SaveTheHill.org

Recent Board Message, 2025 Election, Pool Incident by Kevin Wine, Jul 27, 2025, 8:39 PM, reply, branch, edit

A lot has happened since my last message in April that I can't possibly catch up in a single message, but I can highlight some recent events which essentially capture what has been going on behind the scenes over the last several months.

The Board Email
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After several months of near total silence, the board suddenly decided to send out a community email message congratulating themselves for the wonderful job they did with handling the destruction of "The Hill", or what they call "The Mound". This is another one of the many subtle election manipulation tactics that I have complained about over the years, in this case using Association resources and board privilege to push their narrative right before an election.

Beyond the fluff, there are many other things they neglected to mention, like the massive $97/month fee increase they pushed through right after last year's election. Or the fact that they could have just left the entire hill in place and filed an amended site plan application with the town for maybe $30k tops. It turned out there was nothing "illegal" about the hill - it was graded properly and was outside the wetland boundaries and was not contaminated by DEP standards - it just needed formal administrative approval from the town. This was briefly considered as a solution but quickly abandoned as the board leadership was trying to ingratiate themselves with the town, and the town wanted the Hill removed. So instead of spending maybe $30k to do a site plan app, they spent $420k (it was actually more) to haul away the Hill.

They also forgot to mention the boondoggle grading project behind buildings 43 and 44 on Harwick. After the pond dredging project in 2012 there was a little too much soil behind those buildings (like a few inches) which caused some water pooling after a rain. Around 2020 Dictator Zhou (remember him) tried to play engineer and solve the problem by approving a contract to actually add MORE dirt behind those building and install a drain. All they had to do was REMOVE a few inches of soil. When that didn't really work, our current board under the leadership of Mohiuddin Syed (an actual engineer) took a crack at the problem but unfortunately he approved a ridiculously over-engineered design that still left all the extra soil in place and expanded the drain concept like the were providing drainage for an interstate highway. I'm sure this added tens of thousands of dollars of un-necessary cost to the project, and still didn't entirely resolve the problem.

2025 Election
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In case you haven't already received the notices, the 2025 Annual Meeting and Elections process has begun. The deadline for submitting candidate nominations is now August 15th! This is slightly different than the paper mailing that went out recently.

The first attempt at the annual meeting and election is scheduled for September 16th. There are three seats up for election:

Mohiuddin Syed (currently board President) - 3 year term.
George Tsacnaris (board Treasurer) - 3 year term.
Mark Kelsey - 2 year unexpired term.

Trustees Syed and Tsacnaris were elected in 2022 in the middle of the $2,000 special assessment disaster and the petition to remove the board members. That was the year I did not run, because I assumed the petition would be successful and another election would have to be called to replace the board. The courts decided otherwise. Trustee Kelsey was recently appointed to the vacancy created when the board disqualified (politically motivated in my opinion) Zahid Kahn earlier this year. There are two years left on that term.

Trustees Syed and Tsacnaris were also two of the five votes that passed the massive $97/month maintenance fee increase right after (of course) the 2024 elections, taking our fees to $332/month. I have talked about that increase in a prior message. While arguments could be made that some of the increase was unavoidable, that was a MASSIVE increase and other arguments could easily be made to the contrary. I just recalculated my yearly cost of living here (mortgage/tax/fees/utilities) and discovered it has increased by 30% over the last few years. We are being hit from all sides. My income did not increase by anywhere near that amount and I assume I am not alone in that respect.

I recently heard that Trustee Tsacnaris has resigned from the board, I assume effective as of Tuesday July 22nd. I do not know exactly the reason as the resignation letter has not yet been shared with the board. I assume this means he won't be running in the election this year, but I will believe it when I see the ballot.

In spite of claiming to be transparent, the board has not changed its position on the "secret meetings" it routinely holds. Much of the boards deliberations and decisions are being made in the shadows. This deprives the owners of the opportunity to witness the individual trustees in action. By the time there is a public meeting (about 5/year), most of the issues have been decided and you just get to see the final answer. This makes it difficult or impossible to see where individual trustees really stand and how they think, which then makes it difficult to know what you are voting for in the elections. This is all very intentional. You are left to either read between the lines and guess, or rely on some third-party interpretation of the board members thinking. It would be much better and fairer to all parties if everything was on full display but the current leadership just doesn't see it that way.

The Pool Incident
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The recent pool closure is quite a story but worth recounting in detail for those interested. While this is a smaller incident, it is representative of how the board/leadership handles other larger incidents and is a perfect case study in their attitudes and thinking.

On Tuesday, July 22nd, the Middlesex County Health Department conducted its mid-season inspection of our pool. It did not go well and resulted in the immediate closure of the pool. The inspector found multiple issues:

1-When the inspector picked up the red emergency phone to make sure it had a dialtone, she instead heard someone talking on the phone. This was because a few years ago, to save a few pennies, the board cancelled the dedicated emergency phone line, and cancelled the second office phone line. This left us entirely without an emergency land linen phone at the pool. In the last few years, the health inspector was eventually convinced to allow the cordless office phone to be left at the pool to be used as the emergency phone, but only reluctantly. This year, to avoid possible inspection problems, I changed the wiring so the red emergency phone would work again, however it was in parallel with the last remaining office phone line. The inspector was not pleased.

2-Even with an automatic pool chemical controller, we are still required to perform manual water sampling every two hours while the pool is open. This was being done earlier on in the season when the new management company was taking over, but then it fell through the cracks. The inspector was not pleased to find the chemical log book empty for the last several weeks.

3-The inspector complained about our "Swim at your own risk" sign, insisting that it needs to include another line saying that "this pool is closed when the owner or operator is not on the premises". We are specifically exempt from this requirement as per N.J.A.C. 8:26-5.1(e), however the inspector apparently has a different interpretation of the language.

4-The site evacuation plan was missing from the pool binder. I couldn't find it either, but it turns out that it was indeed there. The paper pages of the binder were in plastic sleeves, and there were multiple piece of paper in the same sleeve.

5-There was no first-aid kit. The first-aid kit was subsequently located.

6-Apparently the inspector complained that that the pump room door was not locked.

Shortly after the inspector closed the pool, the emails started and things got interesting. Our board President (up for election this year as mentioned above) responded with an email blaming the pool closure on me, and trying to use the closure as an example of how all the work in the association should be done by "professional qualified external vendors". This is not the first time he has said something that is completely disconnected from reality and the facts. I was heavily involved in getting the pool filter and automatic chemical controller back in operation this spring, after 6 years of neglect by "professional qualified external vendors" and several green pool incidents over those years. I guess he doesn't remember or want to remember or whatever.

The pool closure put the board in panic mode, so at the secret meeting that same night the board decided to spend another $5500 to replace the automatic chemical controller with a newer model. The existing controller was working fine after spending over $1000 this spring to get it running again. The only thing it lacked was the ability to log the chemical levels. It was supposed to have this capability but when I tried to connect a printer it didn't work and the data signals were missing altogether, so the chemical levels weren't being printed. This was not a show stopper - it just meant that we have to manually take chemical samples of the pool water every two hours and write them in a log book. The lifeguard would usually do this, but there was no lifeguard this year. The board and management was advised of this multiple times as the pool opened for the season.

The advantage of the new chemical controller was that it logged the chemical level and was accessible via the internet. With this feature, the NJ Bather Code allows you to only have to manually sample the water when the pool opens and when it closes. It's a little less work, but we could have probably figured out how to manually test the water a few times a day for the rest of the season instead of panic buying a new $5500 controller.

I responded to the Presidents email explaining that the work I did on the pool was not the reason the inspection failed, but instead of an acknowledgement I received another email banning me from touching anything ever again.

On Wednesday morning, a Cablevision technician reactivated the second phone line so the pool emergency phone was back on a dedicated line. This was really the only "show stopper" that could have kept the pool closed. The first aid kit and the evacuation plan were located, the pump room door could be locked, the signage change was not necessary, and we could have easily started taking water samples every two hours. If it was me, I would have scheduled a re-inspection Wednesday morning and the pool would have been reopened by Wednesday afternoon. I don't know why the reopening was delayed all the way to Friday. I guess the "professionals" need a little extra time.

On Thursday I was off from work and mostly on the property. In the morning, I poked my head in the pump room to see how everything was and to my surprise the new chemical controller was already installed. That was a good thing and I was a little bit happy. That ended about 15 seconds later when I discovered, laying on the floor in the wreckage of the prior controller, our brand new $900 chemical probes were left uncovered. These sensors need to be kept wet. When they are not installed in the system, they have protective boots that can be filled with water and screwed over the sensor tip. You would think the "professionals" would know about this, but I guess that's expecting a lot. The thing that got me most annoyed is that I had emailed the board and management two days prior, warning them to watch for this when the "professionals" come to install the new controller. I also warned the board and management that the control valve on the chlorinator was 24 VAC, and not 120 VAC, and to make sure the new controller is properly configured so the valve isn't blown up. Guess what? They connected the 24 VAC valve to the 120 VAC controller output and blew it up. So none of my concerns made it to the professionals, since they are professional and already know what they are doing. Right.

But it gets worse. A few minutes later after I put our $900 of chemical probes back in their water boots, I notice something is weird with the electrical connector on the wire that plugs in to the controller. The connector is a "BNC", which is a twist-lock design. You would assume that a professional pool technician would know this, and properly remove the old probes - after all, they are professionals. Well apparently they don't know how BNC works, so they just forcibly yanked the cable right out the back end of the connectors! While I realize many are not going to have any idea of what I'm saying, or why this is bad, I assure you that if you find anyone that does know what I'm saying they will be shocked at this level of incompetence or neglect or both. Or maybe this was intentional!? Anyway, $900 of brand new sensors are now trashed. This doesn't just snap back together and it's good - it's a crimped connection and once torn apart it's done up. And a $90 valve is blown up. And these are the people our board President Mohiuddin Syed is blindly supporting.

As of Monday August 4th (12 days after the destruction) the chlorine feed valve has still not been fixed. I would rather they not touch it anyway, because they will probably make it worse. It could be fixed pretty easily but I doubt they know how, given the level of incompetence I've just witnessed. Or most likely, they will come up with some ridiculous proposal and butcher up the system again and charge us plenty for it. The ironic thing is that we just spent $5500 to install the latest chemical controller, and it is operating "open loop" on the chlorine control, and due to the way the chlorine tablets incidentally change the pH, the pH control is also open loop. So we spent $5500 on a chemical logger.. lol.

The Big Little Picture
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There were a lot of little things that I helped with since I was back on the board last April. Every time I turned around there was another over-priced proposal for something or another so I tried to explain the situation to the board and they sometimes let me handle it so we could save some money. There was the $15k proposal for loader repairs that we did for far less (mainly to replace the broken turbocharger), the $10k proposal to dig a new 500' trench and run wires for a broken sprinkler zone - we eventually located the broken wire for far less. There was the pool filter system, controller, and chlorinator which was hacked up over the last 6 years by various "professionals" that I got running again. The pool auto-fill is finally working. There was the new clubhouse HVAC thermostat installed and the missing wire (the "professionals" strike again) in the outdoor compressor unit was tracked down - the board was actually talking about replacing the entire system instead of fixing this one, probably for $25k or more. I finally weeded and pruned the remaining berry plantings that were mostly neglected for the last 6 years - nobody even pulled out the 20+ large volunteer trees that were taking over those beds. I got one of the 4 sprinkler booster pumps working again and diagnosed the other 3, 2 of which should be repaired by now by the irrigation contractor. I reviewed all the irrigation controllers and found several clock and programming issues.

The board president recently sent an internal email banning trustee involvement in the association on this level, while at the same time multiple other trustees have inserted and continue to insert themselves in other association functions on a daily basis. So I wonder will this rule just apply to me?? I'm sure they don't like it when I point out all the shortcomings of their beloved "professionals", so instead of trying to understand the technical issues and save some money, they would rather waste the money just to avoid the embarrassment. It's fantasy to think that all the vendors are going to do everything right and act in our best interest. My experience here and elsewhere has been that I have to keep an eye on what is going on, but the current board leadership thinks otherwise and would rather let it all "burn and crash". That attitude gets expensive with all direct and indirect costs that result from the sub-optimal decisions and the eventual repair or more likely the total replacement costs. Not all solutions are the same, or all paths to those solutions the same. If you don't care about the money then sure, it's all the same, but if you want a board that does care about the money, that's not what we have now.

I just found out that the new $600 clubhouse thermostat has been removed from service. There was a power failure several days ago in the clubhouse, and the HVAC system came back with an error message. I didn't get involved, and sure enough, the service technician decided to replace the Carrier communicating thermostat with a conventional thermostat. I don't know if this is just temporary, but such an arrangement defeats all the efficiency benefits of the dual-stage compressor and modulating furnace. I tried to explain all this to the board months ago and I thought I had made some progress when they agreed to the thermostat upgrade but I guess not.

Several months ago I had offered to submit my application to the State of NJ in order to obtain an irrigation contractor license. This would allow the association to legally maintain and repair the irrigation system. We spend between $40k and $60k a year just on the routine maintenance and repair of that system. My application was finally approved in February, and I had asked the board to consider paying the license exam fee and other fees since I would be doing this just for Society Hill's benefit and not my own. After several months of insurance, liability, and legal investigations, the association attorney chimed in with her "opinion", attempting to cancel the idea. I'm sure she was coaxed by some of the board members to provide an opinion consistent with their wishes. I responded with an obvious work-around to her concerns and so far no response.

Finally, remember the dump truck saga? The final fate of the yellow truck that Tong and Tom bought for $58k was the junk yard. Clarissa finally found a dealer willing to fix it, but the cost was greater than the warranty coverage by about $11k. So the board would have had to kick in at least $11k to get a new (probably refurbished) engine installed. Trucks like that were for sale online for the low $20k range, but the board didn't think that was enough to take the risk and bother with the repair, so the truck was scrapped. A brand new truck was bought, which is great, but it was around $115k (it will be more due to finance charges). So we finally have a working new dump truck, but we are all-in for nearly $200k ($58k lost on yellow truck, plus new truck, plus finance charges). In 2018, my plan was to spend about $8k to bolt a new dump body to the old truck.

While these are small examples of how money is wasted, they are representative of the waste on a large scale. The most recent example of which was the $2,000 special assessment to remove the allegedly contaminated Hill. If there was no resistance, and no petition, we would have spent $1,100,000 on what ended up costing $420k+, and should have only cost about $30k.

Kevin