ANNUAL MEETING
The Annual Meeting this year will be at 6:30 PM in the
clubhouse on Thursday, October 28th. Please plan to arrive a
bit early for registration. If you are unable to attend, please
fill out the proxy vote that was provided with the annual
meeting notice or watch your email for the E-Proxy. In order
for us to have an official meeting and election, we need to
have quorum of the eligible co-owners, which is around 55
to 65 co-owners in person, proxy and E-proxy.
NOTE FROM THE PRESIDENT
Thank you everyone for a far better year than 2020 was!
We were pleased to get the community back to the normal
lifestyle that we enjoy, including welcoming back residents
to board meetings, our contractors being able to address
work orders quickly, and the pool being open! Now that our
finances are firm, we were able to begin to do major
projects that improve the look and safety of the community,
such as concrete tear out and replacement. I am also
pleased to announce that we will not be raising the
assessments for 2022!
The way this community works best is that we all work
together. Remember, the Board of Directors is a volunteer
position. Board members donate their time to help better
the community, but please also remember that Board
members also have careers, families, and personal time. We
make the community a priority, however we are not always
able to address all concerns immediately. Our community
manager, Emily Whiting makes Plum Creek a top priority.
She also serves as the community manager for 10
communities, with Plum Creek being the largest. Please
allow us sufficient time to respond to you, understanding
that we may need to get information from other parties
before we respond to you. I also personally ask that you
show respect to the Board members and Casa Bella when
communicating with us. This job is not always easy, and we
do this out of our sense of community and wanting to see it
succeed. We know that you may be frustrated because an
issue is a major inconvenience to you, but we all work
better when we treat each other with dignity and respect
and have cool heads. Threatening legal action does not
speed the process up, if anything it slows it down as we
need to contact our legal counsel, which adds time and legal
fees. If you feel that you are not being treated with respect,
please come to our open monthly board meetings and we
will work through it.
Many of you have shown passion to ensure our community
is the best and we thank you. Your feedback and
communication help us address concerns quickly. However,
we need this same passion from more members of the
community. We have set up multiple communication
channels to allow you to communicate with us, including a
Facebook Page, Website, and Email. Casa Bella also has a
website in which you can create work orders and violations,
as well as see their status. We are always looking for more
community members to join the Board of directors. The
more diversity in opinions and energy we have, the better
the results for all of us.
SURVEY RESULTS
In April of this year, we sent out our Annual Resident survey
to get your thoughts on where we need to focus our
energies and investments. This survey was sent via email to
the 200+ residents on our Plum Creek Mailing list, in which
38 of you responded. Ideally, we would like higher numbers
to help us ensure that we are getting a representative group
for the community. A big theme that stood out among the
responses was that we seem to have around 35% of the
respondents who were negative about the community, 25%
who were positive about the community, and 40% who
were neutral. That, combined with the non-responses, tells
us that a majority of the community is relatively happy with
the direction we are going. Since this your home and
investment, we want to ensure that far more of you are
overall positive about the community. Some areas to
highlight:
• The response with the highest positive response
rate was “I feel that Casa Bella is taking Plum Creek
in the right direction”
• The response with the highest negative response
rate was “I feel that the response time from Casa
Bella is appropriate”
• When we asked you to rank what concerned you
the most, the highest response was Trash and the
lowest was the Responsiveness of the Board.
You were also given the opportunity to leave comments,
which led to a follow up survey regarding your expectations.
Some key themes that came up: Many of you believe that
the board does not live in the community, which is not true.
4 board members live in the community and 1 board
member lived in the community for 8 years, the board
currently has 6 members. There was also a lot of feedback
about the trash. We believe that we are doing as much as
we can to address the situation. Many of you are sending us
pics and tips of who is putting out trash this early, board
members are digging through trash to find out who is doing
it as well. We have communicated our trash rules in
multiple formats, and we have a contractor who goes
through the community twice a week to pick up the trash.
Fines for trash are double, as well as those offending are
charged a $250 trash pick-up fee. We have made great gains
in this area, but we still need your help. If you know
someone who is putting out trash early, please
communicate with the board. The more of us with eyes on
this, the better we will all be.
At the end of July, we also sent out a follow up survey to
help get more details on your expectations from the Board
and Casa Bella. We received 15 responses out of over 200
residents it was sent to. Overall, your expectations aligned
with the service level that we aim for and deliver to. A few
things to highlight:
• Board@PlumCreekCondos.com and the Facebook
page are both only monitored by the Board. Please
understand that we may not always be able to
respond immediately, as we have other
commitments. We strive to answer within 24 hrs.
You are welcome to communicate with us about
work orders and violations here, however the
response will be faster if you communicate with
Casa Bella directly.
• Please ensure that when communicating with Casa
Bella, you are using the website or calling their
office. Do not try to contact Emily directly unless
she asks you to. If you use the website or call the
office, they have multiple other resources available
who can help you while Emily may be helping other
communities.
• We are all aligned that the highest priority should
be given to those work orders that prevent costly
emergency work orders. One thing to remember
though, those are not always the most visible items.
They include plumbing and roof repairs. The next
highest in priority was a tie between Work Orders
that benefit the entire community and work orders
that bring improvements to existing elements.
We will continue to send out these surveys annually to get
your feedback. If you are not on the Plum Creek Email list,
please join in to ensure you get a chance to participate. If
you are not seeing emails from Plum Creek and you have
signed up, please check your spam filters and settings for
emails from Board@PlumCreekCondos.com.
BUDGET & IMPROVEMENT HIGHLIGHTS
For you to better understand how the community spent its
budget this year, we wanted to share this brief explanation.
From assessments, renters’ fees, and collections, we plan to
take in around $600K. Our most major planned expenses
are Insurance (55K), Snow Removal (70K), Lawn Care (30K),
and Management Fees (25K). Water is around 135K and
electricity is 15K. So, before we get to any repairs or
improvements, we have already spent 330K, of 55% of the
budget. To ensure that we can address major projects and
prepare for the future, we are always adding to our
reserves, which we target at 60K a year. After that is what is
left for addressing things like building repairs, tree
trimming, fertilization and weed control, window
replacement, pest control, plumbing and everything else
that comes up. We have over 230 units, so there are a lot of
issues that come up, as well as the fact that our community
is over 50 years old. The board reviews 3 bids for each
major project to ensure we are getting the best price. Some
highlights from 2021:
• We spent over 10K in plumbing so far and will
spend more. It’s our largest expense for repairs,
however its one very few see.
• We replaced 44 steps to buildings, 3 porches, 1
buzzer system replacement and 3 buzzer repairs
• There will be one roof replacement and we already
completed major roadway and curb repairs
• Two of the carports will be completely replaced
SAFETY
There have been several comments regarding some unsafe
activities around the community. Please ensure you are
thinking about your neighbors in your actions to ensure
everyone’s enjoyment and safety. Please also note that
many of these are against the bylaws and may result in fines
and other penalties:
No Playing in the Streets – Please ensure your
children are playing in the common area lawns.
Parking areas and streets are not safe for play and
many of them have limited visibility.
Stop Signs and Speed Limits – You and your guests
are responsible for following our posted stop signs
and observing the 15mph speed limit throughout
the community. We are recording license plates of
those who are in violation and involving the Sterling
Heights Police.
Doors – Do not prop open doors to the hallways of
apartment style units and do not allow anyone in
your building that you do not know. The buzzers all
have intercoms to allow you to communicate with
anyone asking to be let in.
CLOSING NOTES
You may have noticed we did not discuss the parking
change this year yet. This was the biggest change we have
done in the community in years, and we received a lot of
positive and negative feedback about it. Overall, we are
very pleased with how it turned out and we look forward to
it addressing some of the larger problems we have in our
community. If you had walked around the community
before the new parking plan, you may have noticed in many
spots the numbers telling where to park were extremely
faded and could not be read. You may also have noticed
that there were multiple numbers schemes depending on
where you were in the community.
Prior to this, the number one call to Casa Bella regarding
Plum Creek was residents asking where the parking spot
was. We could not give these residents an official answer,
because there was no record of what spots were assigned
to which units. So, we knew we had to make a hard choice
and make an official parking plan. This has been a project
being done for two years by the board.
First, we had to survey how many parking spots we had on
which streets. We also had to record which units had
covered parking and which did not. Finally, we did our best
to document which cars were assigned to which spots. As
we began to look at the results, we noticed that some
residents had very short distances between there units and
spots and some residents had very long distances, with
there being really no reason that we could see.
Ultimately, the parking plan we had was not fair to all
residents and we knew we needed to address that. We
preserved original spots where it made sense, but we also
took this opportunity to make the plan fair to all residents.
If you had medical conditions that require you to have a
closer spot, please reach out to us so that we can make
arrangements.
Now that we have an official record of parking spots, we can
adjust based on your feedback. We are going to leave the
parking plan in place for one year to see what concerns
come up, and then we will reach out to you next summer
for feedback and ideas on where we can improve.
When you purchased your unit in Plum Creek, you made a
purchase into a community of Co-Owners. Every action the
Board takes is focused on the benefit of the community,
and sometimes may not directly benefit you or may even
seem like its negatively impacting you. This is no different
than your local government, we are focused on ensuring the
enjoyment and comfort of the community as whole.
We make our decisions based our professional community
managers, legal counsel, community plan, and your
feedback and involvement. Please also take a moment to
read through the rules and regulations, as well as the
bylaws. These are the governing documents that we must
follow in our actions and ultimately drive many of the day-
to-day decisions. If you would like to have a more direct
impact in the direction of the community, consider running
for a position as a member of the Board of Directors.
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