A loosely organized group of Westsiders will attempt to gather the 200 or so signatures required to call for a special meeting of the Seven Lakes West Landowners Association [SLWLA] for a vote of the membership on whether Longleaf Drive across Lake Auman Dam should be reopened for vehicular traffic.
    Meanwhile, the SLWLA Board of Directors yesterday mailed a letter [click here to download a copy] to the Association membership asking for input on the permanent closure of the road, prior to an expected final Board vote on the matter, scheduled for Tuesday, October 26 [see story here] .
    A special meeting vote would be binding; the member input asked for in the Board's letter would be advisory in nature.
    
Special meeting petition
    Mike Gorenflo presented the two-page Special Meeting petition [download a copy here] to three or four dozen residents gathered Tuesday night, October 5, in the Great Room of the West Side Park Community Center. There was clearly a diversity of opinion in the room; but, by the end of the meeting, more than thirty of those attending had signed the petition, and a dozen others had volunteered to help round up signatures.

    The SLWLA bylaws provide for the calling of a special meeting at the written request of one-tenth of the membership, which would be roughly 172 lots. Gorenflo suggested during the meeting that the group should try to collect at least 250 signatures, because some will likely be ruled invalid for technical reasons. The bylaws provide no special instructions for the conduct of special meetings, which may mean that such a meeting would be conducted in essentially the same way as an annual meeting, with ballots mailed to the membership, which would be eligible to vote by mail, in person, or by proxy.
    The last time SLWLA members successfully called for a special meeting was prior to the construction of the West Side Park Community Center, when those opposed to the project mounted a successful petition drive. But, in that instance, a disagreement between petition organizers and the Board concerning interpretation of the bylaws led to dueling special meetings, one Board sanctioned and the other convened by the opposition.

    In a quick up and down motion on Wednesday, September 29, the Seven Lakes Landowners Association [SLLA] Board of Directors took a major step forward in the long awaited road repaving project, awarding Civil Group a $31,124 contract to repair and repave a heavily eroded section of Firetree Lane at Echo Dam.
    One of four priority areas identified as needing substantial repairs prior to community-wide repaving work, this section of roadway was particularly worrisome because of its proximity to  Echo Dam.
    Earlier this year, the project was classified as non-jurisdictional by the NC Department of Environment and Natural Resources and was subsequently put out for bid. Of three requests, only one eligible proposal was returned; however, the price was right, and Civil Group is a highly respected firm.
    “We’ve been after that area for some time," said Director Bud Shaver. "We made a thorough engineering study and had our plan approved by three engineers. We expect this work will resolve the ongoing erosion problem.”
     
Agreement with SLCC
    Looking for a progress report on activity related to the agreement between the Association and Seven Lakes Country Club [SLCC] over future development of the old driving range, Southsider and former director Donna Stephan asked for an update.
    SLLA President Randy Zielsdorf said the Club had just recently undertaken a significant decision and that he wanted to give them some time to collect their thoughts.
    “There is no new news, but I am following up with them,” said Zielsdorf. “I will come back and report on it next month.”
    Stephan asked Zielsdorf whether he was pursuing all five bulleted points of the agreement, to which he responded that his current priorities were approving the Club's covenants and the ten-foot easement the club is supposed to grant the Association between the old driving range and Seven Lakes Drive.
    “Two of the points, we can’t do anything about until building starts,” he said.  

    Westsiders who wanted more time to debate the permanent closure of Longleaf Drive over Lake Auman Dam won a reprieve Tuesday night, when the Seven Lakes West Landowners Association [SLWLA] Board of Directors voted to deem the decision a matter of significant interest to the community, postponing a final vote on road closure until October 26.
    A concerted effort to pressure the Board to make that decision began a little more than a week earlier, when local attorney and longtime Westsider Mike Gorenflo used email and postings on Facebook to organize a meeting of concerned Westsiders at his Seven Lakes office on Tuesday, September 21.
    The nearly fifty members who turned out decided their first order of business should be to ask the Board to designate the closure a "material matter" allowing additional time for public input. Phil Castaldi was designated the group's spokesman; he, Gorenflo, and Dick Osborne drafted a statement stating the group's request for Castaldi to deliver during the Tuesday, September 28 Board Work Session.
    Word of the group's intentions was communicated through group emails that included Board members among the recipients, as well as articles published on The Seven Lakes Times website and emailed NewsFlashes.
    As a result, a crowd of approximately 150 Westsiders turned out for Tuesday night's Work Session, and the first order of business was a motion from Lake & Dam Director Mick Herdrich that the Board deem the road closure a "matter of significant interest to the community," delaying for a month the Board's final vote on the issue. That motion passed with the support of all eight Board members present (Treasurer Joe Sikes was unable to attending the meeting.)

    A group of Westsiders wants more time for member input before the Seven Lakes West Landowners Association [SLWLA] Board of Directors finalizes its vote to permanently close Longleaf Drive over Lake Auman dam.
    With only a day's notice, a meeting on the dam road closure drew nearly fifty people to the office of attorney Mike Gorenflo, a longtime Westside resident, on Tuesday night, September 21. [The Times did not have a reporter present at the meeting, but interviewed several attendees afterwards.]
    Based on conversation at the meeting, the group agreed to turn out in force at the Tuesday, September 28 SLWLA Board Work Session, in support of a statement, currently being drafted, that will ask the Board to deem the dam road closure a "material matter" and allow an additional sixty days for public comment before taking any final action on closing the road.
    "Material matter" has come to be the standard shorthand for the exercise of a relatively new option in the Westside bylaws (Article V, Section 3)  which allows the Board to "deem the matter to be one of significant interest to the membership," thereby giving the membership "an opportunity to comment thereon at two duly held meetings of the Board prior to the final approval of the matter by the Directors." The standard interpretation of the clause is that designation of a "material matter" triggers a sixty-day public input period.
    The Board voted six-to-two in its Tuesday, September 14 Work Session to permanently close the dam, subject to ratification at the September 28 Work Session. At the time, several Board members spoke in favor of designating the road closure a "material matter."
    Dick Osborne, who, along with Gorenflo and Phil Castaldi, is responsible for drafting the group's statement, told The Times on Thursday: "We don't plan to take up a lot of the Board's time, because it's a work session and they have other things to do. We feel that the Board should forego the vote on closing the dam and look at this as a material matter."
    "We understand that the Board has designated the issue of a new mail house as a material matter," Castaldi said. "If that's a material matter, then this has to be. This is a big deal, as far as I am concerned -- and as far as a lot of people are concerned."
    Osborne told The Times that a significant number of Westsiders are very concerned about the permanent closure of the roadway over the dam, for a variety of reasons, including its impact on property values in the part of the community that lies to the west of the dam and has been, as a result of the closure, effectively cut off from the back gate.
    "There are more houses up for sale in that area than any other part of the community," Osborne said. "Property values have been hurt. When we bought our property, it was an enticement to be able to have a loop around the lake. That helped the realtors sell us on moving here."
    He said the group is concerned that the Board would make a decision with such profound impact "without our voice even being heard . . . We're going to be asking the Board to give us the 60 days and listen to us during that period of time."
    Castaldi told The Times that he expected the extra sixty days would be used to collect additional data that might result in a decision to close the dam road or might involve investigating -- and putting a price on -- other options.
    "I don't think we have seen enough engineering data to be convinced that the road must be closed permanently," he told The Times.
    "We believe the Board is very, very sincere about what they do," Castaldi added. "But we are concerned that they aren't listening to the heartbeat of the community, so we are trying to get them to do a right turn and not vote on that Tuesday night."
    "So many who turned out at Tuesday's meeting feel disenfranchised," Gorenflo told The Times. "They feel like the Board is taking action on big issues and doesn't seem to care what the opinion of the landowners is."
    Noting that he had copied Board members on all his communications before and after the gathering at his office, Gorenflo said, "We haven't tried to organize this in a clandestine manner. It's not 'us' against 'them.' This is about us trying to convince them to let us mean more."
    Gorenflo added that he has no way of knowing whether a majority of the membership supports closing the road or reopening it -- and neither, he suspects, does the Board.
    "There are certain decisions that should require a careful testing of the will of the membership," Gorenflo added. "Just because it's not required that the Board take the extra step, doesn't mean it's not appropriate. The Board members should want to gather all the input they can before a substantial decision like this one."