Bob’s Blog

In the last few months, our website has had many new users registered, as many as five or six a day. That’s good news, right?

Actually, not so much. These were apparently automated registrations, most of them from Russian email domains. While these new “members” don’t seem to have done anything harmful, it was cumbersome to have to delete them by the dozen.

In order to prevent these computer generated registrations from continuing, we have instituted a new process for registering on this site. First, if you’re already registered, you don’t have to do anything. But for new registrations, as part of the process, you will be required to type in a series of letters and/or numbers. The system will generate a random set and it will appear as sort of distorted characters that an actual person can easily understand, but that a computer program cannot.

Most of the time, this will be very easy, but once in a while these strings of characters are difficult even for a person to understand. If this happens to you, try again & you will get a different string, presumably easier to decipher. If you still have trouble, just email me at bob@hawksnestowners.org & I’ll help you get registered.

On another topic, now that the new hawksnest-marathon.com is up and running with updated rental and sales information, we’ll be making some changes to these pages in the near future to better interface with that website. More later.

The minutes for the last six meetings of the Hawks Nest board, including the June 6 annual owners meeting are now posted on the Hawks Nest website, www.hawksnest-marathon.com.

In order to read them, you must be registered and logged in as an owner. If you haven’t registered yet, it’s easy. Just go to the website, click on the “Owners” tab, and then click on “Register” and follow the instructions. As soon as the office staff verifies your status as an owner, you’re good to go.

The link to the minutes is also located under the “Owners” tab and is visible there once you are logged in.

These minutes make very interesting reading.

More information for those who wish to know. The services for Russell McNeil will be as follows:

Visitation at the Delaney Funeral Home, 48 Common St. Walpole, MA July 15 from 4 to 8 PM
Funeral at Union Congregational Church, UCC 55 Rhodes Ave. E. Walpole, MA 02032, July 16 at 10 AM

On a personal note: I have known Russ and Jane for many years. Russ was on the Hawks Nest board of directors for many years and served as both Treasurer and Secretary at different times. Russ was a true gentleman. He gave me encouragement when I needed it, and was an original member of the Hawks Nest Owners Group.

Russ leaves his wife, Jane, four adult children and eight grandchildren. Please include them in your thoughts and prayers.

For those who wish to send condolences to the family, the address is 35 Park Lane East Walpole, MA 02032, the telephone number is 508-668-7711.

Russell’s obituary can be found here: http://www.delaneyfuneral.com/index.cfm

I received word this morning that long-time Hawks Nest owner and former board member, Russell McNeil died in his sleep last night. My understanding is that he had not been sick and that this was completely unexpected. I will pass more information along as I hear.

When I started this website in 2007, a year after a few of us formed the Owners Group, I posted my very first blog introducing the Owners Group to the World Wide Web. I thought it might be interesting to look at again. Rather than flipping back through all those pages, here is a link to it:

That’s OK, just click and read it. I’ll wait. (It’s the last one on the page.)

http://www.hawksnestowners.org/hawkblog/?cat=17&paged=8

All done? That’s all right, I probably wouldn’t have read it all either. You’ll get the point.

How times have changed. First, our membership now represents nearly 600 unit weeks, over 40% of the total. The communication among us, the owners, has improved exponentially, at least judging from the postings on this site, as well as the literally hundreds of emails I received during the most recent election campaign, especially with regard to the anonymous letter. I have many new friends, most of whom I’ve never met face to face.

Communication from the leadership and management has improved as well, I’m sure that many more owners are more familiar with the members of the board than they were just three years ago, and the new Hawks Nest website has a tremendous amount of potential. Of course, you can’t spend potential, so to speak.

So what about this website? I can tell you that if the state of the board and the “Official” website had been in 2006 what they are today, I most likely wouldn’t have been involved in starting the Owners Group, nor would I have spent the countless hours and not insignificant number of dollars to put this website on the internet.

So. Should we just fold up our tent and declare victory? I don’t think so. We’ve heard promises before. We’ve been optimistic before. While the new website holds a great amount of promise, it’s not the solution to our problems, it’s only the mechanism by which the board and management communicate with us.

The solution to our problems lies partially with the people we have elected to look after our interests. To make the solution complete, we, the owners, need to look after them, and that’s where the Owners Group comes in.

If minutes aren’t posted, we need to ask, “where are they?” If we aren’t getting timely and complete financial information, we need to ask, “why not?” If the property starts sliding back into disrepair, we need to ask, “what’s going on?” There’s plenty for us to do.

So keep asking those questions, call or write the members of the board or the manager. If you have a concern, SAY SO. If you have an idea, SHARE IT. If you have a complaint, VOICE IT. If you have a compliment, PAT SOMEBODY ON THE BACK.

I think most of us are optimistic for the future, and justifiably so. But the people who we entrust to take care of our investment, and it IS an investment, need to know we’re paying attention, that we care about what’s going on.

Sometime yesterday, all of our blogs, postings and comments disappeared. Luckily, all that we needed was a software upgrade which we now have.

If you tried to do something during that time, and it didn’t work, try again or write me to help.

bob@hawksnestowners.org

If you haven’t seen it already, go to the new HN website, www.hawksnest-marathon.com and look at the rental page. They have posted about 50 units for rent between now and Week 17, next year. They show the week number and a general description of the unit (1 bedroom, 2 bedroom corner, center, etc.) This is located in the area of the website that’s accessible to the general public.

With this exposure, the rental program can now finally be the success it should have been all along. It’s user-friendly. What a concept.

Yup, that’s it. The new Hawks Nest website is now on-line. I’ve seen it. It’s state-of-the-art.

Like the old site, parts of it are open to the public, and parts are intended for owners only. That’s where the similarity ends. In the Owners section, there’s a President’s page, and Marty has committed to at least quarterly updates, and there’s a Manager’s page, where new General Manager, Gary Rumberger will be posting at least monthly.

Additionally, there’s an owners blog, a photo gallery, and pages with meeting minutes and with financial information such as the budget, profit and loss statements and receivables. Not all these pages are fully populated yet, but when they are, hopefully soon, this will be the kind of information we should have had all along.

I believe this shows the new board’s determination to provide transparent leadership, something that many of us have been insisting on for a long time.

Located within the public section of the website, which is aimed not only at the owners, but also prospective owners, renters and traders, there’s a “For Sale” page, which the office staff will be able to update as needed, as well as a page to show information about units for rent, something we have not had before.

When you go to the site initially and register, you may need to be patient. Each registration needs to be verified by the staff to make sure that it belongs to an owner, and each will have its own login and password. With the expected initial surge of registrations, it could take a little while to verify all of them.

Vice President, Bill Bergey and All Keys Computers have been working hard for some time to design and implement this world-class website. Go, look, and register. Remember, there’s a hyphen in the web address between hawksnest and marathon: www.hawksnest-marathon.com.

The voters have spoken. They have shown that they have confidence in the continued leadership of Bill Bergey and the potential exhibited by Mike Oostmeyer for the Hawks Nest Board of Directors, and I share that optimism. But we are also interested in the future.

Bill and Mike, along with several other members of the board, and I as well, have been very critical of the former management, the handling of the finances including past due accounts, and the appalling lack of transparency shown by the board. While I believe this criticism was justified, and apparently so did those voting, the problems are still there, and must be addressed.

There have been some very recent collection actions taken on a few of the delinquent accounts, but more must be done. Written procedures must be put in place to ensure that past due maintenance accounts are handled fairly, evenly and swiftly.

There are other financial problems as well. The last two audits show that our spending has exceeded income for the ’07-’08 and ’08-’09 fiscal years. Sometimes this is unavoidable and understandable. But if it is due to unrealistic budgeting or poor controls over spending, the board has to do its job, which contrary to some people’s belief, entails more than just keeping the maintenance fees as low as humanly possible. The condition that we found our building in several years ago is a testament to that folly. The board was just too successful in keeping maintenance fees down. Now before raising fees, every effort should be made to ensure that our spending is appropriate and efficient. I am optimistic that the new manager, Gary Rumberger, will be successful in doing that.

The new board has got to hit the ground running. They have the opportunity and the responsibility to turn the management and leadership of the Hawks Nest around.

At the Saturday meeting, I’m told that President Marty Shapiro pledged to practice total transparency, not only within the board, but with regard to the owners as well. We should expect nothing less.

Regardless of who deserves the blame, and there’s plenty to go around, the ball is now in the new board’s court. If by this time next year, substantial progress hasn’t been made in these and other problems, we’ll have a new batch of goats.

The 800 pound gorilla in the room though, is the Gulf oil spill. How will this affect us? What can or should we do? These are questions the board should give long, hard thought, and sooner than later. One of the board members should be tasked with looking at this and making recommendations to the rest of the board as to what kind of contingency plan should be implemented.

President – Dr, Marty Shapiro

Vice President – Bill Bergey

Treasurer – Mike Oostmeyer

Secretary – Rosemary Smith

In addition, Marty Shapiro and Bill Bergey share responsibility for personnel, and Jim Barringer is still responsible for the boats.

Congratulations to the new officers.  Now get to work!