Las Vistas Blog – August, 2016
,Hello Fellow Bloggers
Greetings from very hot and humid Florida, where the rain falls, but not the temperature. This summer seems endless with the heat and rain most days, and has us yearning for the fall.
Hot or not, we continue to sell our available units and are happy to report five sales since my last blog. We finally managed to sell a unit in the A building that has been empty for years and owned by a bank, and while it sold for $35,000, we will once again see a unit renovated, lived in, and becoming a part of our community. Also in the A building, we sold a two-bedroom for $60,000, and in the B building, a two-bedroom for $69,000. Also sold was a two-bedroom in the G building for $66,000 and one in the F building for $62,500. Three out of these four were cash sales. I expect that we will be interviewing prospective buyers again shortly and will continue to keep you advised of future sales.
As you know, the recently approved amendments included the fact that we do not have Board of Directors’ meetings every month any longer, and that our next meeting will be in October. Nonetheless the Officers and I are working on projects throughout the summer and we are getting ready to meet with our insurance agent to set up our policies for the coming year. I will be calling a special meeting of the Board to present, discuss, and hopefully approve our insurance policies which must be renewed by October 1st. And, speaking of our Board, I am happy to announce that Gilles Labreque has joined our Board as he has been elected Resident Director of the H building. Welcome, Gilles.
Around our property, we are working with our servicers and staff to make sure our landscaping and maintenance projects continue. Vacation schedules notwithstanding, our maintenance staff has continued on with several projects since my last blog, including completing the blowing of all the outdoor air conditioner lines in all of the buildings. They cleaned, for a second time, the canal pipes, completed the painting of all the laundry rooms in all the buildings that have them, worked on the never-ending sprinkler repairs, continued with scheduled cleaning of the garbage chutes, etc. The heavy rains have resulted in some of the elevator pits collecting water, and our staff has been continuously monitoring and pumping water as needed. We will shortly begin again to power wash throughout the complex, and the pool areas will get another good cleaning.
Our duck problem has eased off a bit, but we still have lots of them in residence! You always have to check your car area before pulling out so as to avoid them, and they continue to make lots of noise when guarding their territory and young.
Our security project is proceeding along, and we see fewer and fewer violations for cars parked in guest spots without the guest pass. Most of the violations given in the past were for cars parked only once and gone, which is expected until unit owners become more familiar with our guest pass requirements for their overnight guests.
In my last blog, I mentioned that we were preparing a new edition of our condominium documents which will be disseminated to all unit owners. The first draft typing of all the documents is done, the first proofreading for typos also done, and now the task begins with a call back proofreading, word for word from the original documents to the new replication. I have been and will continue to work with volunteer Phyllis Adams and our Secretary Emily Sudine-Wynter on the first proofing, and then I am going to have “new eyes” proofing a second time. We don’t want to have to do this job again, and while it is time-consuming and tedious work, we will finally have documents that anyone can read and refer to with much less difficulty than what we currently have, and in a format which will make updating a simpler process.
We have also just about completed our telephone directory, and this will be a part of our document binder. The document binder will house the telephone directory, the Articles of Incorporation, the Declaration of Condominium, the By-Laws, the Rules & Regulations, etc. These will be in a three-ring soft binder format. Pages can be easily revised or included in this format without having to recreate the entire publication. Our target for completion will be late fall/early winter, and I hope you agree that it will be worth the wait.
Our Social Society has continued to offer some activities for our unit owners including line dancing, bingo games, ladies’ luncheons, casino trips and our holiday BBQ’s. We appreciate their efforts and look forward to more events to come as fall approaches.
I would like to send out a note of thanks to Luc Reindeau who is now helping me with our website updating. With all the other projects needing attention, I am grateful for his help with this and I will be meeting with Luc and Bernard Ratneiya (the other member of our Website Committee) shortly to look toward the future of our website.
Because I know so many of you know and appreciate all the work she does for us, I wanted to let you know that our office secretary, Brenda White, will be having hip surgery in early September, and we hope you all send out good wishes for her speedy recovery. We will have temporary help in place and look forward to Brenda coming back in mid-October.
I can’t believe it is near the end of August already, and children in Florida are back to school. It seemed like yesterday that we were planning the Memorial Day BBQ and here it is the end summer right around the corner. The only good news for time passing so quickly is that our snowbirds will soon be back to join their Florida Las Vistas family.
And, as I close this edition of the Las Vistas Blog, I would like to mention that the picture I have selected reflects good times being had by some of our snowbird unit owners as they spend their summer up north. As usual, I end by extending my wish that the sun shines every day for all of us.
