Las Vistas Blog – Winter, 2017
Hello Fellow Bloggers,
Greetings at long last from your Las Vistas community, where we have had an incredibly busy few months moving forward with a new administration, new beginnings, and new challenges. If you missed our elections this past January, we have a 17 member Board of Directors in place, with several new members to welcome. If you are not here in Florida to see our bulletin board listing, or are without internet access to our website, here are our Directors for this new two-year term by building: A – Nunzio Beddia; B – Harvey Anderson; C – Emily Sudine-Wynter; D – Kip Ballast; F – Rose Iannicelli; G – Richard Smith; H – Lynette Housty; J – Dwayne Griffin; K – JoAn Moore; L – Winston Imhoff; M – Canute Marshall; P – Gene Palazzo; R – Jean Johnson. Our Directors at Large are Larry Kenline, Gilles Labreque, Gloria Orlando and Bernard Ratneiya. The Officers elected are President, Rose Iannicelli; Vice President, Richard Smith; Treasurer, Kip Ballast; and Secretary, Emily Sudine-Wynter.
Of course you know by now that our budget was passed for 2017 and it included several projects including the restriping of our parking lots, the power-washing and waterproofing of the timbers, the replacement of the flooring in the clubhouse Recreation Room and adjoining areas, the replacement of damaged doors in the cabanas rest/storage rooms, and the repair of pools and their heaters. We did have some unexpected expenses such as when all the electricity went off in the clubhouse, causing the need for major renovation and repair, and when the air conditioning in the clubhouse also blew and required replacement! Of course, we also had to have a major repair to the elevator in the J building and that was a huge expense as well. Given all of this, however, we still believe that our budget, while tight, will accommodate these expenses.
Another accommodation of the 2017 budget was the hiring of an Operations Manager for our Association and I am happy to report that we hired Randy Klotzman for this position and he began on March 1st. I thanked our Search Committee for their hard work in vetting resumes, conducting the interviews, verifying references, and bringing to the Board, at the February meeting, our unanimous recommendation for Randy for this position. The Board approved our recommendation and Randy has been hard at work getting familiar with our property, our personnel, and with working with our Officers. He has already secured proposals for us to review for the installation of the new flooring for the clubhouse Recreation Hall, for repairs to our five pools, and for a myriad of other projects. We welcome Randy to our Las Vistas family.
We have also seen lots of activity over the last months in terms of the sales and rental of units in our buildings. I can report that the following units were sold since my last blog and include: in the B building - a two-bedroom for $65,000, in the F building – a two-bedroom for $106,000, and a small two-bedroom for $55,500; in the H building – a convertible for $58,000, a two-bedroom for $75,000, and a two-bedroom for $39,000; in the J building – a convertible for $46,500, and a convertible for $94,000, in the K building – a two-bedroom for $106,000, and a two-bedroom for $95,000. We also renewed several annual and seasonal leases in a variety of buildings.
As you know, at our Board Meetings, I try to report about the many projects that our janitorial and maintenance staff have attended to during the months and will outline some for you including that new parasols and tables have been installed in all the pools, the new doors mentioned above have been installed, a new sub-pump installed behind the J building, pedestrian gate # 4 has been reopened after adjustments were made to the hinges of gate doors itself and the lock, pedestrian gate # 2 also had a new lock installed, a new gas tank installed for Pool # 1, all the light fixtures in the cabanas have been cleaned, and we installed a new sprinkler pump near building A. In addition, our canal pipes that feed the sprinklers were cleaned again, and every week broken pipes for the system are identified and repairs made. This is a never-ending project due to the number of sprinklers and pipes throughout the property. Also included in my update was the fact that we now have bulk pickup each month and those dates have been posted on all of our bulletin boards.
We anticipate that our new documents book will be ready for dissemination to our unit owners during the week of March 20th. We had teams of volunteers putting together the binders which include chapters on the By-Laws, Declaration of Condominium, Articles of Incorporation, Rules & Regulations, and an updated Telephone Directory. One copy will be available per household, ID will be required to receive it, and it may only be picked up in person.
We have recently formed a Volunteer Committee headed by Larry Kenline who will be working together with unit owners to paint the ceiling of the Recreation Hall, and, if time allows this season, to clean the paneling, and spruce up the bar area. We have lots of good painters among our residents and appreciate their willingness to roll up their sleeves and help with special projects. We are grateful for their help and look forward to working with them.
Socially, I am glad to report that we have had an active few months with BBQ’s, casino trips, a wonderful concert by the Broward Women’s Chorus, a hop dance, game nights, ladies luncheons, pool tournament, bingo games and very soon some shuffle board tournaments.
The picture for this blog is of the 2017 Board of Directors who now have a two-year appointment. Regarding the picture in my last blog, Henri the alligator has wandered off and has not been seen near Las Vistas since the fall. I hope that those of you up north are safe in the recent bad weather and as usual, when closing this edition of the Las Vistas Blog, I extend my wish that the sun shines every day for all of us.
