Informational Meeting and the Proposed Amendments
What a great meeting last night! Thank you to the board for putting this together. My hats off to the community at large for the participation, kindness, and patience though the entirety of the meeting. Also, thank you to those of you that asked questions. They were articulate and well put together on a very complex topic.
After having some time to digest topics that were discussed at the meetings, I find myself concerned with some of the changes being proposed. While many will help protect our community, I find some of them absolutely frightening when it comes to property rights and equal standing in the community. Well intended or not, it appears that the proposed changes creates a new class of ownership that can be used to divide the community, levy additional fees, and provide additional restrictions. Many owners choose to utilize corporate vehicles and trusts for tax and liability purposes or add children to ownership of the cabin to help secure their Snowline legacy. Under the new rules, it appears that these types of ownership could be treated differently.
Additionally, some of the proposed changes are vague at best and those changes allowing access to our properties are not defined sufficiently for my comfort. Although I truly believe that we need to watch out for each other and be good neighbors, I also appreciate clear instructions how that can be done when it comes to written rules. A point to remember is that these rules will be in place long after the current board is gone. Due to the ambiguity of these updates, future boards with no history of the intent of these changes will be free to interpret these unclear rules how they see fit. While you may agree with the intent today, you may not like the enforcement tomorrow.
I wanted to take one more opportunity to thank everyone for their involvement. As a relative newcomer to the community, I continue to be blown away on how amazing Snowline is and how many fun people I have had the opportunity to spend time with. After skiing at Mt Baker for almost 35 years and pining over a place up here for just about as many, I’m very thankful to be in Snowline.