The meeting was called to order at 4pm in the ICHA board room.  Present:  Steve Cauffman (Chair), Sandrine Scherson, Michele Walot, Mike McNally, Jan Fisher, Brad Conley, Andrew Herndon, and Ron Reid.  Marta Baillet attended a portion of the meeting to discuss planning for the Holiday Bazaar.

(1)      Construction Update:

                The Phase 10 Pocket Park is now open.  A "grand opening" with frozen fruit pops for kids, and espresso drinks for adults, is scheduled for November 16th.    Suggestions for park names will be solicited.
                Construction continues for phases 10-2 (houses) and 10-4 (rental townhomes).  Grading should be mostly done by Thanksgiving.  Modification of the path to the vista point was precluded due to ADA accessibility requirements.  ICHA plans to accelerate the schedule for landscaping the slope along California, rather than waiting until construction is completed.

(2)      Name Games:

Prizes for our apartment-naming contest have all been distributed.  Our ranked list was considered by ICHA along with suggestions from other sources.  ICHA is going with "Alturas" as the preferred name of the new townhomes.   HRB finds the choice provocatively bland.

Pocket Park Name:  ICHA is willing to let that be entirely our choice (within reason).

 (3)     Window-washing and/or Car-washing Discounts

Last month we suggested negotiating Uhills discounts to celebrate completion of major earth-moving operations.   Andrew had a window-washing vendor in mind.  There is no urgency, since there will still be some trenching going on through December.  Best to wait until the dust actually settles a bit, before washing it off.

Car washing is politically incorrect, given the ongoing drought, but some retail car wash places recycle their water, so it might be preferable to encourage that as an alternative to washing cars in driveways (and sending detergent into the storm drains). 

 (4)     Tennis Courts:

Proposed new sign language and an instructor permit have been drafted.  Andrew has asked UCI PD for relevant ordinances to cite regarding trespassing.  Once we have that, the new signs can be finalized and ordered. 

(5)      Solar Leases:

ICHA has done a thorough investigation of the ground sublease restrictions as they relate to transfer of solar lease agreements.  Jane Laning summarized the conclusions at the October ICHA Board meeting.  The key clause, as expected:  "3.05 (c):  …the Home Owner's offer to assign and sell his or her interests in the Property and the improvements thereon must not be conditioned in any manner on the purchase, lease, or rental of any other real or personal property in which the Home Owner has an interest."   So when you calculate the Maximum Resale Price (MRP), it cannot be contingent on whether or not the buyer wants to assume your solar lease.  Also, the MRP cannot include the value of the panels if you don't own them.  Therefore, if you set the MRP before you "buy out" your lease, you can't include the value of the panels, and you can't require the buyer to accept the panels (even if it costs them nothing).  The price cannot depend on whether the buyer will or will not want to assume the lease, so they could decide to be difficult and make you remove them (or threaten to, in exchange for further concessions).  Therefore, the only viable approach is to buy out of the lease before the MRP is set.  Then the panels are an improvement, and can be appraised as such.  Determining the appropriate valuation of the panels is a whole other matter, but at least the contractual issues are avoided.

Therefore:  residents should make sure they clearly understand what they would need to do to buy out of their solar agreements, before entering into any such contract.  Any decent agreement will have this clearly spelled out.  It could involve a substantial additional payment, which varies over the lifetime of the lease.  To avoid potential problems with difficult buyers, you should always assume that selling your house would mean having to buy out of the lease before establishing the home's MRP.  Purchasing panels, outright, rather than leasing, avoids such hassles.

(6)      Proposed Aquatic Sculpt Class

Nesve Yayalar proposes to offer an aquatic exercise class.  Her description:

Tentative schedule: Monday at 7:30-8:20 AM, and starts as soon as HRB approves it. It depends on the demand, we might add an afternoon session.

Location: Any heated pool ICHA would prefer us to use, shallow part of the pool, no lanes will be used.
Class description: 
Aquatic training allows you to get a balanced workout that is easy on the joints, and addresses the muscles that gravity assists on land. Uhills Aqua Sculpt offers LOTS of fun and shallow water moves to improve agility, flexibility and cardiovascular endurance, balance, and develop strength. No swimming ability is required,
All levels welcome; class is geared toward an beginner and intermediate level. No music.

She has a list of 11 residents and one non-resident who are interested.   HRB approves, provided that the group takes care to minimize any noise impact, and works cooperatively with other swimmers who use the pool at the same time.   It seems reasonable that the class could co-exist with the usual volume of morning lap-swimming at the lower pool.  Ron has offered to post a notice to the swimmers' discussion group on the UHills website.

(7)      Event Recaps:

  • The Fall Fiesta seemed to go very smoothly.  Bravo Andrew!
  • Instead of a full-on Day-of-the-Dead party, we held a "bare-bones" movie night at the CC on November 1.  About 100 people came to watch "The Nightmare Before Christmas".

(8)      Holiday Bazaar

                Marta Baillet and Sandrine Scherson are organizing the holiday bazaar to be held at the Community Center on December 13th.  HRB agreed to cover the cost of the rented tables to be used by vendors. 

(9)      Upcoming Events

  • Pocket Park Official Welcome, Sunday, November 16th, 2pm (Latte Cart + Fruit Pops)
  • Coffee on Us, Community Center, Thursday, Dec 4th, 7:30am – 9:00am
  • Holiday Bazaar, Saturday, Dec 13th (10am-4pm)
  • Christmas Movie Night, Saturday, Dec 13th (7pm) — Details TBD.
  • Trio Celeste Concert, Friday March 20th
  • Possible brown-bag series (emergency preparedness, neighborhood watch, etc.)
  • Blood drive?

 (10)   Misc:

HRB has requested that the "field closed" signs be stored in the equipment locker at Gabrielino, so that they can be put out when needed, on weekends, due to rain.  If only we ever had rain…

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