For Sun City’s Board of Directors, meetings to discuss important topics within the community will continue on as usual.
The method in which the most current meeting was conducted, however, is an entirely different story.
Sun City resident and long-time meeting attendee, Jim Darow, described his experience using the video conference app Zoom, to participate in the latest board meeting as, “Worthwhile. I have to complement the board and management for pulling off the meeting so well. I’m all for meetings continuing to be virtual.”
Despite the first Zoom board meeting having a higher than usual attendance rate, Sun City Board president, Dennis O’Leary, says that the Board of Directors hasn’t made the decision to make virtual meetings a permanent avenue of communication.
“I like face to face meetings. I’m pretty old-fashioned. The real issue is that these are board meetings, not community meetings. We’ll have to sit down to see if it makes sense to continue these kinds of meetings after the pandemic is over. From my point of view, there’s a lot going on when it comes to board meetings. We can’t always jam everything on the computer,” O’Leary said.
One of the main questions many Sun City residents in attendance at the meeting had was regarding reducing assessment levels due to the lodge services not currently being available. To answer this question, O’Leary cited the Common Interest Community Association Act (CICAA), one of three Illinois statues used to direct board leaders of their rights and duties to a community.
The CICAA roughly states that board members have no authority, “to forbear the payment of assessments by any unit owner,” and are required by law to collect all assessments from unit owners in the same manner as usual once a budget has been set in place.
O’Leary states, “The Board has a responsibility to pay the bills in Sun City. The state law is in place so residential property is maintained. The residents have expectations for us to uphold their investment. We can’t reduce the fees this year, but when it comes to next year we’ll see if we can take into consideration the need for less community resources, like snow plowing, but it’s unlikely. We can’t make any changes this year, but we’ll see if the budget can be adjusted for next year.”
As for what Sun City has planned in terms of re-opening, O’Leary explained that there are discussions in the works in partnership with First Service Residential.
“However, here in Illinois, things change daily and because of that, the Board has not approved any plan as of now. McHenry County has more restrictions due to where it is in the governor’s Restore Illinois plan so there’s no rush to complete [the plan] to re-open,” he said.
For the time being, O’Leary says that the steps they take all depend on what Gov. Pritzker’s next set of regulations will be.
When it finally comes time to re-open the lodges in Sun City and preventing potentially sick residents from entering, O’Leary commented, “Quite frankly, we hope that people take personal responsibility. We have not resolved that issue yet. We’re hopeful that the governor will provide us with some suggestions on how to proceed forward with that. The only source of protection right now seems to be wearing masks and social distancing. That issue is still on the table for discussion.”
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