Lakeside Pool Area -What’s next?

COMING SOON . . .

LSP COMMITEE, WHERE ARE YOU?

WHAT SHOULD BE EXPECTED NOW?

I have been told that all hands are on deck with the resolution to the Lakeside Pool matter.  That is good news, and I hope it is what we see occur going forward. Let’s take a general and basic look at what should be happening now and what should follow.

• The engineers and architect work together to plan a design for the new bath house.
• Materials, roof type, floor plan layout, type of construction (e.g. block, frame) fixtures, flooring, etc. are selected.
• County Code compliance is determined.
• Decision and plans made to leave in place or move current pool equipment to maintain pool chemistry during bath house construction process.
• Decide on licensed building contractors to make and provide bids to the ACSA.
• Meet with the bidding builders to hear their presentations and to answer ACSA questions.
• Decision made on contractor, County permits are secured, and cost and payment plan determined.
• Building Contractor and ACSA maintain a dialogue during the building process.

The three Lakeside Pool neighborhoods should be reasonably included in this above process, i.e. once a basic bath house plan is proposed, a meeting with the ACSA and the neighborhoods should occur where what direction the bath house is taking can be shared and discussed, especially the cost and payment plan.  Further, regular updates would be expected from the ACSA or the LSP Committee on the progress or on any unexpected matters that may arise with the bath house re-build.  Regular communication with the neighborhoods has been lacking other than a onetime alarmist pool demo email from the current LSP Committee.  Residents were given updates only when asked. The recent past ACSA President said that communication was what was wanted by the Residents from the LSP Committee, not having to request updates.

THE CURRENT LSP COMMITTEE

The current LSP Committee may need to be reviewed to create a more balanced approach with its membership. The Committee’s bias with an intent to demolish the pool without licensed and professional input from a licensed pool contractor speaks volumes on its membership’s bias, which needs to be balanced with pool advocates. It could be said that incomplete and a lack of evidentiary opinions by the Committee were presented to the Residents to support the demo bias.  Let’s balance the Committee to attain a sensible approach to any decisions.  Further, other than cleaning, trimming hedges, and raking up cuttings, work performed on pool construction and equipment should be done by licensed and professional pool contractors, and not non-professional laymen.  The neighborhood LSP Residents pay for the pool, and the bath house maintenance and repair, and now a rebuild  It would be expected that any work be done licensed and professionally for the work to be done correctly, and to have any possible liability mitigated by the contractors, and not placed on the three pool neighborhoods.

WHO’S REALLY IN CHARGE?

This whole pool area matter is not an easy situation to address.  We have an entity, the ACSA, which was “gifted” the pool area, and we have three neighborhoods who were responsible for paying the cost of maintaining the pool area as result of their exclusive use. The administrative structure to maintain the pool area was more laissez faire than directive by its owner, the ACSA.

And for nearly 30 years this laissez faire control of the pool area existed.  The pool and the pool area are arguably as nice as one could expect after all these years. Yes, there is the exception of the bath house, which certainly received less attention than the pool.  Should a depreciation table have been setup to be funded for roof and painting, sure.  Keep in mind that there have been no serious occurrences or injuries over these 30 years, and the pool area other than the bath house has been in a safe and usable condition.

Pool politics began when a hasty meeting of the pool neighborhoods was called because of alleged pool  area spending irregularities, and its hastiness resulted in a shouting match where folks were thrown under the bus and biased opinions were spouted about.  It could be said that the whole scenario was instigated, and not surprisingly, the ACSA came in to “save the day”.

What should have occurred, and maybe it was attempted, was for the three neighborhood presidents to first huddle with the LSP Committee at that time to determine what the alleged spending irregularities were, and to resolve the issue.  Calling a spontaneous meeting of the neighborhoods without first having an agenda (where the alleged irregular spending concerns could be explained) resulted in the bedlam at the meeting.  It’s apparent that a political group with its own scheme took control of the meeting.  More on the “politics of the pool” in another Blog Post.

The bottom line here is that both the ACSA as the technical owner, and the three pool neighborhoods as the payers, maintainers, and exclusive users of the pool area, should each have weighted control of this ownership conundrum. Attorneys may be best to come up with a balanced structure of control.  For now, both the ACSA and the three pool neighbors should appreciate their respective ties to the pool area, and work together where everyone wins.