Polo Ranch - Annual HOA Meeting Recap 2023

Polo Ranch Community, This letter serves to recap our last annual townhall meeting, introduce our new board member, and communicate our goals moving into the next year. For those of you that were able to attend the meeting, thank you for your participation.

Elections for the HOA Board of Directors will continue to take place each year at the conclusion of the third quarter, around September. The election resulted in Pete Daugherty remaining on the Board of Directors, now serving with a three-year tenure. Danielle Jones remains on the board for two additional years and Veronica Arango was appointed to fill the vacancy from a recent resignation; Veronica’s remaining term is for one-year. Please welcome and congratulate Veronica on her new position as one of our Board of Directors.

The annual townhall meeting consisted of a detailed review of our financial position and reviewed the budgetary items for 2023. This information was also conveyed on the last update. In summary we are in a good financial position for this year and are not required to raise the annual HOA fees for 2024. We recognize that our website has been down for some time, but we would like to inform everyone that it is now working again. We would like to thank Anthony Pinheiro for volunteering his personal time to managing our community website. His personal contribution is integral to our ability share information. We would also like to note that several lights in the neighborhood are out. These lights can be returned to service by contacting CenterPoint Energy at 713-659-2111 and providing the serial number listed on the bottom of the light pole. There is also a hyperlink to CenterPoint that is available on our community website under Important Contacts and Info. The community website can be found below.

We are glad to announce that we now have a new bulletin board at the community pool that can be used to post information. The left side of the board is for information from the HOA Board of Directors and the right side can be used by anyone that would like to post information. We would like to thank Mason for making this bulletin board as part of his Eagle Scout Project. His hard work in this project surely be a major benefit to the community. Additionally, we have received several volunteers for the events committee and will be appointing people into this role shortly. You can expect to receive more correspondence about this soon.

An Events Committee has now been established for our community with the purpose of planning fun activities and events in our neighborhood. Everyone that expressed interest in the committee will have an active role. The members are Amanda Boyd, Courtney Layton, Yely Portillo, Adamu Yaya, and Erin Brown, with Erin serving as the Chairman of the Events Committee. If you would like to volunteer or be involved with events please feel to reach out to any of the members on Facebook. Erin can also be reached at ebrown@frontiertitletexas.com. We have allocated money from our excess operating cash from this year to fund the committee and also intent to establish cost savings from taking a more active role in functions that were previously paid to vendors, such as holiday decorations. Please congratulate the members of the committee on their new positions. We look forward to engaging in functions that will us to connect with each other and provide positive experiences to residents of all ages. Information on events will be shared on the Facebook community page and our email directory.

The elections results conveyed that participation in our community is very limited. Less than ten percent of the community casted a vote for the election. We believe this is indicative that members of our community are not receiving the email updates. We have decided to make changing this our main goal for 2024.

We are asking for your help in this goal. We aim to achieve communication milestones of having 70% of the community receiving email updates by the end of 2024. Email is our primary means of communication. This is necessary of consistently and accountability, as well as other factors which will be explained in more detail later. We also intend to use social media, our new bulletin board at the pool, our community website https://www.poloranchcommunity.com/ and word of mouth to inform residents about our email communication process.

Quarterly updates, communication information, and HOA details are shared by means of email updates such as this one. When we write our update letters they are sent to our community manager who sends them out as a mass email (E-blast) to the community. It is possible that these emails are ending up in spam folders. Please help us by informing your neighbors about this process and to check to make sure that these emails are not going into their spam folder. For some communication, it is legally required that direct mail also be used such as for our elections. Please be careful not discard these letters.

To be included in this email communication residents must request to be added to the email directory. This can be accomplished by sending their name, address, and email to our community manager, Rachel Schmutz, at service@csutx.com This information must be captured legally before email communications are can be sent to residents.

Please share this information with your friends and neighbors in an effort to help us establish better communication. It is our goal to have 50% of the community receiving email communication within the next 6 months and 70% by the end of the year. We believe this goal in obtainable, realistic, measurable, and most of all necessary. We believe that if people can help spread this information by word of mouth it will be trusted and received well by our residents. We appreciate your support in this.

In recent times, we have observed the increasing use of Facebook and other social media platforms for sharing updates and information related to our community. While we appreciate the convenience and accessibility that platforms like Facebook provide, we must emphasize that they are not officially recognized means of communication for the HOA boards in the state of Texas.

The decision to refrain from using Facebook as an official communication channel was based on several factors (1) Lack of Official Recognition: Facebook is a third-party platform, and we cannot ensure that all community members have access to it. To ensure equitable access to information, we rely on our recognized communication channels, such as the community website https://www.poloranchcommunity.com/ and our email directory. (2) Negativity on Social Media: Social media platforms often host negative discussions and misinformation. We believe that our community deserves a positive and constructive environment, which is better achieved through our established communication channels. (3) Data Privacy and Security: Privacy concerns and data security issues can arise on social media platforms. We prioritize your data protection and ensure that our official communication methods meet appropriate privacy and security standards.

Moving forward, we kindly request that you refer to our official communication channels for updates and important announcements. For most issues’ and request, resolution can be found by using the email service@csutx.com.

We understand the importance of open communication and value your input. If you have concerns, suggestions, or questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at either poloranchpete@gmail.com (Pete), daniellemaringhoa@gmail.com (Danielle), and lcoveronica@gmail.com (Veronica). We intend to work together as a Board to resolve issues in a timely manner, but please understand that just like you we also have jobs, families, and related commitments. This is a volunteer position but we seek to do the best we can to serve the community well. Your feedback is vital in helping us make decisions that benefit our community.

Thanks again for your participation and support in this community.

Respectfully,

Your Board of Directors

Pete, Danielle, and Veronica