Minutes of Committee Meeting
Monday, 13 December 2021, 2.30pm
Calle Puerto Lumbreras 3, Camposol C6
Present :
Phil Gelling [Chairman] (PG); Jayne Miller [Secretary] (CJM); Gordon Cockburn (GC); Dave
Jackson (DJ);
- Apologies for Absence
Colin Barton; Tracey Comper; Alan Fleming; Nigel Jones; Alison Lister; Steve Reynolds
- Minutes of previous meeting
Minutes of Committee Meeting held Monday, 8 November 2021, were approved by those present and without comment from absentees, therefore signed by the Chairman.
- Matters Arising
Nothing arising not covered by the agenda – Matters relevant to AGM to be covered under item 5.
- Treasurer’s Report
Colin Barton reported expenditure of €3472.45 during November. Apart from A6 flyers for the
2025 Team at a cost of €59, the remainder was in respect of invoices from Gerardo Vazquez. It
leaves a bank balance of €6575.35, PayPal unchanged and cash in hand of €184.73. Copies of the Vazquez invoices are attached.
5.Membership
Currently stands at 1381 – GC confirmed that numbers are not measured by property but by
individuals. However membership fees will be per property but in terms of voting would be
personal to the individual.
Emails which have been circulated to committee members, from both Gerardo and Maura have detailed the requirement to register the Association correctly. The first step in this process is to
regularize membership of the committee through means of AGM/EGM. CJM had put in process
arrangements for AGM on 8 January. However in view of the rarity for all or even a majority of
members to attend a meeting preparations had been made to allow for an email vote in respect of
committee members and introduction of fees. In the light of implementation of increased COVID restrictions and the urgency in respect of the voting, it seemed best to pursue an email voting option. The documents had been prepared, some slight adjustment to the wording suggested and GC was prepared to send out emails in tranches of some 200 supported by the emailing system and had the spreadsheets ready to record replies.
Attempts had been made over recent months to follow the procedure through Tina, who had
proved elusive and difficult to agree meeting dates.
The last correct registration of the Association was 2016 and in view of the lapse of years and
particularly with recent COVID restrictions, there would be an easy explanation for discrepancies and missing committee nominations.
Once the committee are all properly elected and in place GC and Maura will go through correct
procedures for registration and explain discrepancies in between by movements over the years.
Following the reregistration of the association the aim will be for the next AGM at the normal time in June when all committee members will resign and stand for re-election. Officers will be
volunteers or nominated and appointed at meetings of the committee.
6.Website
PG is finding solutions to the problems and fixing the present site but not intending to manage it
long term. He has enquired of Laurence terms of CRA contract with them, and has also queried
advertising since there are two aspects to this, which must depend upon the terms of the contract.
There is the element of general advertising controlled by Murcia Today. Their website is massive
with CRA only being a part. It may be that an element of income from general advertising should
accrue to CRA. Alternatively, again depending upon contract terms, advertising within the CRA
section may also be chargeable with the question as to where the proceeds go -possibly shared
with Murcia Today.
The website is multilingual and this element must be protected. There are complications between background companies; Certification and renewal is with one company, hosting with another and management by Murcia Today.
PG has now checked through old entries – 300 pages of out of date entries have been eliminated.
MurciaToday have do some maintenance – there is always a delay in getting responses. Laurence
can train but at cost and it will when he has time.
On the matter of a suggested new website, PG recommended not to pursue this. Most problems
are now resolved. What the remainder of the Committee have to appreciate is the complexity of
the website which provides many things to many people. Re-vamping is prone to problems and a
new website will be costly as would be a new hosting contract and ongoing maintenance could be even more costly. Also, current information would need to be maintained and transferred. again an exercise prone to errors and/or costly. Some plugins which are available on the site are not used because of cost implications. In general it would appear that there are no real issues with the website as it stands. If some buttons do not work, they will be removed – Q&A does work, ‘to join’ button at the top leads to a 404 page and has been disconnected – there is a ‘to join’ at the bottom. All other links have been checked. PG reiterated that advertising costs have been queried through Murcia Today. Some adverts are out of date and are managed by Murcia Today. If we have no control of advertising, we have no control of charging. Those present had no wish to pursue the matter of a new website. The issue with the current site is that it was not monitored properly and loads of stuff had been loaded on to it which had a ‘sell by date’ and was not cleared off. In the past the CRA website had been monitored by a couple of people. Part of a forum so mistakes were picked up quickly and fixed. At a point when the website needed an overhaul the whole site was ‘trashed’ by handing it over to a couple of guys who ran a website business from Sector A who eventually did a moonlight with €800 of CRA funds
and left the CRA without a website. As a result a previous committee had handed over the
building of a website to Murcia Today who administer some issues for us with subsequent charges.
7.Report of 2025 Group
No actual report received but see questions under AOB.
8.Fundraising
Alison had reported that she was planning a Valentine’s Evening for 14 February but doubted
whether it would be viable, depending upon Covid Restrictions at the time. She was also planning a murder mystery evening on 15 March – although this may have similar possible limitations.
9.Reports from the Gardening Groups
None received
10.Any Other Business
10.1.Nigel’s Points
- Can you please share the legal advice, referred to in the “letter to membership”, with the
committee so that we can satisfy ourselves that there are no legal obstacles to the route that is
being taken. The strategy for CRA is being directed by Gerardo as per the meetings early in
- Until Rambla resolved nothing will happen. Gerardo has said focus on Round Table and
resolve Rambla then move onto other elements – roads, lighting etc. CRA are being led by the
C Team of experts to involve Ayuntamiento, Region and CHS. There are no legal obstacles,
progress is being made including investigation into cases currently moving through the Courts
2)The same letter refers to voting for the committee en bloc. You are fully aware that Alan, on
two occasions has made proposals that members are elected individually, As far as I am aware
these proposals have not been discussed within the committee. They should be as they
fundamentally change the process. Once again, this could be done at the meeting on Monday
and accepted or dismissed. The process of election is in the Constitution. For the purposes of
what is required the co-opted members need regularising. Formal AGM will be in June when
each committee and/or the Constitution can be voted upon. Democratic individual vote not
required at this time.
3)Nowhere, do I see a list of elected members seeking re-election, Is this an omission or is there
a reason for this? Elected members are not seeking re-election at this time – they are not co-
opted and will be seeking re-election in June.
4)The following comments relate to the “fee proposal DFV 231121 reworked” document : It is
good to have Option C which is the do nothing option, however the addition of the words
“and watch Camposol deteriorate”, although true, should be perhaps be removed as
unnecessary as there are no corresponding comments on the other two options. It was
appreciated that Option C had been added to NJ document, this was to provide clarification
within the voting form – Options A and B had been covered by the document.
5)CRA membership : According to the figures provided by Gordon after the last meeting, CRA
currently represents, at best, 19% of properties on Camposol, or less than one in five
properties. I appreciate that the recent effort has been to increase individual numbers.
However, 1 in 5 properties is not a lot and I wonder if we should amend our focus to try and
increase the percentage of properties that we represent. I would appreciate your thoughts on
this. As per item 5 above, membership is measured in bodies.
6)Relevance of CRA : It seems that the CRA is being sidelined in relation to planning activities
on Camposol. Two examples are: A) the recent meeting between the Camposol Business association and the Town Hall at the bridge. If we are the representatives of the residents, we should at least be involved in discussions such as this. It is all well and good having photos taken by the bridge, but unless we are involved in the discussions, there is limited value. In May we were advised to serve an official notice on the Town Hall, which I understand has now happened. What is the follow up and how do we become involved in these discussions?
- B) There are monthly meetings on Camposol which discuss future plans for Camposol. The
business association and other elected guests are invited to these meetings, which are attended
by the Town Hall. CRA is not invited. Once again, we are unable to influence these discussions. Do you have any plans as to how we can become relevant in this type of important activity?
We must remember that the prime objective of the CRA is to improve living conditions within
Camposol. Over the years CRA has been sidelined many times. On these issues we have notified
the Ayuntamiento and received no response. Similarly matters have been raised by Gerardo who is also awaiting responses from Mazarron. PG has suggested that 2025 team should be negotiating with business association since presumably they are also looking to matters for the future. We have not been approached by the association to join forces. Discussions surrounding the bridge have been subject of meeting in September with another suggested meeting in November (which did not happen) movement on this matter clearly with the Ayuntamiento. PG will ask Gerardo to follow up. Noted again that all 5 options for dealing with the rambla have been declared unviable and further investigation required and no information available as to what the Ayuntamiento intend.
7)The C team : We all appreciate that the C team and Gerardo in particular, have been very
useful in highlighting the issue of the Rambla. The situation remains that CRA has not
developed a strategy, which will inform the type and level of support needed from the C
team. The last written advice that we received from them was, as far as I know, in May, some 7
months ago. It does seem that the tail is wagging the dog, in the sense that Gerardo appears
to be deciding CRA strategy. There may of course be other information that has not been
shared with the committee? I assume that the requested information about costs and
outstanding hours available, will be available and presented at the meeting.
The strategy is to use C Team who will amend focus as and when required – they are working in
accordance with their experience on similar issues elsewhere. Maura, having already followed
through these processes, has recommended 20k per annum for 12 months. Advice is generally
received by email which are circulated to all committee members. Every time a question is asked,there will be a charge.
10.2.Alan’s Points
1)Gerado has been doing some great work and is moving matters forward. However, we need to
understand what this is costing us. Can we have an estimate of the additional fees we owe him
for this work. ie. After the 8k Euro (I think that was the figure) spend that Colin has identified.
See response to similar point made by Nigel
2)In light of the increase in Covid on Camposol. It seems sensible to either delay the AGM until
say February or hold an online AGM. A discussion at the meeting would seem sensible. My
vote would be for an online meeting due to the urgency and need to legitimise the current
committee. See discussions under item 5. Zoom meeting for an AGM not practical so assume
Alan intends mail voting. As recommended by Gerardo we are offering postal opportunity in
order to deal with the matters as quickly as possible. Because of potential seasonal delays,
the decision was taken to send out now with deadline 5 or 7 days. Spreadsheets prepared
with lists of 200 members tranches GC and CJM to continue with arrangements. DJ
suggested no reply indicates acceptance – and I can’t remember whether we decided to do
this or not!!
3)I have issued a number of emails, but have not received any responses to the questions or
proposals contained in them. This is both disrespectful and not very professional. I would ask
the Chair to raise the questions and proposals and discuss them at this meeting. At the
moment I feel ignored and this is not the way to engender a whole team approach. Please do
not ask me to resend the emails as I have done this on several occasions. CJM has
endeavoured to pick up questions from recent emails, to be covered within these minutes. It
may be that some questions/proposals have been overlooked or are not viewed as requiring
response. If it involves C Team, CRA does not have finances to invite C Team to meetings and
any questions placed with them will be costing CRA money.
4)Website : For clarification, the offer from the tech company on Sector A was to provide one-
off training on how to upload content on to the website and day to day content management.
I do not ask them to host the website nor provide technical support. Clearly Phil wants to do
this himself. That’s his decision and goes against the committee decision to delegate the task.
Meanwhile the website continues to be out of date and to a degree has been superseded by
the successful 2025 Facebook page. However, I will make a suggestion and that is to avoid
further time and effort let’s develop a new website. I understand Dave has done this
successfully for his business. The amount of money we would need to spend would be
worthwhile. Finally in an effort to build bridges, I would volunteer to project manage the task.
This would allow Phil to concentrate on the ‘legal’ matters. By way of experience I have
project managed significant IT projects including setting up a 100 desk contact service centre.
See comments under item 6.
10.3.Future Committee Meetings
Cohesiveness – We should all be tolerant of each other, we are all individuals who are busy. Each team should be reporting to Committee. In order to be clear emails should include deadline for responses and ideally keep on topic – if nothing received, from one member it will have to be taken as ‘no comment’.
10 January subject to venue. No-one really likes Zoom meetings but these may have to be considered for during January.
10.4.Outcome from Legal Clinics
Saturday morning had been successful in terms of highlighting further issues for residents,
including legal position of properties in the rambla; Calle Punica where properties are occupied
without escrituras and not registered on cadastral although the properties are listed but owners
not named and no evidence of previous ownership of the land and movement between owners,
IBI will be chargeable on all years missed, including fines; also the problems of turistico properties where re-zoning will be required either per house or by Polygono, technically the Tourist Board can request record of tourism receipts for those properties.
10.5.Delegations
For clarification, delegated work includes : AGM and meetings – Gordon and Jayne; future
ventures – Nigel and team; fundraising – Alison and team; past problems ; Phil, Gordon and the
C Team; Membership – Gordon; Finance Control – Colin Barton; Legal Clinic – Phil, Gordon and Gerado. There are other tasks which spring up from time to time.
Next meetings 10 and 31 January 2022
Meeting closed 16.51