Minutes of Committee Meeting, 22nd August ‘09.
Present; Maribel Jimenez Morales, Tid Clifford, Jan Rennisson, Pat Brown, Jenny McFadden, Norman Richardson, Terry Dunn & Lowri Mitchell.
Absent; Rafael Barcelo Martin.
Meeting commenced at 1005 hrs.
1) The committee accepted the minutes of the last meeting.
2) Cleaning Contract. Having recently witnessed two demonstrations from other cleaning companies and experienced some dissatisfaction with the existing company, the committee has decided that it would be beneficial to change from the present company. Options are now being researched.
3) Debtors. As the recession continues to bite, the debtors’ list at this time is larger than last year’s with 66 more debtors. Also there have been many repossessions which have contributed to the overall indebtedness. Those who have not paid their urbanisation fees in June are now accruing interest on their debt. Although we are all ‘feeling the pinch’ non payment of urbanisation fees is unacceptable and will land you in the courts. You signed a legal and binding document in your escitura (deed) in front of a Judge (Notary) in which you agreed to pay the urbanisation quota when requested. If you have not paid your quota YOU ARE A DEBTOR and the courts will not accept any extenuating circumstances. You will be liable for paying all the costs incurred by the urbanisation together with the court costs, your own legal costs, the debt and the interest. There is no escaping this.
It has come to our attention that some of you are allowing your pool cards to be used by debtors. This is against the urbanisation rules. It will result in your pool cards being cancelled and does nothing to encourage the debtors to pay. By allowing this you are not helping yourself or your fellow owners of this urbanisation who do pay their fees.
Many people see the pools as being the main reason for paying their fees. This of course is a wrong assumption. You expect your street lights to be on, your pavements and roads to be cleaned and repaired, dog faeces removed, pavement covers to be replaced when they are broken or cracked and all these have to be paid-for by the urbanisation funds. There are electricity bills, water bills, maintenance contracts, security, handyman, repair bills, insurances, banking expenses, postage, stationary and administration fees which all have to be paid on time by the owners. People are very quick to complain when they see a cockroach and want their streets sprayed or a light bulb changed outside of their house. Again, this costs money and we all have to pay our fair share. The urbanisation fees payable on Dream Hills are among the lowest in the Costa Blanca.
HOW DO YOU THINK THESE BILLS WILL BE PAID IF YOUR NEIGHBOURS DO NOT PAY THEIR SHARE OF THE COMMUNITY EXPENSES? IT IS YOU THEY ARE CHEATING AND YOU WHO WILL BE WALKING THE STREETS IN THE DARK. IF THE COMMUNITIES BILLS ARE NOT PAID, THE AREA WILL VISIBLY DECLINE, SERVICES WILL HAVE TO BE WITHDRAWN, IT WILL BECOME AN UNATTRACTIVE PLACE TO LIVE AND YOU WILL HAVE A PROBLEM WHEN TRYING TO SELL YOUR PROPERTY.
ARE YOU HAPPY THAT YOUR NEIGHBOURS ARE RELYING ON YOU TO SUBSIDIZE THEM, EVEN IN CASES WHERE THEY RENT OUT THEIR PROPERTY.
DO NOT LET THEM GET AWAY WITH IT! TELL THEM TO PAY UP!
We are doing everything we can to pursue debtors but we can only do this within the boundaries of the law. Letters will be sent out at the end of this month to this year’s first-time defaulters. Those who now owe for previous years as well as this year are to be put before the courts this September. Due to a change in the law that came in to force this year, we can now do so after only three months default. The owners at the AGM 2009 voted unanimously to support this action. Whereas ultimately we will win all these cases, we are at the mercy of the over-burdened court process in Spain before we will get satisfaction. We are attaching a list of debtors with these minutes so that you are aware who has not paid in your street and area. Please have the courage to confront them.
Many of you reading these minutes will be debtors. We advise you to contact the administrators NOW before you start incurring legal costs.
4) Digital (TDT) installation. All of the properties with the postal numbers of 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 have been completed at this stage. This week the work has now started on the other side of the urbanisation and this should be completed by the end of September.
How can TDT benefit you? It means that if you have a television that can accept digital signals, you can attach a TDT box to your set and be able to view in English some of the programmes originally made in English in the US and the UK. Many recommend the Phillips TDT box as the best on offer for English speaking owners to facilitate language conversion. This can be obtained from most electrical shops. The Tiene 21 chain of shops is selling them for 54 euro a present. TDT also allows you to view more than 20 Spanish channels and one will be able to access pay-to-view channels in due course, should one choose to do so.
BE AWARE. If you had a previous TV system such as Telemicro, you may not get a signal if your cable was compromised, i.e. the Telemicro engineer or another may have used or cut your original cables to install another system. You will then have to get an engineer out to run a new cable if you wish to avail of this service. This has happened in a number of houses and we are informed that the repair cost is around 50 euro. If this is so, it is your problem and not the builders.
5) Street light repairs. The Street light cabling in the 800’s has reportedly now been replaced. We will continue to monitor these lights for the next few months, please keep us informed of any failures.
6) It is now getting dark earlier in the evenings and the street-light time clocks in some areas of the urbanisation have to be changed manually. The engineer will do this at the beginning of September to come on at 20:00 hrs.
7) Lost property. Has anyone lost any small items of property, keys, phones etc? Some small items have been handed in to committee members. These are now in the care of Jan Rennisson of the NHW at number 198. Larger items of value such as handbags, wallets and cards, are taken to the Policia Local, by the Playa Flaminca Town Hall.
8) Request for bollards to stop cars driving on pavement. The pavement area leading from the bungalows to the casita and pool areas belongs to the Town Hall. Accordingly we will have to put in a request to place a traffic restriction there. This may take some time to achieve!
9) Yellow lines by Via Park III. A request will be made to the Town Hall to re-paint the yellow lines to prevent accidents by restricting parking on the corner at the top of the Urbanisation.
10) Pools We have experienced severe problems with cloudy water in the pools this August and have had to close the pools for health and safety reasons on a number of occasions. We have been told by the pool company, who are maintaining the pools, that there are several contributing factors causing this problem; grass cuttings, sun-tan products, more people staying round the pools for longer this year, that the water is getting old and because of the high water temperature this year. However we notice other community pools in the area do not have this recurring problem. The pool company wanted us to close both pools for two hours in the middle of the day to rest the water. As most of the people here this summer use the pool from midday onwards, we felt it inappropriate to do this at these peak times, but had to agree to limit the top pool by opening it two hours later in the morning and closing the bottom pool two hours earlier in the evening. We have never in the history of Dream Hills had to resort to this before and are asking why? Three committee members have in the past few weeks spent a very considerable amount of their time getting up early to see if the pools are fit to open first thing in the morning, then going up and down to the pools several times a day monitoring the state of the water. People have on the whole been most co-operative knowing that we are doing the best we can to get them fit to be opened as soon as the water is clear, but of course there is a small number of bad mannered individuals who think shouting will magically clear the water faster. The pool company boss was called to this meeting and has been made aware that we are dissatisfied with their cleaning performance this summer. We will be following and monitoring their work carefully over the next month. In the meantime we will be getting other companies to submit quotes for the contract, should we consider it necessary to change companies in the future.
We have, prior to this meeting, obtained an independent second opinion and advice on the condition of our pools and pool equipment.
11)Just a reminder - The pool attendant contract finishes on Friday 4th Sept. The Casita toilet will no longer be
available to pool users after this date.
Meeting concluded at. 1240 hrs.
Next meeting; 3rd October, 1000hrs
(T.C. VP & Sec.,)