A few days ago I wrote an article, Big Canoe: Creek 9 Ballot Challenged. Included was a link to a 5 Page Letter I had written to the POA Board, their attorney, et al.
The POA Board’s Attorney (Kimberly C. Gaddis Esq. of Gaddis and Lanier LLC) has just submitted a Response. You can read her 2 Page PDF here:
Response to Email “Big Canoe Voter Complaint & Notice”
Regardless of what the outcome of this Creek 9 Vote is (results are supposed to be released Friday) it is apparent to myself, and others, that this POA Board has no respect for the rules, and has become little more than an extension of the Big Canoe Developer’s interests in regards to major financial decisions within the community.
Even if the Creek 9 Initiative vote fails, this Board will most likely just double down on their next expansive list of Expensive Projects, as outlined in the recent Aug 17 Notes of Meeting (1), in which they outlined plans for $17 Million dollars of more projects in the next several years. Among discussion was the suggestion “to tear down the realty office and The Chimneys and construct a boutique hotel.”
Discussion of a boutique hotel is just a new spin on an old plan that goes back as far as 2003, when it was first publicly referenced in the long range Water Supply Evaluation Report (2) that blueprinted the Developer’s Long Range Strategy to create an income generating Resort, anchored by a central Village Core located, 80 room Hotel/Inn attached to commercial entities, including 4,000 Square feet of new office space, and a new 150 seat adjoining restaurant.
According to the currently retained rights of the Developer (Big Canoe Company) under Article 1; Section 1 (h)(3) of the 1988 Covenants, the Developer….
“may provide an inn or inns and a restaurant or restaurants within the currently Covenanted Property and inn guests shall have guest privileges to the use of the Common Properties…”
Using Property Owner Dues and Special Assesments to fund all of these world class resort amenities is nothing new. But we are entering ino a new phase of the Developer’s plan… the establishment of that Village Core Commercial Venture. You can already see that the Developer Representative, Phil Baldwin is keeping the Board laser focused, and on target, to lay the expensive foundational groundwork of moving the Postal facility, upgrading the Chimneys, and expanding Parking within the Village Core. I predict this morphs into a full scale civil engineering venture to completely regrade, reshape, and repurpose the entire Village Core into a Developer Controlled (or Assigned) Hotel, Commercial Retail & Restaurant complex – bringing even more Special Events Guests into the community to create a need for even more property owner funded expansion of fitness, wellness, swim, clubhouse, golf, tennis and other amenities to keep the Developer’s Resort Guests happy and spendng money.
So we, as property owners, are going to be spending a LOT of money in the coming years to pave the way to establish the Big Canoe Village Core as a Cash Cow Resort for the Developer.
That won’t be all the money we’ll be spending though. None of this includes the $48,000,000 (million$) of 2016 Reserve Study (3) identified replacement items that will be coming due in the next 30 years (not including the 20 year old estimate of $3,550,000 to repair the Petit Lake Dam – which was not included in the 2016 Reserve Study). These are replacement items that we have a whopping $2,850,000 +/- dollars in our reserve fund to cover the needs of. Sounds like a lot of increases, fees and special assesments coming our way, and all will most likely have “special voting quoroms” attached for approvals.
Honestly, the primary problems the community faces if we are to succesfully rise to the occassion and challenge the status quo are: (a) we have an older population too tired to fight at this stage in their lives, and (b) we have too many newcomers with no clue as to the governance history of Big Canoe – except for the revisionist b.s. the Board, Management and Smoke Signals Screen Newspaper put out, and (c) the old HOA that used to look out for us was disbanded.
Informational Tidbit of the Week: Did you know that Bob Crouch was HOA President leading up to its disbanding? Yes, Bob and 2015 POA Board President Dick Scharf were instrumental in eliminating the community watchdog as they secretly began putting together the 2016 Land Deal.
With all of this said, we now wait for the Creek 9 Initiative Vote results – to see if any future hope of energy and resistance remains within this tired old mountain community – or whether the Developer’s vision of Big Canoe as a property owner funded Mountain Destination Resort will be accepted by property owners as inevitable.
Peace,
– david / publisher
Focus on Big Canoe, GA
* a publication of The Mountains Voice
References:
(1) See link sent via email from enews@bigcanoePOA.org on Tue, Sep 15, 2020 and titled “Board Work Session Thursday”
(2) 2003 Water Supply System Evaluation Report (See Pg 165 of 187):
(3) 2016 Reserve Study (See Pg 6 of 40)
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