The Reston 20/20 Committee has sent to the RA Board of Directors a paper identifying eight key issues it believes must be investigated in the upcoming audit of the Lake House purchase and renovation. The issues begin with disclosing the details of discussions that led to the secret deal with Tetra Properties to the near tripling of the property’s renovation costs in 2016.
Reston 20/20 puts the capital cost overruns associated with these Tetra issues at $2.9 million if RA follows through with the proposed grounds improvements, a cost of more than $130 per RA household in additional assessment fees, lost RA services, or unplanned reserve drawdowns.
Reston 20/20 Co-Chair Tammi Petrine said, “It is vitally important that whoever investigates the mess made of the Tetra purchase and renovations addresses these eight critical issues or RA will have wasted additional tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of our assessment fee dollars in the Tetra property morass. It is far past time for RA to fully account for the poor decisionmaking and waste of RA homeowner funds on Tetra over the last year.”
The list of Tetra issues focuses on a number of errant financial and procedural steps Reston 20/20 says RA made throughout its acquisition and renovation of the property. Among the issues are how RA so badly miscalculated the renovation costs for the Lake House, seeing projected costs rise from $259,000 to $687,131 this year alone, and why RA has committed to spending this sum without having passed any budget for Lake House renovation.
“Our list of key issues is based on RA documents available to the public as well as critical gaps in the availability of information essential to understanding RA’s decisionmaking,” said Terry Maynard, Reston 20/20 Co-Chairman. “Without understanding the reasoning behind the decisions leading to the production of these documents and the hiding of others, we will be unable to prevent the waste of RA member assessment fees in the future.”
The Reston 20/20 key Tetra issues statement comes the day before RA’s Board Governance Committee meets to discuss key issues around the selection of an independent contractor to carry out the Lake House audit. (The Committee was scheduled to meet Tuesday, July 12, 6 p.m., at the RA Conference Center - after the Connection deadline).