As your Advocacy Group, we believe that stability is at the heart of mutually beneficial outcomes. Unfortunately, these outcomes are illusive in the face of recent The Pointe South Mountain Residential Association (PSMRA) Board Leadership. Here is the latest update:
At the July 18 PSMRA Open Board Meeting, Board Vice President Eric Wagner announced that First Service Residential’s Erin Busey, our current community manager, was no longer involved in any matters related to The Pointe South Mountain. As a result, Mikala Klug (hired as assistant manager) will field emergency calls and requirements for the 840+ owners here until FSR and the Association can meet with/hire a replacement candidate. With few details shared, meeting attendees were left shaking their heads.
In making this enormous announcement, which will have long-lasting ramifications for the entire community, Eric introduced FSR Vice President Kirk Kowieski, who asked for the community’s “patience” and told attendees, “We have fallen short and haven’t been delivering.”
PSMRA Board Leadership has repeatedly issued the call for “patience” during the past three years. This latest setback, coupled with no other further communication from the Board Leadership to the entire community, creates a vacuum of distrust, rumor, and negative miscommunication. A week later, assistant manager Mikala Klug emailed the community announcing the change at FSR—still no official word from PSMRA Board Leadership. Many single-family, garden and courthome owners have been left to wonder: How did this happen? What will happen now? Many owners are furious, because they are seeing the early results of a lack of authority/presence within the community. Please visit our photos page under the Community Resources tab, where you will find current images of compliance non-enforcement, such as double parking, tandem parking, construction refuse left on the sidewalks, and even dog doors being installed in the front doors of units.
Although there are several well-intentioned members of the current Board of Directors, PSMRA has had more than a three-year history of change, and not in a good way. We offer this example of a continuous lack of stability: Back in early 2021, volunteer committees were successfully focused on a five-year maintenance plan, working with Brown Community Management, which, utilizing just one community manager, was able to keep most compliance and common area and courthome projects issues on track. In June 2021, Brown resigned, and two months later the Association hired Vision Community Management (which also utilized only one community manager). In early, 2022 the Association terminated Vision mid-contract. Again, Board Leadership cited arcane reasons why they could not provide details, leaving owners to surmise the cause on their own. From June 2021 (when Brown resigned) until the Association hired FSR in March 2022, a host of critical records were lost, vendors quit and very little maintenance of common areas or courthomes took place. As a result, today PSMRA is paying FSR for THREE full-time employees to do the work that, from previous management companies, required only one.
As the PSMRA Board and FSR once again begin the difficult and complex process of hiring another new community manager, owners here are now both angry and bewildered at the ongoing lack of communication, which results in a broader questioning the Board’s leadership decisions. What is Plan B? What can owners do to help during the transition? When will the community enjoy stability again? True leadership demands accountability and the skills necessary to engage with the community and draw us together, not drive us apart.
As we enter the last part of the year and the PSMRA Board begins its process for the annual meeting notice and Call for Candidates, please keep in mind Author Mark Epstein’s famous quote, “Anger is a sign that something needs to change.”
Image Credit: Stability by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Pix4free