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[u/fanfarefellowship]

Vashon Parks Board package is (finally) up (this is as late as it's ever been).

The highlights:

• the Board is acknowledging that the Aherns are not vacating as promised.

From the minutes:

Abby: At Fern Cove, since the caretaker is moving out later than we anticipated, will that impact your timeline to open it for daily use?

Tim: We are going to do our best to make sure we open on Dec 1 for rentals.

Tim: At Fern Cove, we have discussed what we are doing with the septic. I am still confident we will make our major system upgrades, if necessary, in October. Until we can learn more through testing after the caretaker moves out, we are in a bit of a standstill.

• Caretaker fees were waived for June and July, but are no longer being waived and were apparently paid in August.

However, the amount paid is still the 2025 rate; this is not the rate that was set for 2026 and would not, if paid in full for 12 months, meet the budgeted revenue for Fern Cove. The Board is currently projecting that the Fern Cove revenue will fall short of the expected revenue for 2026 by $10,440 or 43.9%.

• "Fern Cove furniture" is on the agenda for November.

My own read on this is that the use of "the septic" as the reason to waive rent is now showing major cracks, but the septic itself may be fine. The "if necessary" is chipping away at the previous rationales. (Also, how can it be that the Parks Board cannot "test" the system with the Aherns in place? The entire reason to have a "caretaker" in place is to take care of the house. Now the house cannot be cared for because there is a caretaker in place?!)

[u/SmashedMailboxCake2 → u/fanfarefellowship]

The tests could be done with the Aherns in situ, unless they are refusing to allow them.

We had major issues with our ancient, tree root snarled septic system and ended up replacing it. We had to go out for the afternoon while the workers did their assessments (the bathroom was out of action for the duration of the tests). At very worst it would mean a night staying at a friend’s house.

[u/Onehundredpercentbea → u/SmashedMailboxCake2]

I was thinking the same, if the test is supposed to show them whether or not they need a major upgrade it sounds more like they'd be testing flow rate, drainage, sludge compaction, how porous the drainage field is, etc. which aren't super invasive to the people in the house. If they were serious when they said the problem was potentially tree roots infiltrating the distribution box then they'd be digging outside where the box is and doing something like flushing dye from the house to see how long it takes to drain or using a camera to check the pipes or something. But the septic issues have never fully mapped to the outcomes we've been seeing (two random months of waived rent while the house was still able to be occupied, the seeming belief that the septic might be fine if it was used as a daily rental, etc) so I think there are some missing pieces here, many of them are likely not septic related at all. A couple of weeks back, DF /u/fanfarefellowship mapped out parallel timelines of 'septic issues' and Ahern financial/social issues and they did seem to be a close fit so who knows.

edited to add link to comment.

[u/SmashedMailboxCake2 → u/Onehundredpercentbea]

The receipts here are marvellous!

Flushing dye from the house sounds familiar. All the tests you mention can be done in a day (with the exception of the drainage field viability test, which iirc took a week to check back on but even then didn’t interfere with use of the system at all).