CONDO DEL SOL
BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETING MINUTES
November 14, 2022
Zoom Meeting
Board Members present: Mike Riach; President, Jennifer Johnson; Secretary, Laura Deland; VP, Colleen Daleabout; Treasurer, Sydney McNeal, Taran White, Chris Bradley.
Scott Kindred: Manager
Marianne Bachus: Accountant
Some owners joined the meeting
Call to Order: president called meeting to order at 5:03
Minutes from 9/23/22: Meeting on roofs and Ting. Minutes have already been reviewed and approved by the board and they are posted on the website. As a formality Mike asked for an approval for the records. Jennifer made a motion to approve the minutes and Laura seconded.
Manager’s Report:
- Working with welder on the posts for the gates. Scott will be working at the welders fabrication shop to doing some cutting, layout, sanding and prep work to save the association some cost. He anticipates everything will be done sometime in December.
- Many projects are still on hold due to prices that are still too high.
- Scott will send out a letter in first of year to outline projects that were completed and what was not due to increased costs.
- There are new safety lights on the tennis courts
- There is a new solar motion sensor light down by the dog.
- Scott asked homeowners to let him know if lights are out on perimeter areas where safety is an issue, so he can replace them.
(Note: Scott suffered an injury during the Fall which limited the physical things he could work on.) - Scott will resume projects in the spring.
President’s Report:
- Budget report is available on the website for owners to review.
- Mike gave a heads up to the owners to expect a dues increase for 2023. The consistent increase in prices across all areas have made it impossible to stretch our money any further. We are up 21% since 2015.
- Also looking at a hybrid management style.
- Scott and Marianne have met multiple times to review the increasing costs and how to cover them.
- Mike asked Scott, Marianne, Jennifer, Sydney, and Colleen to meet and look at what things have increased and by how much and start creating a working budget for 2023 based on the increasing costs.
Secretary’s review of the budget planning meeting:
- We started with the highest numbers we felt that we might need and then started to trim it down. Scott, with Marianne’s help did a stellar job of trimming it.
- Discussed the advantage of cancelling Vyve and the cable service from Vyve (the old Northland). Some of our buildings have had problems with cable reception for years and Northland was never effective at fixing their service. By cancelling cable and having owners simply use internet streaming,(for all the local channels provided by cable) we were able to essentially suck approximately $27,000/year back into our budget to be used to cover other costs.
- This year’s anticipated budget is $394,500. We have a small amount of padding built in. In the same way that we’ve all experienced increases in our household costs, the condos have experienced those same increases. Some areas of note are: Sewer and water have increased, our flood insurance is really high and we are required to have it and the group that controls those rates can increase it as much as they want with no obvious constraints. The cost of heating the pools, the chemicals for the pools are way up. This is the first year we are just barely squeaking by and we are hoping we have enough funds to cover the rest of the year.
- Scott has been putting in way too many hours (sometimes up to 70 per week), simply because he gets called on everything. So we’ve decided to add an assistant manager as this complex is too big for one person. Part of the challenge is that when Scott hires someone to do a job and they don’t show up, he goes ahead and does it himself. He is a hybrid manager in that he not only oversees everything at the condos, he actually is a boots on the ground, hands on, doing the jobs himself. Much of what takes place here, the average owner doesn’t see. Some of the unseens are the insulation under the buildings that he installed, the heaters under the buildings that break and need to be replaced, the thermostats that were placed under the buildings to run the heaters automatically, the pipes that break and require someone to fix, the pumping out of water under the buildings due to a leak.
- The way we looked at funding an assistant manager was to look at the items that we contracted outside and then decide if the assistant manager could do those. For example, we paid $13,000 for lawn mowing. That money will be used for the assistant manager position. Pools require 2x/day 7 days/week. Pools took 21 hours/week last year. We hired someone to help with part of it and that money will be used for the assistant position. Pools have to be hand vacuumed every day due to the pool drains having been filled with concrete a number of years back. That is very labor intensive. When Scott hires an outside person he has generally had to pay them more than he makes. And if they don’t show up, that disrupts Scott’s entire time budget.
- We have line itemed the entire budget this year to make it easier for homeowners to understand it.
- Asphalt is needing repair. It was supposed too be done last year but the cost of asphalt skyrocketed so it was delayed. We budgeted for that one based on pure guesswork.
- Decks-Scott started examining the decks this year and many of them have weathered poorly. We don’t know what the cost or how much work will be required to restore decks that are not doing well. We have an amount we’ve put into the budget for materials and Scott and the new hire will do the work. We will have to determine, based on our by-laws, what the association will cover and what the homeowner will pay for since they are limited common areas, reserved exclusively for the use of the homeowner of the unit.
- General category is for the unexpected.
- Landscaping is the gals that handled our flowerbeds.
- ost of the categories are easy to understand as they are listed.
- $2000 for the pool is for chemicals. We are hoping they don’t have a big spike or a shortage.
- Roofing-This fall we had a company called Roof Max spray a material on the roofs that is supposed to make the shingles more supple and less prone to breaking and cracking, and extend the life up to 5 years. The product is warranted and if we have to re-spray or replace a roof we are refunded 20% for each year that we didn’t get of the 5 years. Our roofs just barely qualified for the spray as they were quite brittle. We are still putting away money annually for the eventual replacement of the roofs and hopefully will have enough in the fund to cover the entire cost of replacement when we get to that point. Scott added that it is possible that we will get up to 10 years on some of the roofs due to the superior performance of the roof maxx product. We may have to have a second spraying but that is much more cost effective than replacement.
- Window washing-Due to homeowners requesting this service, we put it into a line item.
- Dryer vent cleaning has been taken over by the board as the vents are a potential fire hazard. We’ve never had a fire in a dryer vent that we know of but it is best not to take the chance. $75/unit one year and $25/unit for the next year.
- Ting-That price came down significantly when we opted out of cable/tv service. That allowed us to keep the dues increase closer to 15% rather than 25%.
- Sewer-That’s a painful bill that Scott has been fighting the city over. Bill is based on amount of water used and during the summer we use a ton more water to keep the pools filled. None of that water goes into the sewer but we get charged just the same.
- Big jumps in insurance costs across the board.
- Boat storage-we’ve rented space in the past for people to store their boat trailers. The facility we used has been sold and isn’t offering that option so owners are on their own for finding a place to put their boat trailers.
- Reserve fund-we used some of the fund for spraying the roofs ($45,000). We will replace it out of 2023 budget. We will also set aside 10% of our budget to go into the reserve fund rather than waiting to see if we have any money left over. The state of Idaho does not require a reserve fund, but banks like to see one before they loan on a unit.
- After 7 years of no increases, we were still able to hold the increase to around 15%
- Asphalt, roofs, sidewalks are all projects that we’ll have to explore as they come up.
Q and A:
- Do we have a job description for the new position and is Scott staying or quitting?
Answer: Scott was a big part of the budget planning, and likes the idea of an assistant so at this point in time, he has no plans to leave.
Questioner asked if a job description could be posted for the new position in case any homeowners know of someone who might like too apply. - Does the board have a back up plan for an assistant if we can’t find someone to fill the position?
Answer: Not at this time. The position is based on $20/hour and we are going to assume that there will be people looking to go back to work by spring. Taran expressed that the best money our association can spend is on the people we hire even if we have to spend more to get good people. Scott jumped in and said that he knows enough people in town that do the work he will be looking for that he is confident in being able to hire a really good person for the $20/hour. - Have we shopped our insurance?
Answer: We can’t shop our flood insurance but Scott went through 35 brokers in Montana, Washington and Idaho to shop our other insurance. Out of the 35 we got 4 quotes back. Most of the companies won’t insure the docks for liability reasons. Our current broker was still the best price. - Are the manager and assistant managers employees or contractors?
Answer: Manager is a contractor and assistant manager will be an employee of the association. - Can we have an owner directory?
Answer: We can created an opt-in list to overcome privacy issues.
Closing remarks:
- Mike gave kudos to Sydney for tackling the mailchimp for communication task and Colleen for handling facebook information.
- Need for a committee to tackle an ongoing long range plan…1, 5, and 10 year plan.
- Decks: Our bylaws and declarations are gray as to who owns and maintains the decks/limited common areas. We are attempting to get on top of the deck issues and will come back with more info in the future.
Meeting adjourned at 6:07pm
Respectfully submitted,
Jennifer Johnson, Secretary