Community News

May 2003

The Board of Directors has been addressing a number of difficult problems this year that were discussed at a general meeting of the homeowners on Wednesday May21, 2003. This newsletter is to inform those of you who did not attend the meeting, what some of those issues are and how we as a community plan to handle them,

Community Maintenance

In the past, maintenance in our community has been handled in the following fashion: If
for example, the decision was made to replace steps in front of each unit. Bids on the job would be collected from a number of contractors and in the past the cheapest one was chosen to do the work. In many cases the quality of work done by these contractors was poor and the work had to be redone or repaired resulting in higher cost. All the contractors would deny they caused the problem and wanted to be paid again for repair work. In fact, sometimes contractors were hired to redo work that had been previously done of poor quality. Also, in past years the community hired on-site handy men to do minor repairs around the community. This created another set of problems for our community. First, the handy men were not experts at any one type of job. They were combination carpenter, plumber, painter, and what ever else we needed them to be. So repairs were simply done to the best of their ability. Now after years of maintaining our community in this fashion we are seeing maintenance problems reoccur and new problems occur caused by poor maintenance and poor workmanship. In fact there have been cases where owners were not aware of the contractor's identity that were hired to do repair work.

To solve this problem, one maintenance company has been hired, Mighty Maintenance Inc. They were tested along with a number of other contractors on a variety of jobs over a one-year period. In that time they responded the quickest with proposals, they had expert workmen in the areas of repair we needed, they were on call 24 hours a day, and they did not over charge. I personally checked references and talked to other communities they worked for. The feedback I received has been all positive. They all carry identification, and their vehictes are all clearly marked with their company name. We will now get away from hiring contractors and paying high rates by the job. Instead, since theY are under contract we can now get more work for our money, better quality work and we also know who is responsible. I will receive weekly status reports on all work orders. These status reports can be distributed to anyone who would like to see them. Homeowners will also be able to see when their work order is planned to be addressed. Most importantly this will cut down on the time it takes to schedule a work order.

Mighty Maintenance is currently working on correcting the violations that the state inspectors brought to our attention. There are 3 units that have foundation leakage problems; almost all of the buildings have problems with the aluminum siding and gutters.

There are a few buildings that have roof problems and a number of railings need to be replaced. The sidewalks also have been looked at and noted there are problem areas that need to be fixed. Mighty Maintenance is equipped to handle all of these problems and will spend the balance of the year correcting them. When these problems are corrected they will begin a preventative maintenane program. For now we are playing catch-up on years of poor quality work.

Community Insurance

The insurance coverage for our community expired Sunday May 25, 2003. State Farm Insurance Company informed the Board that they are not going to renew our policy in late February.. The reason they stated for not renewing the policy was because of our high claims history over the previous three years. We immediately appealed their decision. They again refused to renew the policy. Next, we offered to let them make conditions and structure the coverage so that the policy could be rewritten with limited conditions. We discussed these conditions with the agent and we appealed these conditions with the underwriters at State Farm.. All of these efforts took time but the final answer from the appeal committee from State Farm was negative. They were not interested in renewing or further discussing coverage for our community. Next Crawford Community Management Services, LLC, approached no less than 4 different insurance companies and called in 2 separate insurance brokers to help us try and obtain coverage. Most insurance companies said no, but a few returned proposals for coverage that would cost over $100,000 dollars per year. An insurance policy that would cost that much is unacceptable. The reasons again were the high claim history and the aluminum wiring in our buildings. There were two insurance brokers that were successful in convincing two companies to cover our community at a cost of $93,000 doilars per year. Our current policy With State Farm cost $35,000 dollars per year. Five people worked on this problem for three months and the difference in premium is obviously high but we are required to maintain insurance coverage for our community. The problem facing.us now is paying for this policy. I asked the homeowners that attended the meeting and I am asking you now for ideas to raise revenue to help pay the premium for this policy. I believe some of you that attended the meeting thought I was asking for help deciding coverage and we will have coverage. Now it is time for you as homeowners to express your ideas and make suggestions how toyaise revenue to pay for this increased expense. We will continue to search for more affordable coverage and address the maintenance issues that are causing our premiums to be so high. I printed my e-mail address on the agenda that was handed out at the meeting so you could send me your ideas for increasing revenue. Here again is my e-mail address JamesL9456@Worldnet.att.net. If you have any ideas for increasing revenue, please contact me.

Community Attitude

I cannot stress to you enough how important it is for us to act as a community. We still have people in our community that look to only place blame on the Board for why things are not perfect in our community. The problems the Board is facing today are problems that have been building for many years, especially the poor maintenance issues. I an see that our community is not perfect, but it is getting better. Financially, money that was wasted on dishonest contractors in the past is being put to better use, and financial statements get reviewed monthly. We now have honest contractors working for us. We will improve communication to the homeowners to keep you more informed on pressing issues, but betteer communication has to improve from the homeowner too. This means ideas to improve our community not just complaining. To date I have not received one e-mail or phone call with an idea. There are over 400 people living here, I cannot believe that no one has any ideas to improve this community. This attitude has to change.

When the elections are over we will increase the number of Board members from 3 to 5. It is good to see there are some new homeowners that are interested in improving where they live. The old attitudes of complaining and apathy will take time to die out but eventually they will. I am looking forward to working with anyone interested in helping to improve this community.

Regards,

James C. Lawrence
President