Board of Directors & Meeting Notes

Palmetto Bay Plantation's Board of Directors for the year of 2011 are as follows:

Gary Chamer - President
Joel Moscowitz - Vice President
Paul Provost - Treasurer
Gene DeMarco - Secretary

In previous years Palmetto has had 5 members on the board. Last year a board member quit and the remaining board members refused to fill the position with other elegible home owners. Choosing instead to continue on with 4 members. When a third member of the board resigned, the remaining 3 board members refused to acknoledge it, even when asked directly to the HOA boards chat group.

This year at the meeting Joel Moskowitz stated that:

In accordance with Article 20 of the Statutes (“The number of other directors that will form the Board of Directors will be approved in each assembly”) Joel Moskowitz moved that the number of directors be limited to the four filling the prescribed offices of President, Vice President, Treasurer and Secretary. He explained that the Board for some time had four members, that it had been increased to five for a few years, but that what was needed now was a cohesive, collegial group that could come together to face the critical problems that the organization was facing. The motion passed unanimously.

So even though there were multiple other home owners that were eligible and willing to volunteer their time, the above Board members chose to exclude anyone that wasn't part of their "click" and might have some differing opinions or ideas on how to solve the problems and issues that face Palmetto.

As usual (see below for an account of last years proxie misuse) , Gary Chamer collected a majority of the proxies from absent home owners and was able to vote all motions in his favor. Upon finding this out a few of the homeowners left as they didn't see a reason to be at the meeting if they weren't able to participate.

General Meeting Notes

PDF of the General Meeting notes 2010
PDF of the General Meeting notes 2009
PDF of the General Meeting notes 2007

Palmetto Bay Plantation Design Review Commitee

Gary Chamer - President, General Manager, Developer
Joel Moskowitz - Home Builder
Heather Donnelly - Lot Owner

For years home owners have repeatedly asked for reports from this comittee, but as of this writing nothing has ever been provided, yet development of homes and clearing of land continues.

Palmetto Bay General Manager

Gary Chamer - Developer, President & Design Review Committee

Palmetto Bay Plantation Landscape Committe

At this point it's a bit unclear as to who is on the commitee.

NOTE From 2009 Secretary to Home Owners
October 5, 2009
Hello Palmetto Bay Plantation Owners,

I wanted to report to the members a disturbing result from the Annual Meeting of the HOA held on October 3rd. The 2009 operating year has been a difficult one due to the economic and political situations affecting the world and Honduras. Despite those situations I thought that the board members worked well together over the past year to accomplish the tasks necessary to keep things running through severe cash flow issues. However it became obvious Saturday in events leading up to the general meeting that Joel and Gary had personal agendas to fix the voting in order to achieve a board of directors to suit their personal wishes. Let me relate to you the events leading up to yesterday’s meeting.

On Wednesday the BOD meet to work out some remaining details for Saturday’s general meeting. There are no minutes of this meeting as I was told by Joel that it was not necessary. The discussion began with reports from the three members whose fax numbers had been used to collect proxies. I reported the four proxies I had received, Joel reported that he had not received any and Gary reported that he had only received 3 or 4. However as we were organizing for the meeting later in the week it was revealed that Gary had solicited 24 proxies and had them in hand on Wednesday when he told the board of directors he only had 3 or 4. This bloc of proxies was enough for him to be able to control the votes and consequently elected the individuals he desired to the board of directors.

With this power in hand Gary and Joel decided that they did not want Michael Kintner to be on the board and asked him NOT to run for the board and told him if he did run they would ensure he would not be elected. As became obvious during the general meeting my name was also on the list of members Gary and Joel did not want on the board. Instead they selected two owners, Alex McDonald and Bob Brown who had not previously expressed any interest in running for the board and voted them onto the board of directors. The down side to this selection is that Bob Brown and Clay Donnelley (previously on the board) are family members and that reduces the diversity of interests on the board.

This type of back room politics does not serve the best interest of the home owners and only divides the community at a time it was just beginning to pull together from previous years of mistrust. Trying to move forward from this type of under handed subversion of the election process puts a dark cloud over anything Gary and Joel try to propose. There will now be doubt as to Gary and Joel’s real intentions on everything that come from their mouths.

The point of relating this detail is to make all you aware of the danger in giving “blank check” proxies to anyone for the general meeting. I’m sure you had the best intentions of having your vote count, but giving your vote to anyone without restrictions opens the opportunity to abuse the privilege of your vote.

This note was emailed to Palmetto Bay Home Owners and reproduced on this site without Philip Buck's knowledge. We apologize to Philip Buck as this has caused some to believe this is his website, when it is NOT! We would remove the note, as Philip requested, but since the BOD is harassing Philip about his opinions on the event, he was served papers and threatened with legal action if the below wasn't posted next to his letter. So he forwarded the below on to us and we are more then happy to help clear his name.

So.,.....

Since the Palmetto Board disagrees with the previous Secretary's accounts below is their rebutal.

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