The 4/9/24 POHOA Regular Board Meeting reached peak fiduciary hypocrisy when the third agenda item, coyly noted as only “COI” (which nobody would have a clue was Conflict of Interest) came up. Secretary Flanary slid a piece of paper across the long boardroom table where only the spouses of Directors Jones and Hutchinson, myself and my wife, and a new couple that had moved into the neighborhood recently, were all sitting around the other end.
Director Hutchinson signed the Conflict of Interest Policy with no fanfare. But, then President Ballweber began a process of reviewing the contract with Ms. Hutchinson that included allowing some comments and questions. Oh wait, not contract. “Verbal Agreement”.
I asked whether or not there were written invoices, since there is no written contract, and Ms. Hutchinson confirmed there were. I then asked whether she had insurance or whether POHOA has insurance specific to having a homeowner receiving such large payments (10% of the HOA Revenue), and we do not – and they don’t intend to get any.
But, then I asked about whether any bids were solicited prior to the “verbal agreement”, and it led to an interesting back and forth. I mentioned that at the 12/14/22 meeting, when Treasurer Clay Jones announced that he was going to hire Jenn Hutchinson “administratively”, that Gloria had said that she received a bid for $4000. To my surprise, the Board and Gloria vehemently denied that she said that at the meeting.
I said that there was a recording, and they denied it anyways. So, let’s take a look starting at 00:12:00 in the recording:
It even comes out in the AI transcripts that are available via Glasp, YouTube, etc.
I followed up with the fact I’d like to see the quotes or bids, and got a rather cold response. I asked if any of the Directors had maybe checked to see more recently if there were any bookkeepers who would give us a better deal. Not only did they not, they seemed uninterested in doing so even after the meeting.
So, I volunteered to get some quotes, but asked if Director Hutchinson could reveal how many hours per month she was spending to justify $500 per month. She said 10-20 hours, but then volunteered some information that was a tell – most of those hours were “on the phone with Quickbooks”.
For any of us business-owners who use QB, that’s a sign that something isn’t right.
In fact, we know there’s been a problem with our automated monthly payments from homeowners. In the last payment request, the POHOA Board indicated that we would need to set it up again because the payment amount changed for 2024.
But, when I tried to follow these instructions, the checkbox to have it save my routing and checking account number was missing. It’s there by default, says most every QB advisor I’ve spoken with. So, I wrote to Treasurer Jones and got this response:
So, we are paying $500 per month to Ms. Hutchinson to sit on the phone with Intuit (company that owns Quickbooks) and still not get the problem resolved.
Today I spoke with several Quickbooks bookkeepers, all of whom said that if this was actually a problem, a simple email to officeofthepresident@intuit.com would get the problem resolved in less than 24 hours. Does Ms. Hutchinson not know this? Does the POHOA Board not know this? Why are we spending all this money to sit on the phone over a problem that any of these bookkeepers say they could resolve quickly, and still do our books for far less?
How much less?
Well, the first quotes I received were for $320, $360, and $375 per month. That translates to LESS than $4000 per year, and no more than $4500. And, there are 38 Quickbooks bookkeepers IN Fort Collins who I sent out requests to, and those first quotes all came within 2 hours!
And, while Gloria Jones made it sound like the sole $4000 quote she got was an outlier (in the video above) to justify giving Ms. Hutchinson this no-bid “verbal agreement”, it turns out that it’s actually in the range of bids 1.5 to 2 years later! There’s not even really inflation on these costs!
So, if the Board is hemming and hawing over two bids for spraying for noxious weeds that were $800 and $1250 (at the most recent Board meeting prior to this), why is it of no interest to them to save more than $2000 per year AND get this ongoing problem with automated payments solved?
I have suspected for 2 years now that the issue is that there’s something in our books that this group of Directors really doesn’t want anyone else to see. Neither I nor John Tunna was allowed to log into Quickbooks during our tenure on the Board. In fact, other than Ms. Hutchinson, there’s not really any evidence of anyone but Clay Jones (and perhaps Gloria) logging in. It’s just odd that a boring set of HOA Financial Books is treated like it’s the secret nuclear codes.
Meanwhile, the decision to proceed with a no-bid verbal agreement that appears to be 50% higher than several quotes from other qualified professionals calls into question the competency and integrity of the Board, as their fiduciary duty should require them to get us the best deal possible. $2000 is alot of money for an HOA of this size and budget.
When I sent an email to Treasurer Clay Jones with the good news that we could save some money, this is the response he sent back to me this afternoon:
And, this is where we see the absurd notion that a Treasurer claiming an authoritarian right to control who any homeowner contacts jump the shark. Apparently, the reason they didn’t want to get any bids is because it would expose the fact that this no-bid “verbal agreement” with Ms. Hutchinson is exactly what such agreements are – corrupt. We are overpaying a homeowner who can’t do the job to keep our books secret . . . and then we threaten those who get bids proving it is so.
While I supported the hiring of Ms. Hutchinson in December of 2022 if criteria were met, clearly, Treasurer Jones and the POHOA Board have no intentions to do even the bare minimum work of ensuring we are paying a fair and reasonable rate for services. This is an insider sweetheart deal that has broken our automated monthly payments system – and they have no intention to get it fixed and now demand we just pay the full amount for the year all at once because of this incompetence. I withdraw my support.
FIRST QUOTES RECEIVED:
