Conservative PSJ, US

Remember, this is NOT the official PSJHOA page.

Due to the batteries dying in my digital recorder, and the recorder therefor losing the data in it (the recordings of the meetings), the notes on this entire page are from my handwritten notes only.

PSJHOA meeting notes for December 9, 2003

Meeting was called to order at 7:05 PM.

The minutes from the last meeting were read and accepted. The Treasurer's Report was $4,759.06.

The logo that I came up with (basically a simplified version of the old logo) was liked and requested in color to see how it would look on T-shirts.

The Christmas families we chose were discussed. I do not go into detail here in order to keep from causing anyone to be uneasy.

The membership was informed that the Board had decided to donate $100 to Tracey Higginbotham in order to help him with the Christmas decorations you see on the lightposts along Fay Blvd. Membership was told that we may want to do a fundraiser to help with repair costs for the decorations.

Larry King confirmed the trailer for the Christmas parade. Helen announced that the float would not have the design we had previously agreed on. She had changed the float from "The Magic of Christmas" to "The Magic of a Florida Christmas." The whole float would be different than the membership thought it was going to be. (Editor's Note: This was done without a vote from the Board nor the membership. Helen did it arbitrarilly, thus, not only exluding membership from voting, but also effectively changing the theme of the parade.) Volunteers to help assemble the [new] float December 19th were requested.

Beautification Chair still needed someone on the Committee with her.

The family our Secretary, Vicki, chose for our Christmas charity was extremely grateful. Things were in dire straits at the time.

Helen was looking for volunteers to help people prepare their income tax returns. The IRS would train people and provide computers for volunteers to use.

The Humane Society was scheduled to speak to the HOA in February.

The meeting adjourned at 7:35 PM.

PSJHOA meeting notes for November 4, 2003

This will be strictly from my notes due to a loss of the recording of the November meeting.

The Treasurer's Report was given. We had $5,078.65 in the treasury.

Old business: Christmas Charities. Different people within the Officers and Board of the PSJHOA found families they thought were deserving of some help from the HOA. We voted (or had already voted) to spend $200 for each of the three families.

The Secretary read the minutes and they were accepted.

Tuesday, December 9th was to be the PSJHOA Christmas Party at the regular general membership meeting. NOTE: Meeting location was changed to the Community Center during that month's Board meeting.

Maureen Rupe, Amy Tidd and Helen (maybe others, but I didn't write it down) were at the Commissioner's Board meeting to address the Commissioners regarding the FPL and Reliant emmissions. The plan now is to have the County Attorney, Scott Knox, approach the companies about their emmissions causing damage to property and threatening them with law suits for the damage if they don't clean up their act. Mr. Knox will report back in December's first Commission meeting how the plan worked.

The Sales Tax increase issue started late at the Commission meeting. It was requested that they prioritize the items on the list so that people will know about when to expect their pet projects to be started. (But it wasn't worded that way.) (Editor's Note: Now that we have defeated the 1˘ sales tax increase, the Commissioners seem to be looking for another way to tax us to get more money. Keep your eyes open!)

For the Christmas Parade, the theme was announced to be "The Magic of Christmas". Larry King (Board member) found the HOA an 8'x20' trailer from a friend of his. We needed volunteers to be on the float as the idea at that time was to make our float a half-and-half: half secular "magic of Christmas", and half Christian "magic of Christmas" with the Nativity scene. It was going to be $30 for entering the float.

Helen had called Disney® and asked for cutouts of their characters (Mickey, etc.), but they said that they'd have to have complete control over the float and would have to decorate it themselves, or they couldn't participate. Family friendly, huh?

The PSJ HOA logo redesign contest was discussed.

There were at that time only 130 people in the entire HOA with their dues paid. We had 300 people who had not kept current. (Editor's note: That totals 430 people/families in PSJ who have been interested in the PSJHOA in recent times? Out of over 22,000 residents?) There were a total of 21 people there that night, including the Officers. A January membership drive was discussed.

The Beautification Committee Chair again asked for volunteers to be on the Committee.

The idea of a Tour de Port St. John was brought up by me. To find out the details of what happened with the real Tour de Port St. John, keep an eye on this website. The rest of the Tour de Port St. John story is here.

The PSJ Library raffle drawing was done by Helen.

Helen asked the membership if we wanted to donate a new flag with stand to the Library. Membership voted yes. A dollar amount for Helen to spend was voted to be $125.

The Logo Design Contest: Previous to the meeting, I told Helen that there were eight designs that had gotten votes; none had a deciding victory. I said we would have to show them all to the members. She said she would not do that. We would only show them three. She assigned points for each vote received and totaled the points. The three with the highest point total went before the members. The membership voted that instead of using one of the designs shown them, to have me work on a redesign of the existing logo, which Helen told them at the last minute they could do. I was told to send the contestants whose entries were shown to the membership a "thank you for participating" note.

It was announced that there was an investigation into the power plants being done.

Helen got call regarding clearcutting lots for building. New code says new trees are okay, that they don't have to keep the old, existing trees.

I told the membership that my website was down and that I will keep them informed about the website when I get it back up.

We adjourned; time not noted.

PSJHOA General Membership meeting October 14, 2003.

The notes for this month's meeting are from my notes only due to the loss of the recording.

Minutes were read and accepted. The Treasurer's Report was not noted.

The Beautification Committee Chair asked for members to join her in the Committee.

The Logo Design contest was discussed.

The Garage Sale was discussed. Needed help with the day's events. All inside tables were already sold, plus seven spots outside.

There was to be a Halloween event at the Community Center; did we want to help?

Veteran's Day was the same day as our next General Membership meeting and the Library and the Community Center would both be closed. What date did we want for the next meeting? November 4th was decided on, even though it was election day.

The Christmas Party was discussed; Helen needed help "hauling" food.

The Christmas parade was to be December 20th and we had the trailer for the float.

Deputies and C.O.P. (Citizens On Patrol) were to be selling baked goods at the Community Garage Sale to help the Deputy who was dying of cancer.

I told them about my website (I believe it was back up for a while at the time).

Helen asked for volunteers to walk the parade route to hand candy out to the people watching the parade. (At the Board meeting that month, it was decided not to hand out candy that year.) There would be a parade meeting with Randy Rodriguez, the organizer, that Thursday night, October 16th.

Scott Ellis talked to the members about the 1˘ sales tax increase. He said that the "Wish List" the Commissioners had totalled $450 million and that there wouldn't be enough money to do everything on the wish list so that meant that something, somewhere would be axed from the list as soon as the list passed. He said that only two-thirds (66%) of the first year's money can be spent. That the Advisory Committee was not going to have any real authority. He said that there would be $13 million in debt service for the 1˘ sales tax increase (not counting the School Board's part: with them, it would be $150 million in interest alone!) due to the fact that the Commission was planning on getting a loan for part of it. He said that it would mean about $250 per household per year times 20 years. He said that inflation would drive both revenue and costs up.

A motion was made to appoint someone from the HOA to attend the Commission meeting and ask the Commissioners to prioritize the list. The motion passed unanimously.

The meeting adjourned at 8:02 PM.

NOTE: Not all links work at this time.