Please see the attached email that was sent to the board about homeowners’ concerns about the lack of accountability Nepenthe has with respect to the landscape proposals the board is approving. On August 11th, I sent this to the General Manager and asked that it appear in the September Board packet.
I noticed that the attached $69,760 proposal for Zone 2 paint and siding preparation didn’t make it in the newsletter. I also noticed that the Board is now including whether or not a proposal passed unanimously as well as the number of dissenters. I do hope that a correction can be published or mentioned in the next Friday email blast along with the voting record. If the Board is claiming they are being “transparent”, there needs to be some consistency. I know that some things are mentioned at board meetings and might be found if you dig around the work orders in the board packet, but it is difficult for us homeowners to keep track of what’s going on when they are not voting in open session.
On another note, I have looked at the black dots and documented the Zone 2 removals. I highly doubt that $1,000 worth of materials will be installed given the small number of shrubs that were actually removed. I’d also be very surprised if the required labor is four crew and 16 days of 512 hours at $105 an hour, or $53,760. As such, I am requesting that Carson provide invoices for materials and documentation of labor costs. From my view, it didn’t appear that for the $200,560 October 26, 2023 proposal that there were four crew for 46 days, nor was $46,000 spent on materials. For your reference, I have included a 2021 Carson proposal which provides details and a scope of work. Given that Carson doesn’t provide any information at all anymore as they enjoy an exclusive vendor relationship, this blank check type of proposal is highly inappropriate especially since the grounds committee or homeowners were not included in the decision making nor provided the opportunity for comment. In July’s board packet, it included a letter showing pictures of the black dots which was intentionally deceptive. The other thing that is very wrong about this $200,560 proposal is that we paid them before the work was finished claiming it was a financial decision based on closing out the books when we could have instead earned, even with a progress payment, about a $1,000 worth of interest on this money and created some type of carry forward of this accounts payable. In short, the games are not appreciated and do not think that our Board is holding up to their fiduciary duty. It’s just bad stewardship and not right.
Since there is no detail in these proposals, it is impossible to hold our landscaping vendor accountable. I do not believe we are getting what we pay for and suggest that if Carson doesn’t want to take the time to write up an industry standard detailed proposal where we can validate the work was completed, we should have Paul Reeves supervise Carson. I had a discussion with Paul and he said that we have received a few credits for estimates that assumed certain fence work needed replacement when it was later found to be salvageable. Paul could check the receipt for materials and labor hours to negotiate potential credits for us. I do believe that we would quickly recoup any consulting costs to Paul for this oversight and this would also mitigate some of the inconsistencies we are seeing in the work quality product. I understand that Paul is not a landscaping specialist, but believe he would be very effective overseeing the landscape renovation work. I do believe that we should hire a professional landscape architect, but I think Paul is a good temporary solution. Please include this as an agenda item for the next board meeting.
Thanks,
Ashley Tangeraas
