Amigo Road Association 
Dec 4, 2023 meeting minutes
Attendees: Smith/Dichek, Asche, Bjorn, Pohorsky, Johas Teener, Reed, Caborn, Rolen, Cahill/Mai, Duckart.
SLIDE REPAIR
Rick Duckart described his progress working on the slide. He has opened up the plastic sheeting to reassess. He will work with others to get this re-covered. We may need to get new plastic and more sandbags and cold mix asphalt. A soils engineer has agreed to a site visit at $200/hr for 2-4 hours. He will assess and bid for the soils report, required for civil (structural) engineering and a permit. Preliminary estimate for the full soils work is about $8K. Once the soils report is complete, he will proceed with getting bids for the civil engineering. A couple candidate firms were discussed as good options.
NEW TREASURER
Elene and Michael Johas Teener were nominated as the new Treasurer(s), and unanimously approved. Former treasurers Daryl Dichek and Carol Bjorn will assist the transition of information and software from previous treasurer Susan Trinity. Tom Pohorsky will assist getting them on the bank account.
OUTSTANDING ACCOUNTS
A property owner adjacent to Amigo road has been very delinquent in paying their road association bills. The previous owner of that propery negotiated a deal where the county would allow him to subdivide his 80-acre parcel, but only if he joined the association to obtain emergency-only access to Amigo road. He does not use the road, but is obligated to pay zone 2 Association assessment, and with some prodding made some initial payments. But he has been ignoring all bills in recent years.
This has gotten to the point where it's difficult to even budget, much less pay for, ongoing expenses. Eric Rupp and others have been working on this, and have sent notice to the owner's lawyer that the association will apply a lien to those properties if the bills are not paid. The lawyer contesting the validity of this arrangement, and has indicated they may be open to a settlement if they can be released from future Amigo road association obligations. Someone from the road committee will look into implications of this relative to their permits with Santa Cruz County.
Ken suggested that we re-engage the lawyer who wrote the original agreements, to better understand our legal position. Carol asked whether it would make more sense to go through small claims court. But even the past-due bill exceeds the maximum that small claims supports, so that's probably not our best option. It was proposed and approved that the initial lawyer fee (up to $1000) would be paid from the money dedicated to the slide repair, as this will have a big effect on how those repairs are billed and paid for. A subcommittee will pursue this further.
HOLD-HARMLESS AGREEMENT: Tom will send out to interested parties a draft of the updates to the original 2008 version of the agreement. The updates are to indemnify all residents working explicitly on behalf of the road association, not just the officers. Good faith work would be protected, but negligence and/or bad intent are not protected. These updates should be implemented by the same lawyer as for the outstanding account issue above.
NEXT MEETING: We will meet again via Zoom on Mon Jan 29, 2024 at 7 PM. Email reminders will be sent out for that meeting.