Channel Cove residents meet new director

A smattering of Channel Cove residents took new Home Trust of Skagit Director Felicia Minot up on her offer to meet and greet them at the complex's community room Dec. 16. Each of the four residents that came out between 11 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. could have taken a box of donuts home and boxes would have remained.

Minot was hired to replace Jodi Dean in November, who retired after overseeing the completion of five owner-occupied homes on the property's north edge last summer. Many of Channel Cove's 50-plus adult residents were critical of Dean for inattentive management of the property and lack of communication with them.

Jennifer Martin's complaint of her having one parking space and the unfair allocation of spaces exemplified both problems. Minot's list matched the tenants': parking, keys and locks, past management and board communications, her phone system, unit utility problems. "Safety concerns are at the top of my list," she told them. "Heating, electric, plumbing, they are all a concern in all the units and they all need to be addressed."

For years Mary Lou and Al Williams's lack of heat and inadequate electrical wiring concerns were not fixed. Williams said his unit was cold and they did not feel safe using the heaters.

Minot was aware and sympathetic of both property and communication problems and pledged to address health and safety issues to have an "immediate impact," but warned of the tangle of funding sources from all levels of government and the many contracts involved, saying "unfortunately it is not something that happens very fast" to get agency responses.

Minot said she was getting squared away in her own office and still in the process for getting a cell phone, credit cards software. She got business cards the day before. She pledged she would respond to emails and phone calls.

She was sympathetic to the complaint of the Home Trust's board of directors not responding and residents not being able to participate in annual meetings. "Every nonprofit has an annual meeting. It is usually a big event," she noted, and "community members can vote on changes in policy." She suggested scheduling it for next spring.

She pledged notification and participation by residents and several times repeated and stressed the need for consistency in their communications "It is what I am aiming for."

"I would like to do monthly meetings so we can work through things as a group," she told Williams. New homeowner Justin Barnes, a board member, "is the best person at this time for residents to contact."

The last thing she said to Williams: "The best way to be transparent is to have everyone together in one place. It is little baby steps. I wish I could do more faster."

The first action Minot took Saturday after the meeting was emptying out Bob Abrams apartment, a more straightforward cleanup process. Abrams had died in October.

Home Trust of Skagit has owned the Channel Cove campus neighborhood since 2011. There are a mix of some 30 rentals and owner-occupied homes. Skagit Habitat for Humanity built some five of the homes. Home Trust of Skagit is a community land trust owning the land underneath the homes.

Home Trust of Skagit Mount Vernon properties are the Summerlynd neighborhood and some scattered housing.