped cheese enchiladas. We’ll see.

• Fire Safe Council / Chipping day

Pat Cates was nominated to be chairman of the Fire Safe Council by John [Hicks], and John Evasovic wants to be part of it. They can work together and keep track of what bulletins are coming out from the county. Other than that, chipping day. We have to plan a date for that.

Ginny Cates: John [Hicks] said the Fire Safe Council could use a dedicated secretary to help out and send out information. I want to be the secretary.

• Website (https://twinlakespropertyowners.com/)

Chairman: Greg Dahl. It will be Greg and another person (Rockey will get back to us with her name) working on the website together. It should be a pretty good website this year.

Ensuing discussion about chipping day, etc.

Dave Holcomb: Did we have chipping day last year? Everyone put out piles. Were they just doing it in hopes that we were going to do chipping day?

RR: Yes. It was an off year for chipping day in 2020. We’re going to do chipping day this year — actually, chipping weekend.

Ted Vournas: The property around the lake that’s owned by Twin Lakes Enterprises, does he participate in chipping day?

RR: No.

Ted V: That is a travesty. It’s such a fire hazard. All of us are so good about our property, about clearing stuff away. But more crap accumulates there. Isn’t there anything we can do?

RR: Other than talking with Norm and him shutting me down, no. The U.S. Forest Service would have to declare it a fire hazard and force him do something about it. We’ve had the Forest Service do cleanouts around the area. They pretty much tell us, in our subdivision and Norm, what needs to be done. Norm was part of the grant process of thinning around here. The U.S. Forest Service determined, obviously, that it didn’t need to be done.

Ted V: If you look at his property versus our property, it’s night and day.

Mona Reed: We can certainly bring it up.

Polly Potocar: We’re on Charley Day, on the other side. The debris is literally three- to four-feet thick. Until you walk through it, you don’t realize it. It looks level. Between the pinecones and the needles, you’re walking on a mattress. It’s really thick.

RR: I’ll bring it up. But he’s not going to do anything.

Mona: Maybe we can go a different route.

Polly: We got spoken to several years ago. We raked all the pinecones into the road. Norm said we couldn’t do that. We were trying to do the right thing, be good neighbors.

Art W: I wonder if we have all the information from the grant requests John Hicks had made several years ago. They were either state or federal grants, and John got more than $100,000 from these grants to help us pay for cleanup around the subdivision. We hired the California Conservation Corps for several summers. It was quite a successful operation. I’m guessing money like that is still out there to apply for.

RR: I’d love to get money toward bike paths. Look at the tourism we’d have if it were safe to ride between here and Bridgeport.

Ginny C: Is chipping day open only to those who pay their dues?

RR: Homeowners are OK. Those who aren’t members pay a bigger price: $100 or so.

Ginny C: How do we do that, charge nonmembers for chipping day?

Rob Llewallen: I spoke with John Hicks two years ago. One of the nice things is that you get the chippings and have a nice soft under layer in front of your cabin. But they’ve been hauling it away.

Pat Cates: You have to ask them to leave it.

Ginny C: I can put up a sign at each place.

RR: The Fire Safe Council person walks the division.

Dana Rayburn: How is it coordinated?

RR: We will send out an email message. The information will be on the TLPOA website.

Pat C: We’ll send out a message. Schedule it. We’ll notify everyone.

RR: We’ll get Rick Edney’s schedule. There will be a chipping day this year.

David H: You can get vouchers from the Bridgeport Fire Department for taking pinecones and needles to the dump. Tom Mullinax [I think that’s his name] is the new fire chief. Can ask for three or four, if you can’t do it all in one trip. Good for about 500 pounds.

DH: I motion that we approve a chipping weekend this year. Seconded.

RR: We’re [Rockey and Mona] trying to stay here through November. I’ll look into it with [fire chief] Tom.

Ted Vournas: What do they chip?

David Lawrence: Branches up to five inches in diameter and sagebrush too. Originally they didn’t. They have a new chipper. But they still don’t chip needles and pinecones.

Pat Ulm: Several members have been approached by a fire insurance underwriter and have been told to clear their property better or they’d have their fire insurance canceled.

David L: That happened to me, with Hartford. We had to clear our property. We submitted before and after photos.

Diane Wilson: We had the same situation. Now we have a larger yard. We got a nasty letter from CalFire about being compliant: You have to clear all the brush within 100 feet of your property. They weren’t supposed to be able to change your policy. But they threatened us and a neighbor across the street. They had already done two cancellations. We had to follow up ourselves and didn’t get an immediate answer. They finally told us we were good.

RR: When you see someone parked in someone’s driveway, and the car doesn’t look familiar, check out the situation. We had individuals who didn’t belong on someone’s property. Have a flag or something out to indicate you’re here.

Bob Wilson: Some of you may know that we have a Little Library in the community now. Ours is a monster library. It’s on Patterson near the fire hydrant. We’re looking for a 24/7 barista! Take a book; leave one. Someone suggested we do that for lures!

Meeting adjourned at 10:01 am. (Definitely one of the fastest meetings in years!)