A message from the CSHOA board -

We received the following from Kathleen M. Elmore, Esquire – Chair – Maryland Legislative Action Committee for Community Associations Institute, and are passing it along for your information:

The ACLU Wants to Unlock the Doors to Your Community!

On Friday, February 25, the Maryland Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee passed Senate Bill 212. The bill was sponsored by Senator Alexander Mooney with the support of the Maryland ACLU. As drafted, this legislation would undermine the core principles that attract people to community associations – security and rules to protect property values.

Inaccurately framed as a freedom of speech issue, SB 212 is a full on assault to the private property rights of residents in Maryland’s condominium and homeowners associations. We need your help to stop this legislation!

If passed SB 212 would:

• Give non-residents an unlimited right of entry onto your associations private property, including gated communities and secured condominium buildings for any ‘noncommercial purpose.”
• Create a constitutional takings issue by granting 3rd parties rights to access you and your associations property.
• Prevent associations from regulating ANY non-commercial displays within the community which would render most, if not all, architectural restrictions null and void.
• Repeal current Maryland law which provides well-balanced and clear protections for homeowners to display political signs and American flags and replace it with a vague “Free-for-all” standard preventing any regulation of “non-commercial activity”.

This issue has been framed as a matter of free speech and constitutional rights and as a result has gotten the ear of politicians in Annapolis. The ACLU would like them and you to believe that by living in a community association you have given up your constitutional rights. But the reality is that by living in a community association, you are actually exercising your rights of expression by agreeing with your neighbors on how you would like you community to operate, look and what security measures are appropriate for your neighborhood and building.

Take action now to protect your community and your property by calling your Senator and telling them to Vote No on SB 212.

Kathleen M. Elmore, Esquire
Chair – Maryland Legislative Action Committee for
Community Associations Institute
5 Riggs Avenue
Severna Park, Maryland 21146
Phone: 410.544.6644 ext. 100
Fax: 410.544.7294
E-mail: kelmore@elmore-throop.com
Web: Elmore-Throop.com

From the President

Will Spring ever get here?? Winter definitely is. I think we have handled it pretty well, I hope the rest of January, February and March are not nearly as bad as we have seen so far. I received the following email on Dec 19th while we were still getting our 20 inches of snow at Chesapeake Station: “The parking lot is a mess. A good chunk of the entrance is blocked, we are missing many parking spaces and the lot itself is a sheet of ice. Can we possibly get some parking areas cleared and some sand or salt laid down?”

Considering all the snow and then all the freezing weather I think things got cleared up very well. With the cooperation and effort of the Town Public Works department, our snow Removal contractor, Tim Modlin, and many volunteers everything got cleared in reasonable time. I would like to thank those with the equipment and the muscle that actually helped to move the large amounts of snow. One such volunteer, Mr Moody, a renter who has a really big truck and a really big blade, on his own, cleared snow for a couple of hours and put down some ice-melt. Your neighbors thank you so much.

- Jim Mulder

Deputy Gray visits Chesapeake Station

At the Dec 9, 2009 CSHOA Board meeting we asked the Sheriff’s Department to come and talk to us about some issues that members have raised.

Deputy Brianna Gray, the sheriff’s deputy assigned to Chesapeake Beach, gave us a very informative presentation on how we can best use the services of the police and sheriffs’ office. She noted that the streets are town property and thus considered public areas. Our posted walkways and beach area, however, are CSHOA community property and thus considered private. In terms of trespassing complaints, the sheriff’s department is most concerned about malicious trespass, that is when the intent is to do damage, harm or cause disturbance. The sheriffs’ office has adopted a “no tolerance” policy toward loitering and vandalism and requests that we report any incidents of such to them.

As far as reaching the sheriff’s office and/or Deputy Gray,the best way to report police issues of a non-emergency nature is to call the Sheriff’s Office numbers 410-535-2800 or 301-855-1194. Both numbers connect to the same 15-line phone bank which is manned 24/7 by one or two operators. Deputy Gray noted that at times of peak activity, all lines may be busy at once and even with two operators it may take some time for a call to be picked up. As always, 911 should be used only in cases of extreme emergency when police, fire, or ambulance is needed immediately.

The sheriff’s bike patrols include our beach sidewalk and access paths, but the bike patrols are subject to the weather and availability of two officers, thus are more frequent during the warmer months. If we notice malicious trespass we should notify the sheriff’s office and every attempt will be made to respond and increase the bike patrol frequency.

We then talked about the no trespassing signs, and it was the consensus of the Board to leave the current wording. During the discussion, it was also the consensus of the Board to not adopt a rule that guest must at all times be accompanied by a property owner while on CSHOA common ground.

Parking Concerns

In recent weeks the Board has received questions about assigning parking spaces in the Overlook parking lot. There have been suggestions including numbering the spaces, deeding parking spaces to homes, adding spaces by narrowing the width in conjunction with the repaving this year, designating some spaces “resident” and some “guest”, and reminding residents to limit their vehicles parked in the “front door” spaces to no more than two. The board has discussed this at length and concluded that the occasional inability of a resident to park directly in front of their home does not warrant deeding the spaces and the resultant financial restructuring of the entire community. The board feels a better solution is to work cooperatively with our neighbors, display our resident stickers, and to voluntarily not park in front of our neighbor’s house if the spaces in front of ours are filled. Several Overlook residents have had success with asking drivers to move their un-stickered vehicles to more distant spaces so as to not block the ones directly in front of the homes.

The Board wants to be as responsive as possible to the concerns of the community. We wish to encourage community members, who are interested in the parking space issue, to form an ad hoc committee to research, investigate and make recommendations on what needs to be done, including projected costs and sources of funding. If you are interested in chairing or being on such a committee please contact a board member and/or start a dialogue on our website, chesapeakestation.com.

In the meantime, please refer to Resolution 4 in the Bylaws, remember to display your Chesapeake Station resident vehicle stickers (Two per residence. Contact Jim Mulder if you don’t have them.) and, as always, be considerate of your neighbors.

Volunteers needed

CSHOA needs you (homeowners) to consider being on the Board of Directors for next year. The CSHOA by-laws require a Board to oversee the affairs of Chesapeake Station, the Board can be made up of up to five property owners. The laws of Maryland require that there must be a Board for a corporation (CSHOA) to enter into contracts. So if nobody volunteers in 2010, there can be no contract for financial services management, no contract for grounds maintenance, no contract for tree trimming, no contract for snow removal, no contracts for auditing the books and no contract for doing our CSHOA Tax returns. Talk about destroying property values, those things will work against us much worse than any recession will. Experience is not necessary as the current Board can provide background and training, only one evening meeting a month, and not a lot of extra work or time is required, although some planning and decision making is required. You don’t need to decide today, but in September you will have the opportunity to volunteer. In the meantime, why not attend a Board meeting? The meetings are open to all CSHOA members and we try to meet once each month in the evening. Call any Board member for the time, date and location of the next meeting and come join us.

CSHOA Board of Directors

President, Jim Mulder, jmulder3@verizon.net, 410-257-0626
Vice President, Rusty Kuhns, rustykuhns@comcast.net, 703-217-2212
Member at-Large, Charlie Pritchard, cpritchard44@gmail.com,301-855-4170
Secretary, Diane Halvorsen, caseypug2001@yahoo.com, 434-960-1692
Treasurer, Roland Schlehuber, bebopster1@aol.com, 410-286-2421

Treasurer’s Report

The December interim financial statement was discussed and approved. The final statement will be available after the 2009 books are closed. Jim made a motion that we authorize the same firms we have used previously to do the association taxes and audit for 2009. Rusty seconded. Motion passed.

Committee Discussion

Architectural — No report.

Beach — no report

Grounds — The committee reports the soil samples have been analyzed and the recommended program of fertilization and lime has been reviewed with our landscape contractor. The current fertilization program corresponds with the recommendations and we will add a lime application in the fall of 2010 and 2011 for minimal additional cost.

Social/Welcome — The draft newsletter was discussed and changes recommended. Diane will rewrite the copy and aim to email the newsletter to residents in the next week. We will continue to submit the minutes to the website for posting.

Old Business

Regarding the bond insurance, Roland reported that Brenda has reorganized the Summit management handling of our business so that the requirements of Nationwide Insurance Company can be met in order to purchase the state-required bond insurance from them. Our regular association insurance has been continued with Nationwide remaining our insurer. Roland is waiting to hear back from Nationwide that all is in order to move ahead with the bond insurance.

The proposal from Ben Dyer Associates for the pavement and sidewalk rehabilitation project has been approved and signed.

The Board has agreed to accept the town’s offer to include our parking lots in their city snowplowing services. Jim will return the signed copy and insurance verification to the city.

The amendment to the bylaws authorizing late fee charges for overdue association dues has been signed and is being recorded by the attorneys. Summit Management will begin instituting the charges as soon as the recording is completed.

New Business

The Board wishes to acknowledge and thank the members of the “Bylaw and Amendment Committee”, specifically Paul Hoffman, Elizabeth Krentzman and George Newman, for their hard work on revising our quorum requirements. A motion was made, seconded and passed to accept their recommendation of reducing the quorum to 40% (44 members) and change the meeting notice requirements to 15 to 60 days. Voting by the general membership on the proposal will take place at the 2010 General Membership Meeting.

Charlie brought to our attention that the area at the bottom of the Overlook walkway/steps is extremely soggy with standing water most of the year and is dangerous when icy and a health hazard year round. The board concluded that we will ask our engineer to include an anazysis and recommendation for this area when he preparing the pavement and sidewalk report.

Meeting adjourned 8:45pm. Next meeting February 10, 7pm, at 4006 Carousel Way.