Fairlington Glen Board Meetings

May 10 and June 7, 2006

Attendees: Bob Patrician (President), John Fuller (Vice President), Charles Robbins (B&G Liaison), Alison Burns Trimble (Secretary), Margaret Windus (Treasurer)

Each meeting was convened at approximately 7:30 pm and adjourned at approximately 9:30 pm by Bob Patrician.

The President led a discussion of strategic planning over two sessions and described a process that included examining the external and internal environments that surround the strategic issues we face, as well as stakeholder values and condominium mandates. We agreed that vision statements are not always worth the time devoted to crafting them and moved directly to major areas in which we face strategic issues over the next 5 to 10 years (and even beyond where appropriate). We focussed on eight areas for discussion and dealt with four at each meeting. They include Records/Contracts, Governance Structures, Volunteers, Facilities, Rules, Operations/Management, Staff, and Finances. Highlights are provided below.

Records/Contracts. A records retention policy was recently approved for the Glen and will now be implemented and significant items archived to disk in addition to those already in that format (Board minutes, B&G minutes, newsletter, variances).

Governance Structures. We brainstormed on a number of possibilities both for the creation of new committees and the strengthening of the role of court reps. We met with the court reps on May 16 and have prepared questions for them to discuss at their June 20 meeting.

Volunteers. The recent use of volunteers on short-term task groups has been very successful and enables us to tap into a large group of Co-Owners, harness the energy of some very capable individuals, and broaden our outreach and inclusion of the community. To engage such individuals successfully requires that we give them important, well-defined work to do, support them in performing that work, and take their output seriously by acting on it.

Facilities. We reviewed the status of our common area facilities and discussed the planning needed to improve them, which includes appropriate reserve planning and engineering studies. We agreed that the pool and office/workshop area is in need of substantial upgrading and will appoint a task group to consider this.

Rules. After 30 years as a condominium association, it is time to consider renovating our rules and we plan to use a checklist found in a CAI publication entitled “Reinventing the Rules: a Step-by-Step Guide for Being Reasonable.” We will appoint a task group to bring proposed changes to a community meeting in May, 2007.

Operations/Management and Staff. We combined these two topics into a single discussion, and focused on the interaction of a number of groups, including the Board, the management company/agent, on-site staff (as well as contractors), committees and task groups, and the condominium community at large. Our goal is to maximize the interactive functioning of all these groups while minimizing miscommunication. In addition to focusing on the present arrangement of work effort and personnel, we need to plan for the future.

Finances. As an aging community, now over 60 years old, we have a growing list of capital needs (roofs and sewer laterals most prominently among them) as well as operational needs that are facing inflationary pressures as energy and transportation prices increase. Upward pressures on our budget are high and growing. We need to plan for budgets that we can live within, that we can explain well, and that are acceptable to the community. In the longer term, we need to provide a strengthened reserve position for the Glen. For the benefit both of individual Co-Owners and the overall Council of Co-Owners (the association) we need to clarify and publicize the responsibilities of each, taking a conservative approach to assuming responsibilities for the association.

The Board plans to continue work on the above issues and will communicate regularly with the community over the next year, via the Glen Echo, the Community Forum on September 20, the Annual Meeting on November 14, and a community meeting next spring or early summer.

Respectfully submitted by,

Margaret Windus

Treasurer