September 2006

I hope everyone has enjoyed their summer. There have been some absolutely delightful days to enjoy the outdoors, especially from our community beach and marina. We are very lucky to live in a community with such beautiful waterfront facilities.

We are a community of good, decent people. Sometimes we are a little too trusting and forget that everyone doesn’t think the way we do. I am sorry to report that someone decided to take advantage of our good nature. In May we started a new contract with B&B Security to provide security patrols. The number of patrol days increased as the weather got warmer until we had patrols nearly every night. The patrol car had a yellow flashing light and security patrol signs on the side. We started getting a few complaints that no one had seen the patrols. I assumed that it’s a big community so that wasn’t so unusual. Many of you have met Randy, the security guard at the beach during the day on weekends. Randy works directly for HSIA and does a wonderful job for us. After we had a few acts of vandalism at the marina we hired Randy to spend a few nights a week there. This was paid out of the marina budget, not Special Tax. I asked Randy if he had seen the security patrol checking the marina. He said he had never seen them. Now we were really concerned. Myself and a few other board members “staked out” the beach and marina for a few nights but never saw the security patrol. Every night, after the patrol, the security guard leaves a log at a pre-arranged location. The morning after my beach “stakeout” I went to check the log and it wasn’t there. At first I though maybe he hadn’t been scheduled to work that night but the next morning I found two days worth of logs. The logs had a general entry for each hour stating that he had checked the entire neighborhood, including the beach and marina. Apparently, the security guard had figured out that he could just stop by every day or two and leave a log and he didn’t have to work. The last day we knew for sure he had worked was June 11th, On that date we received a complaint that the flashing light was disturbing one of our residents near the marina. Alan Weiss, our Security Committee chairperson, met with B&B and they were as shocked as we were. We informed them that we would not pay any outstanding invoices (we had paid up to July 9th) and that we wanted a refund of anything we had paid for services after June 11th. They should have exercised better management of their employee and we should have been less trusting. We decided to allow them to continue, based on their cooperation on this matter. They have provided a new person who seems to be a very good fit. His name is Guido. He speaks seven languages, has a lot of security experience, and takes his responsibilities very seriously. His car has an amber light but he does not have it on all the time. There are also security signs on the side of the car. If you get a chance to talk to him be sure to say hello. As President, I take full responsibility for this situation. Fortunately, we did not lose any money but we did lose the security we thought we were receiving. We have learned from our mistakes will exercise more oversight in the future.

The Beach Strip Lawsuit continues to be a big topic of conversation in our community. Many people have decided to file the documents provided on our web site and support HSIA in our fight to keep the plaintiffs from seizing community property. Unfortunately, some resident’s, who support the plaintiffs, have attempted to spread a false impression about the nature of this dispute by writing letters to the Capital. Of course, there is nothing wrong with writing a letter to the editor. The problem is that they are saying that this is a personal vendetta by me against the plaintiffs. They called it “one person’s misguided agenda”. Nothing could be further from the truth. The board unanimously supports HSIA’s defense of this lawsuit. The vast majority of the letters, emails, and phone calls that we have received support our efforts. This is clearly a community defending itself from a few people who are trying to take what belongs to all of us. To characterize it as anything else is an insult to everyone who cares about defending our community.

In this Sea Breeze is a motion that our attorney will be filing with the court. Apparently, one of the plaintiffs, Mr. Sahandy at 133 East Bay View, had appealed his tax assessments based on the fact that his was not a waterfront property and that he did not own or claim to own the property between his lot and the water. The Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation has documents going back to 1983. They will not release them without a court order or Mr. Sahandy’s permission. His attorney did not respond to our request to give permission so we are asking the court to order them to be released. According to legal decisions cited in the motion, if the documents prove that Mr. Sahandy did appeal his assessment based on the fact that he did not own the land between his lot and the water then that would invalidate his claim of adverse possession.

Another challenge we recently had to face concerned our community message board. After the new sign was put up someone apparently made a complaint. The county issued two violations. The first one said that the new sign required a permit. We did not realize that a permit was required to replace an existing sign. The second violation said that the sign was on the county right-of-way and had to be removed. To resolve the first violation we needed proof that the sign was the same size as the old one. Luckily, Designs & Signs had taken before and after pictures so we were able to deal with that issue. The second one would have been more difficult. The sign has been there for over 20 years. It was moved to it’s current location when the library was built. In a stroke of pure luck, while searching our records for documents related to the lawsuit, we came across a letter from the county, written in 1993, stating that it was ok to have the sign on county property. Both violations have been resolved and we get to keep our message board that serves so many people in our community.

This month we begin the budgeting process for the next fiscal year. One of the improvements we are considering is building a second playground on the pool property. Several mothers had complained that the beach is too far to walk and often too windy for small children. The playground would probably be along Harbor Drive between the rental house and the pool entrance. It would be smaller than the beach playground. We will work with the Pool Association in planning the playground. I think this would be a great addition to our community.

Have a great autumn. Get out and enjoy the best weather of the year. This is the time to say “Hi” to your neighbors, go for a bike ride, take a stroll by the beach and marina, and generally enjoy living in this great community.

Bill Shuman
President, HSIA