These are my personal images and photos that show the beauty of the view from Deer Ridge Mountain Resort and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Cobbly Nob and the Gatlinburg, Tennessee area.
Just click the Play button to watch - or click Big Picture to see a much larger slide show on a dedicated page here at DeerRidgeOwners.com.
Deer Ridge Litigation Fund
Do you, as an owner at Deer Ridge Mountain Resort, believe we are ALL entitled to have access and be able to copy the books and records of our Homeowner's Association?
So, do I.
But, apparently, Employee Joe Thomas and President Luther Parker and the Board disagree - and are doing all they can to block access, publication and candid discussion of the Asinine Assessment, special deals and favored treatment - at the expense of all Owners.
What ARE they so afraid of us finding out?
Maybe it has to do with the HUGE $10,000 overcharge for my HOA Fees, special assessments, water and cable TV bill - which, in my personal opinion, is due to fraudulent intent or at least gross negligence by the Deer Ridge Board of Directors and / or General Manager Joe Thomas. Please see the posts for details.
We have no choice but to file a lawsuit against GGRC and RML in order to finally, once and for all, make it clear that OWNERS do have a right to all the information about our property and our investment at Deer Ridge.
If you have thoughts and ideas and suggestions, please post them here on this blog.
If you have any clout with the Board, convince them to stop the charade - and let the owners have the information that all owners own!
If you want to help cover the legal costs to get us the right to see the bids for $50,000 for nuts and bolts - and the other background documents for the $353,500 Asinine Assessment, please click on the Donate Button below.
With enough in donations, we can hire BOTH an attorney AND a forensic accountant for the whole process through the Court in Sevier County to make absolutely certain we win EVERY point - and never have to fight Employee Joe and the Board on this stuff again.
Even a $100 contribution will help show that you are in favor of an open and FULLY transparent homeowners' association at Deer Ridge Mountain Resort!
Thanks so much to those of you who have already contributed!
GENERAL DISCLAIMER FOR ALL PAGES AND POSTS AND EVERYTHING ELSE I DO OR SAY REGARDING DEER RIDGE AND ANY AND ALL RELATED PARTIES:
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.
Please note the obvious:
Everything I ever say or write in person, via emails, or on my blog, about Deer Ridge or any and all related entities and organizations or any and all affiliated personnel or owners, is strictly my own personal opinion of course - based, in part, from my owning a unit at Deer Ridge for over five years - and on my own personal history.
That history includes earning a Presidential MBA degree, being awarded a Bachelor of Science, With Honors, in Engineering Physics from UT, working for NASA as a rocket scientist at Marshall Space Flight Center, 30 years of CEO experience directly employing and managing many hundreds of people at multiple companies I personally started and operated (including one that I took public), 15 years experience buying and selling over $100 million of property and managing more than 45,000 rental units - AND being able to read and do four-function arithmetic.
Legalese - And Powered Wig - Off
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Welcome to All Deer Ridge Owners
Welcome to all owners of Deer Ridge Mountain Resort condos in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
My goal is to help all Deer Ridge owners to have a voice in the management and operation of your property.
Click on the TITLES of any of the following subjects to read the whole posting - and see the comments made by your co-owners. You can also type any term into the below search box, or any word or term in the search cloud.
Click the big image at the top of the page to return to the front page at any time.
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Investment Analysis For A Rental Condo At Deer Ridge
Will you really lose $40,000 cash if you buy a rental condo at Deer Ridge and use Ridge Management Ltd?
As an owner-occupied home, Deer Ridge is an incredible value with THE best view in the Smokies and great amenities.
However, several owners and would-be owners of Deer Ridge condos have asked me if these units are a good rental property investment or not. To help answer that question
objectively, I had to analyze the real moving parts of buying and owning here.
Get my complete, detailed investment analysis based on buying a rental condo unit at Deer Ridge Mountain Resort in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
It shows what you MUST do to make money when you buy a rental unit at Deer Ridge.
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.
Comments Welcome From All Visitors
You are welcome to leave your comments on the various posts on the blog. You no longer have to be registered to comment. (Even regular contributors had trouble remembering their log on passwords!)
Note that SPAM blockers are in place - and all comments require approval to be visible.
So, let's hear from you on these topics!
To view the comments, you need to click on the post topic to see the entire post and the comments.
"We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert." — J. Robert Oppenheimer. This includes the Board of Directors of Deer Ridge Mountain Resort.
Summary: Do you realize that HALF of all HOA fees collected each YEAR from ALL Deer Ridge Owners are illegitimately used to pay the $152,000 a year negative cash flow of RML???
No wonder we never have ANY reserves for Deer Ridge – and the illegitimate “board” tries to force all owners to fund an illegitimate $353,500 Asinine Assessment to help cover up their lie that RML fully supports itself.
I have completed a GGRC and RML budget analysis that we intend to use in our $3 million lawsuit against GGRC and Joe Thomas and the “board” – and I thought you might find it overwhelming indicative of the lies and misrepresentations that are being perpetrated here at Deer Ridge.
It shows that RML actually has, in reality, a NEGATIVE CASH FLOW of $152,000 EACH YEAR- not the $12.000 “positive” cash flow that Joe Thomas and the “board” lied to you about with the budget mailing to all owners last December.
OK. Fair warning: This post is all about numbers and budget analysis which I know is a total bore to many of you. So, in an effort to make it easy for you, I am going to give you, up front, the Executive Summary and bottom line of all that follows. All the data is there if you would like to plow through it to understand where each and every number comes from.
The key question to remember: For every operating cost associated with Deer Ridge, would that cost, or that full cost, be there IF Deer Ridge was not operated as a motel? Would that cost, or that full cost, be there if we were operated solely as a small, 84 unit residential condo complex owned by over 78 owners with diverse needs and goals?
Bear in mind that there is NOTHING in the Master Deed or Bylaws that indicates this property is anything other than a small, 84 unit residential condo complex – so there is nothing in our regime documents that sets Deer Ridge out as a motel or as a predominately rental property. Therefore, when folks buy a condo at Deer Ridge, there is NOTHING in any of the legal documents that provide for RML or running the property as a motel. Each owner can choose to rent or not rent their unit out – but any and all costs associated with renting a unit is that unit’s responsibility.
Hence, the Common Expenses that are funded by all of our HOA fees can ONLY relate to operating Deer Ridge as a small, 84 unit residential condo complex. So, the point of this analysis is to break out any and all expenses or partial expenses that would not be required of a small, 84 unit residential condo complex.
The Executive Summary – The Dirty Dozen Secrets Of RML
All of the following is my personal opinion based on my detailed analysis of the audits and budgets provided by the “board.”
Joe Thomas and Larry Ohm and the rest of the “board” have been LYING to you for years that RML is profitable – and that RML is the part of Deer Ridge that really supports the real costs here.
All of that is a lie.
The real truth is that RML has a NEGATIVE CASH FLOW of over $152,000just for 2010, assuming all the budget numbers are hit. (Last year they missed their revenue budget number by almost $100,000 – so, if they miss this year’s number by the same amount, that means the RML Negative Cash Flow could be over $252,000 just for 2010!)
The 2009 actual numbers show that the NEGATIVE CASH FLOW for all of 2009 was over $130,000 according to the numbers in the audits handed out at the 2010 “Annual Meeting.”
The reasons that the budget numbers and the audits show otherwise is that these guys have been playing games with at least 14 line items of expenses totaling nearly $164,000 that are falsely shown as GGRC expenses when they, in fact, have nothing to do with operating and administrating a small 84 unit residential condo community. Those 14 line items, instead, are related to being in the motel business that is run by RML.
Joey and the “board” know that the truth of this would be unacceptable to a significant number of Deer Ridge owners – so they lie to all the owners about which company is really responsible for each line item – hoping that their “artful dodger” arithmetic will go by unnoticed. This is one of the reasons for their disinformation campaign and lies trying to discredit me – because they KNEW that I was going to expose these secrets for all Owners to see and understand.
Assuming the last six years was the same level of negative cash flow for RML, then RML has squandered OVER $1 Million of our HOA fees!
This is almost THREE of the current Asinine Assessments! No wonder we don’t have any money in any of our reserve accounts! No wonder that Deer Ridge has the HIGHEST HOA fees in the entire area.
This ANNUAL NEGATIVECASH FLOW represents over HALF of the total HOA fees collected from ALL owners at Deer Ridge – each and every year.
This $152,000 NEGATIVECASH FLOW each year equates to a cost of over $1,800 to each and every owner at Deer Ridge – including the 20 plus units that do not use RML. If just those who use RML were to pay this $152,000 negative cash flow each year, they would have to pay $2,375 a year EXTRA just to keep RML out of bankruptcy. If you think in terms of NET dollars to each owner per year, you can see that RML is not a good deal for ANY owner at Deer Ridge.
This means that RML has wrongly robbed me of over $9,000 just for my unit during the past five years we have owned here.
On top of the financial impact, RML is a illegitimately formed and operated “for profit” corporation owned by a non-profit organization. There was never even the guise of a vote authorizing its formation – and there is zero provision in the property’s master deed and bylaws that provide even a nickel for paying for RML out of our Common Expense – and here it is, taking over HALF of our HOA fees each and every month from ALL owners.
If GGRC were operated correctly, without RML, and using a professional HOA management company, GGRC would generate a POSITIVE CASH FLOW each year of over $118,000 with current HOA fees in place. This would have equaled approximately $600,000 over the past five years! This is almost enough to cover TWO Asinine Assessments – without requiring owners to dig in their pockets for even more money.
The GGRC “board” has a fiduciary duty to ensure that GGRC, not RML, is operated properly for ALL Owners in accordance with the Master Deed and Bylaws. Joe Thomas and the rest of the Gang of Six are GROSSLY violating their fiduciary duty to GGRC by trying to protect RML’s negative cash flow from being discovered – and continuing to deplete hundreds of thousands of dollars of HOA fees to do so. It is past time to hold every member of the Gang Of Six personally and financially responsible for their wanton disregard for their fiduciary responsibility to every owner at Deer Ridge.
All owners should be outraged at this despicable lie that has been perpetrated by Joe Thomas for YEARS just for his own self-serving reasons to keep employed and paid all the money he unjustifiably gets from our small 84 unit complex.
All owners should be outraged that Luther Parker and Larry Ohm and the rest of the “board” are either so incompetent and grossly negligent to understand this – or are in collusion with Joe Thomas to intentionally misrepresent these facts to all the owners.
We expect to hold Joe Thomas and every member of the “board” fully accountable for every dollar of Owners’ money they have wasted on RML with our $3 million lawsuit – and believe that the jury in our case will have no difficulty in understanding and believing the following analysis that proves their lie – and the extent to which it has been covered up. And, since these Dirty Dozen Secrets About RML have affected EVERY OWNER, past and present, for the last decade, this will probably be the basis for a SECOND Class Action Lawsuit against Joe Thomas the rest of the Gang of Six.
An Alternative – Professional HOA Management of Deer Ridge
My previous posting How To Fire Joe Thomas And Save GGRC Tens Of Thousands $$$ Each Year gives details on a bid we received from a professional HOA management company that specializes in providing the managerial, administrative and maintenance services required of home owner associations in the Knoxville and Gatlinburg areas. Their bid provides for:
A one time set up fee of $1,680 to audit the books and records
A monthly management fee of $1,680 per month plus any and all late fees they collect
Maintenance done at $25 per hour for individual homeowners’ repairs.
All monthly bookkeeping included, which would also save GGRC thousands of dollars per year.
All personnel would be their people – not ours – so there would be no cost to us for all personnel related costs. This also means that they provide the back up folks for vacation, illness and resignations and firings.
You can see their full bid by clicking Bid and view their brochure by clicking Brochure.
Bear in mind, that all of these activities are strictly GGRC related and have nothing to do with the illegitimate RML and its’ activities.
Their company:
Has been providing HOA services in the area for over a dozen years.
Has managed over $800 million in HOA property at over 50 different locations throughout East Tennessee.
Has their own accounting and maintenance people along with their own lawn care experts.
Generates management reports that include monthly management summaries, balance sheet, income and expense statements, budget performance, collection report and bank reconciliation.
They maintain the state-required HOA “Administrator’s Book” that seems to be so difficult to produce with the current management team led by “full time” General Manager Joe Thomas.
By tapping the expertise of this, or some similar company, GGRC ends up with a HUGE positive cash flow each year of nearly $120,000 each year! That kind of surplus would have been able to fully fund even the absurd Asinine Assessment of $353, 500 in under three years without the need for any additional pay in by all the owners.
Doesn’t it make sense for GGRC to have this kind of positive cash flow each year – instead of using HALF of our HOA fees each and every year from ALL owners to feed the RML negative cash flow???
Check out our new Deer Ridge Owners webcam for the current view from our balcony!
Just click the photo for the most recent update. Updated every 5 minutes.
Top 10 Cam Award!
Our new Cobbly Nob TN site was just chosen as an Earthcam Top 10 Webcam!
All of this in just our first two weeks of operation - and before we install our new wide angle, high definition lens! Stay tuned for even better images!
EarthCam, Inc. is the global leader in providing webcam content, technology and services and ranks among the top 1% of all websites. EarthCam.com is the world’s favorite webcam network and the EarthCam Network cameras have been seen on top news shows, including CNN’s Headline News.
New YouTube Channel For Deer Ridge Owners!
Check out ALL of our videos on our new YouTube Channel for Deer Ridge Owners:
We already have videos that will walk you around the whole property and give you reviews from past guests and tourists. Find out what they REALLY have to say about Deer Ridge!
We are adding even more videos in the next few weeks - so check out our Deer Ridge Owners Channel often!
Update: Just added two new videos for a total of 20 videos so far! Check them out!
Owner Files $3 Million Lawsuit Against HOA, General Manager And Board Members
A homeowner in Gatlinburg, Tennessee has filed a $3 Million Lawsuit against his HOA, General Manager And All Individual Board Members at Deer Ridge Mountain Resort.
In response to their meritless, retaliatory $1 Million defamation lawsuit against me, I have now filed a $3 Million lawsuit against Deer Ridge Mountain Resort, AKA Gatlinburg Golf and Racquet Club HOA and Joe Thomas, Luther Parker, Larry Ohm, Margie Duncan, David Barone and Tom Reise, all as individuals.
If you believe in free speech as much as we do, we need your help - no matter where in America you may live.
The Deer Ridge HOA board and individual board members have filed a $1 Million Lawsuit against me in their ongoing attempts to stop this blog and have its contents removed. Click Press Release for details.
This power clique wants to continue to block free speech on this property and to keep their illegitimate secrets hidden from other owners.
They are willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars of other owners' money on legal fees to keep themselves in power while they continue to break both Tennessee state law and Deer Ridge property law.
We need your help with the legal fees that will be required to force them to abide by the law - and insure that Deer Ridge Mountain Resort is entitled to free speech like the rest of America.
If you would like to join with others who believe in free speech and believe that all of the 305,000 Home Owner Associations across the nation should be protected from tyrannical boards that ignore the laws, please click the
Donate Button below.
Even a donation of just a few dollars would be very greatly appreciated as a way of showing that we have financial support from thousands of Americans for these important issues!
Thanks so much to all of those of you who have already contributed!
Please help us broadcast this Press Release to others you know who can spread the word. You are welcome to link to this site from Twitter, Facebook or other sites.
With your help we can fight and win this $1 Million lawsuit - and keep this blog active - and an inspiration and model for other HOA Abuse Blogs across the nation.
Owner Comments