Incumbent Director Mick Herdrich is a former Navy helicopter pilot with substantial career experience in Human Resources management, including stints with Pfizer and Fidelity Investments.
    It was unfinished business that convinced Herdrich to change his mind and run for a full term on the SLWLA Board. Herdrich was appointed to his seat to serve out the unexpired term of a director who resigned. In the year-and-a-half he’s served, the remediation of the Lake Auman Dam has been the largest, though by no means the only, task on his agenda.
    And, while the dam repairs are finished, there remains the controversial issue of what to do about the roadway across the dam.
    “It’s a big issue that is going to be facing the community in the next six months,” Herdrich told The Times. And it’s an issue that would benefit from having someone on point “who’s been dealing with these issues all along.”
    “People ask all the time about the road,” he explained, highlighting some of the complexities surrounding the future of the dam and dam roadway. “It’s a very, very contentious issue with a lot of facets.” Herdrich said he sympathizes with  both those who are inconvenienced by a longer commute and those who have turned the top of the dam into a de facto walking trail.
    “But it’s a very difficult issue. We did the remediation last June, and, when they did the work, it was a lot worse than dam engineer Dan Marks thought it was going to be — especially on the far west side. It cost us significantly more money to fix it. He was shocked, Hayward Baker [the remediation contractor] was shocked.”
    “I think that changed people’s opinion a little bit about just what some of the issues were as far as the stability of the dam and the condition of the dam.”
    Herdrich explained that the repair that was done to the dam created a barrier that prevents water from passing through the upper portions of the dam, but that “slurry wall” “basically provides no structural integrity to the dam whatsoever. . . it does nothing so far as structural integrity is concerned.”
    “I have no idea what the state is going to say. They could come back and say nothing about the road. They could come back and say you can have a road, that’s fine everything’s okay, you can reopen your road. They could come back and say, no you can’t have a road, or they could come back and say you can have a road, but only under certain specifications.”
    “I think that’s going to be a big issue facing the community. It’s certainly going to be contentious, and I’m just waiting for the state. If they’re not happy with the dam, the state can tell you to drain the lake.”
    “I’ve got an engineering background, education-wise,” Herdrich said. “I have an excellent dam committee coming from wide backgrounds. We’ve got a very good committee that’s been dealing with a lot of these things; we’ve got a very cohesive group. I certainly think it would be helpful to have someone who’s been dealing with this all along to be in there when these decisions have to be made.”
    Noting that hours commuting to and from Manhattan had left him little time for community involvement while pursuing his career, Herdrich said retirement in Seven Lakes West had given him an opportunity to get involved. “I’ve really enjoyed my time on the board. It’s a hard working group, it’s a fun group. Yes we have our arguments, but I think the entire group is willing to give and take and listen to each other and come to a resolution. . . It’s been a very positive experience. And with my background and my experience I think I can still provide a lot of valuable contributions to the Board.”
    
Community challenges
    Asked about the big challenges facing the community, Herdrich said the biggest is infrastructure. “Infrastructure is like anything else: If you don’t maintain something, when it falls apart, it costs you a lot more.”
    “I don’t think any of us were expecting the problem with the culverts,” he said, referring to the recently-discovered need to replace the corrugated steel pipes that carry water under Longleaf Drive and other roadways — a project that could cost $200,00 or more. “I was astounded at the potential cost of that, but it’s not something you can ignore. I think that people would be very upset if the roads started falling in and they couldn’t get out of the development.
    The roads, the culverts, the big issue with the front gate; we still have the issue with the railroad crossing; what are we going to do with the mailhouse. — I think these are things that are all going to come about in the next year, year-and-a-half,” Herdrich said.
    “Infrastructure is the biggest thing on the Board’s plate. And, unfortunately, it all costs money. And I don’t like that any better than anybody else does . . . but, unfortunately, to fix things, you have to pay up.”
    Security is another key issue facing the Association. Herdrich said. “Security is one of those things that ‘It’s fine,’ until you start to have a problem. we’ve had a few things, nothing real significant. But if you talk to people, you find that’s one of the top two or three things on their list.”
    
Budget and Dues
    “I fully support the budget,” Herdrich told The Times. “I’m on a fixed income. Am I happy about paying more money? No.”
    Noting that one letter writer had labelled the Board’s approach, he said he saw it as the exact opposite. “The Board is trying to say these are the costs and expenditures that we are facing and we need to start saving now. If we were big government we’d start spending now and worry about where to get the money later.”
    “Nobody on that Board wanted to raise dues 36 percent.Our reserves have been taken down . . . To be fiscally responsible you have to build those reserves back up.”
    “It’s not like we’re building a lot of amenities. Most of these things are for infrastructure.”
    
Liaison with CAS
    In addition to his time spent chairing the Dam Committee and overseeing the remediation of Lake Auman Dam, Herdrich has also, as Chair of the Human Resources Committee, been the community’s primary liaison with Community Association Services, Inc. [CAS], the company that manages Seven Lakes West.
    “I continue to be the liaison with CAS. My committee will be doing the evaluation on them, the recommendation for contracts with them. If there are any issues that come up with CAS, I am the one that is the interface between [CAS President] John Stone and the Board. “And that’s been going very smoothly. But if there is a CAS issue, I’m the one who deals with that.”
    “We brought CAS in to do a lot of the operational things that Board members were doing,” Herdrich said. “I have probably been the most successful at turning that stuff over.”
    “I have a lot of responsibilities for landscaping Johnson Point for the dam, for managing the marina. I have turned all of that over to CAS. I still have oversight of it, but the day-to-day operations of it, they handle. That has dramatically changed my workload. If there’s an issue at Johnson Point,  [Community Manager] Joan [Frost] deals with it and lets me know . . . . Other Board embers have been doing it also. And I have encouraged them, ‘anywhere you can, let that stuff go.’ Because that frees the Board up for more strategic time. I don’t like it if I hear a Board member say they have to work 40 hours a week.”
    
 Lake Committee
    Herdrich also chairs the Lake Committee. He told The Times that he has worked to streamline the boat registration process — and would like to find a way to “make it a little more painless.”
    He noted that sometimes trivial violations of the lake rules can waste a lot of time for a number of people. For example, boat owners often register their boat but then neglect to apply the new decal to the vessel. The lake patrol spots and reports the violation, the office staff goes to work, only to find the boat is in fact registered.”
    “That waste’s a lot of people’s time,” Herdrich said, noting that a new fine system that goes into effect this year should help alleviate the problem.
    
Recruiting Board members
    “It is hard to get people to run,” Herdrich said when asked about the difficulty of recruiting Board members. “We have a lot of people in the community now who work. And serving on the Board does take time. Board members now, and in the past, work very very hard.”
    “But if I, as a volunteer, have to work 40 hours a week, then I need to work a little smarter . . . I see CAS as a valuable tool to help me not do those things.”
    Herdrich mentioned a recent restructuring by some Board members to have their committees include a deputy chairman who can run the committee and take some of the workload. “You have to run it almost like a business after a while.”
    Some folks shy away from serving on the Board, he added, “because we’ll lose all our friends. I have not found that to be the case with anyone. As a Board member, you have to make some tough decisions, but hopefully that’s why people asked you to take the job.”
    
Other thoughts
    Asked for any other thoughts, Herdrich described his approach to decision making — one that he said most folks on the current Board share.
    “I’m very commonsense, keep things simple, let’s not make mountains out of things if we can break it down and fix it. I am really very direct. I don’t like to beat around the bush. If something makes sense, that’s what we should be doing. If it doesn’t make sense, we shouldn’t be doing it.”