Legalese On
GENERAL DISCLAIMER FOR ALL PAGES AND POSTS
Note: The following, and the information on any and all other posts and pages by me about General Manager Joe Thomas, GGRC, RML and /or the Board of Directors and its members, or any related topics, are my personal opinions based on my ongoing investigation into the actions and inactions of the GGRC and RML Board of Directors and / or Joe Thomas, General Manager.
While I believe these allegations to be true based on my objective analysis, these opinions remain as only allegations until I, or others, prove things in court.
My goal is to offer all owners all the information and evidence that I have available so that everyone can reach their own conclusions.
Legalese - And Powered Wig - Off
----------------------------
Every Dollar You Pay For Deer Ridge Is The WRONG Amount!
Please read the various posts here on this Deer Ridge Owners Blog - and see my evidence and analysis which I believe shows conclusively that EVERY dollar of HOA Fees, EVERY dollar EVERY special assessment, EVERY water bill and cable TV sent out for YEARS to ALL Deer Ridge Owners has been wrong!
In many cases at least ONE THIRD of ALL owners have been GROSSLY overcharged. My calculations show that I have been overcharged more than TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS in the past 50 months I've owned at Deer Ridge.
The Board has been WRONGLY and arbitrarily ignoring the requirements of the Master Deed and the Bylaws for YEARS.
If my analysis is correct, the Board has zero choice. They MUST abide by the Master Deed Percentages.
But they haven’t.
However, if the Board knowingly ignored the clear directives of the Master Deed and the Bylaws when allocating costs to various unit types, and overcharging certain unit types on a regular basis, my opinion is that the Board and Joe Thomas may have acted fraudulently.
If they have not been fraudulent, then they have been, at the very least, grossly negligent.
Read the various blog postings - and judge for yourself.
nd discuss issues – and have a voice that I hope will finally be noticed by the Board.
What are the HOA fees used for at Deer Ridge $275 per month? Why not use this for the painting???
Michael you are so right. Hope to see more of your comments on the site.
Is there an itemized list of how it is Divided up ?
My Dear Robert:
Have read with great interest the One Bedroom Loft rental analysis piece on ‘your’ Deer Ridge Owners website.
Really enjoyed your pointing out how much my unit, A302, was being “rented” (for 25 days) in October, based on occupancy data from the RML on-line reservations system.
Let’s add some information that you did not ask me for, prior to putting your so-called research out there for all the world to see.
Betty and I are going to be at DR October 11 -18 (7 nights) enjoying the serenity. It is time for a mental recharge and what better place is there?
I have given my friend Marla free use of my unit during October 24 – 30 (7 nights) for her honeymoon with Matt.
A gift to begin the first week of her married life in a breathtakingly beautiful setting with nice amenities.
Subtracting those 14 days of ‘personal use’ of my unit from the 25, yields an actual 11 days rented in October. Seven units were rented more than mine, two less. This works out to 35% of the available nights with my unit being rented, or 11% below your calculated average of October booked One Bedroom Lofts.
Or put another way, a 46 percent Error Rate in your calculations.
In September, my card playing and golf buddy Elmer spent a free week with his wife Barb. In August, Betty’s two great-grandchildren and granddaughter Kelly visited. As many other 1BRL units were available for rent, those owners get the income and thus benefit by my unit being occupied by my personal guests.
Should the sport of Jumping To Conclusions ever be made an Olympic event, I feel certain you will be up on the podium at some point for at least a silver medal.
It is my understanding you are asking for large numbers of GGRC records and documents to analyze, both as a power play and to search for evidence of wrong doing. If your analysis of those records are performed in the same manner as you did for mine, the results will certainly be worthless and a major waste of time on the part of Deer Ridge paid employees.
During my upcoming visit, I invite you to walk with me on a Building and Grounds type tour of the property. I can show you the infrastructure items such as the Closed Circuit TV system I designed and helped install for safety and security, the C Building electrical installation Betty and I rehabilitated at no cost to owners and so on. At the same time you can bring me up to speed on your personal contributions for the benefit of all the Owners and/or Guests of Deer Ridge.
By the way, are any of those legal forms you have available for download on your site, usable for Slander or Defamation of Character lawsuits in Tennessee?
Regards,
Jim Hinchee, Owner, A-302
Jim,
Great to hear from you…and thanks for your posting. More postings by you are certainly welcome.
In answer to your response:
One of my disclaimers on that posting was, “Now, bear in mind, all we know is that those nights were marked, “Unavailable” for rental. Maybe they are going to be used by the owner, maybe used by friends of the owner…we can’t tell from just the reservations systems.” I also pretty clearly stated, “We say that the only thing certain about the unit above us is that we don’t know ANYTHING for sure…Is this a fluke? Is it a one-time aberration? We can’t be sure. Do the Board and Committee members even know this is going on with their units? Who knows?”
That seems pretty clear to me – on all levels for which you seemed concerned – with disclaimers galore and no slander or defamation of character in sight.
What we asked for is an easy to produce analysis of ALL RML rented units be included in each month’s statement.
That way, ALL RML folks would have total transparency. This would be a trivial analysis to program into the reservations system software that would automatically generate the full report for the whole property once a month – with that one printout showing all units – included with the rental checks each owner receives every month.
Don’t owners deserve that level of transparency – especially when it is so easy – and there’s so much money involved?
The documents I am asking for are really the underlying documents you, yourself, so perfectly recommended to the Board regarding the assessment for $353,500. If you look at my posting titled “Assessment Information Request – An Open Letter To Joe Thomas And The Board” you see that I respectfully requested the documents tied to the request for so much money.
In that posting, I even quote you from your report to the Board:
“On any major project, a set of written specifications as to exactly what is wanted should be included with the Request For Proposal. Reference to it should be made in any contract. Requirements for the contractor to clean up behind himself should be included and enforced. Acceptance tests or inspections should be performed by a member of staff prior to final payment of invoices or statements.”
Bravo, Jim!
As I say in that posting, “In my opinion, Jim Hinchee, Building and Grounds Committee Chairman does a GREAT job in that role. I completely agree with the statement he made in his recent report to the Board.”
Many of us want to see those underlying documents – especially for ones that have a singular line item: “Nuts and Bolts – “$50,000.” Instead of Joe and the Board having to provide dozens of concerned owners with this information, I even offer a simple solution: give the info to me and I post it on my blog for all to see – and even give everyone, including the Board and Joe, a forum for open and transparent discussion.
Instead, Joe smugly says “No copies of ANYTHING.” Even though ALL owners deserve to have access to every document so they can analyze them at their leisure – without Joe looking over your shoulder while you try to read and understand complex documents. Not to mention, that Joe’s approach conveniently negates most owners who are not local from even viewing them.
As to your contributions, I, for one, very much appreciate the CCTV system you designed and installed along with your other many efforts. With both of us long time ham radio enthusiasts, I applaud how your technical skill sets have greatly helped this property and it is noticed and appreciated! My skill sets are more business oriented than technical – although I did finally get Comcast to fix the Internet feed problem to all of Deer Ridge – after getting them out to the property 11 times in July and August to finally replace some flawed equipment.
Since you asked that I “bring you up to speed on my personal contributions for the benefit of all the Owners and/or Guests of Deer Ridge”, I would probably include the following items that quickly come to mind:
= My Deer Ridge Owners Blog gives all owners an open forum for discussing what is really happening at our property. Any owner, including Board members and even Joe Thomas, can register and participate.
= My comprehensive business plan on the pavilion probably kept the Board from going totally wild – and probably saved Deer Ridge Owners over $60,000. It is too bad that the Board violated the Master Deed and Bylaws by still spending $80,000 that I wasn’t able to stop since they were unwilling to release Deer Ridge documents to Deer Ridge Owners – but more about that in an upcoming major post at the blog.
= My suggestions to the Board four years ago that: no pooling of income and expenses for RML, reduction of the management fee from 45% to 40%, individualized accounting for each owner, no more “excise tax” where owners were charged a “tax” if they wanted to use their own unit during “prime time”, etc. – were finally implement virtually identical to my recommendations – even though it took the Board an extra year or two to get there after my posting those very suggestions to my Deer Ridge Owners site.
= The most recent personal contribution I have made has to do with clearly identifying last week that at least 30 owners representing 36% of ALL units at Deer Ridge have already been overcharged by AT LEAST $300,000 as a result of either gross incompetence, gross negligence and/or fraud by Joe Thomas and the Board of Directors. Please see my various postings at the Blog for details. The upshot of this is that THIRTY current owners have had their rights, and their checkbooks, abused. Untold numbers of prior owners of Deer Ridge units were also abused. THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS is a lot of money – and those 30 owners deserve to get their money back – and then some. And, if Joe Thomas and / or any Board members ever knew they were suppose to follow the Master Deed Percentages – and instead chose other approaches on purpose, then it is fraud. I don’t yet know whether it is criminal fraud or just civil fraud – but either way, I am delighted to have been able to uncover this ongoing misappropriation against 36% of our owners. I am still waiting for Luther Parker and Joe Thomas to respond to this issue – and provide me the documents I have requested. For some reason, they have been totally mute on this issue.
= There are other ways I believe I have personally and positively contributed to Deer Ridge, but I hope that the above shows some of the major ways I have already helped owners at Deer Ridge. It’s hard to quantify even the above – especially with no books and records yet – but my hope is that my total financial contribution to all owners of Deer Ridge may exceed at least HALF A MILLION DOLLARS – and maybe as much as ONE MILLION DOLLARS. Since we are already over ONE THIRD MILLION – I am at least getting close.
With regard to my requests for documents being “worthless and a waste of time…” I would think the above pretty clearly shows that my requests are, in fact, pivotally important to the way money from ALL owners is handled at Deer Ridge – and is a LOT more than just “finger pointing.”
With regard to your walkaround suggestion when you are here – great idea!
Another couple of owners and I had planned on walking the whole property with my digital camcorder so that we could generate a video of all the things that need $353,500 to fix. Your participation would be GREAT – that way, you can show us where there is all that wood that needs to be replaced – and exactly where the $50,000 worth of “nuts and bolts” are located.
We’ve all already walked the property and for the life of us, we can’t seem to find the need for $50,000 worth.
What I would like to do, with your permission, is video you while you take all of us on a tour of the entire property. I would then be happy to post that full video on my blog for all owners to view! What a GREAT way to inform all owners at the same time with video – and your narration that would help clarify the need for all $353,500.
Please let me know if you want to help us with that video tour – and we will postpone doing it until we could have your invaluable help.
Jim, you and I share a common goal – to benefit the owners of Deer Ridge. I do hope that you now see that, in spite of what you may have been told, my goals are the same as yours – even if the methodology is different.
Robert
Jim,
The more informed all 84 owners are the stronger we (Deer Ridge) becomes; therefore, the best long and short term decisions come forward with less errors. The path to that is openness and transparacy. That is all. If there are no problems i cannot for the life of me understand why not let the documents speak for themself? Please encourage the board/Joe to do so. Open up the books. What’s the big deal?
I am glad you are posting Jim. I truly am. I hope this is a light at the end of a dark tunnel of board/committee silence. Silence can breed mis-interpretation which none of us need. I know you care about Deer Ridge, as i do. Anyone that owns here cares. I care enough to look and report for water leaks when i walk the road or under units, or copper leaving the grounds, or the latest lights out on E ramp which i reported first, or anything i see that doesn’t appear right. I have not done anything as grand as Robert or yourself. I thank BOTH OF YOU for your valuable time. Your time is priceless. I just live here, that is all. Some are here so little and have no clue as to what goes on, but want to know. Thanks Robert for this site. We all need to be treated equally and equally informed as well in all our applications here at the Ridge.
Life is good! Enjoy your stay here and take some time to relax. It truly is a wonderful place to live.
With openness and clarity, like our incredible view on crisp and clear fall day, it will only get better!