Las Vistas Blog - May, 2016:

Hello Fellow Bloggers: Greetings from Las Vistas where summer has arrived with temperatures well into the 80’s and where the rainy season is beginning to cloud our skies each afternoon. However, we are grateful for the rain since we have been busy around our grounds with replanting, mulching, and fertilizing.

By now, you have probably received our notices on new parking decals and guest passes, and we will begin disseminating them on June 1st. We included a notice with that mailing regarding our hope that residents would stop feeding the duck population, which seems to have tripled in a very short time, and which is soiling and staining our carpeting and walkways.

Lots of updates I want to include in this blog, especially on what took place at our May Board Meeting, and the fact that the Board of Directors approved Amendments 1 through 6 and 9 through 15, and the proposition on the material alteration. The last two remaining amendments, 7 and 8, will be voted on at a special meeting we called for June 6th, since they deal with unit use rights and required advanced notice to all. Once this vote takes place, we will be recording all approved changes with the County Clerk’s Office. We want to thank again all unit owners who participated in this process with us. Your participation was vital and I am sure helped our Board with making their decisions.

As you know, we have been without Resident Directors for buildings H, L, and P and we sent out notices again to call for candidates. Gene Palazzo in building P entered his name in nomination and, since no one else came forward with an intent to run, I am happy to report that he will be seated with the Board again at our June meeting. No other candidates submitted their information for either H or L, so those positions are still available.

Our unit sales and rentals continue to occur and during May, the Board approved an annual rental lease in the F building, a sale of a 2 bedroom/2 bath unit in the A building for $55,000 and a sale of a 2 bedroom/2 bath unit in the R building for $100,000.

Some good news includes that we finally had the last inspection that was required for our cardroom in the K building, and we passed both the clean air inspection as well as the final one conducted by the City of Lauderhill. Residents of that building are, I am sure, happy to have their cardroom back, neat and clean. We also successfully passed fire inspections, and the electrical issues we had in our elevators have been resolved. Inspections have abounded, and we also passed the final one on our L building roof and we are very satisfied with the work done once again by Innovative Roofing. For the May Board Meeting, we provided dramatic before and after pictures of the L building roof and, pictures of the K building roof, after six months of its completion. The K building roof still looks like new!

Some news from around our property includes the fact that our canals have been cleaned. We had to scramble to get our canal pipes out of the water so they would not be broken by the cleaning equipment since, of course, we got no advanced notice from the City. While it was being cleaned over a period of almost a week, our staff had to use hoses to manually water our property so as not to lose all the new plantings. Once the canal was cleaned, our men also cleaned the canal pipes before reinstalling them, and began work on trying to get our sprinkling system up and running. Plagued with broken pipes and sprinkler heads, this is an ongoing challenge for us.

Unfortunately, we had a power failure here during the week of April 25th, which resulted in FPL opening a huge hole outside the pedestrian gate by building L. We had to reroute our L, M, P and R building unit owner traffic to gate # 1, and Pierre manned that gate through the night. Luckily the repair work was done and a path opened the next day for traffic and, after several weeks, the repair has been completed, the hole filled, and the asphalt replaced on our property.

We lost a hardwood tree and old palm tree in the back of the P building during a really violent storm on May 4th. The tree was extremely old and had previously been compromised during the replacement of a water main last year. Unfortunately it fell on an old palm tree which also had to be removed.

Our staff is continuing with seasonal chores and have completed the cleaning of all laundry room exhaust pipes. They have cleaned and sanitized the garbage chutes in all buildings, and are beginning in earnest the painting of the laundry rooms, one building at a time. We are installing bulletin boards over the mailboxes in all buildings so that the approved social and other postings will be organized and not just taped at random. Also, Pierre attended a required course at NOVA and passed an exam and is now a Certified Pool/Spa Operator. He will be handling our routine cleaning and testing of our pools and we will continue to use our vendor for maintenance and repairs.

Not to forget social activities, our Social Society is busily keeping us entertained. We have line dancing classes being conducted on Wednesday afternoons, a Memorial Day BBQ is about to take place, we have card parties, bingo games, and ladies’ luncheons taking place each month, and a casino trip on the 25th.

My picture for this blog is of the Bingo Game projected on our large screen in the Recreation Hall. And now, calling number B 15!

On this note, I end this blog with my usual wish that the sun shines every day for all of us.