Presidents Annual Community Review 2006/2007
1 Introduction
Welcome dear colleagues and friends. Thank you for giving up your precious time to attend the fifth Annual General Meeting of your urbanisation.
During the last year many things have happened that affect all of the Orihuela Costa, not only us in Dream Hills. I have been active in organizing the necessary repairs inside the urbanisation and I was also busy in my position as representative of the Orihuela Costa Presidents Association (OCPA) for the area of Los Balcones, Los Altos, La Florida and Punta Prima, with the objective to achieve improvements for Dream Hills and the surrounding areas.
Already most of you will know that the Association tried to get regular meetings with the mayor of Orihuela in order to gain improvements for Dream Hills, and for all the other urbanisations in the area of Orihuela Costa. Due to my language skills I was in the English group and also in the German group of representatives. Both groups aware of my Spanish language fluency requested that I should prepare the formal letters to ask for the meetings which the current mayor promised to have with us. After sending three formal letters to the town hall, I even tried to gain a meeting with him by phone. All these efforts had no success.
The increased frustration of getting ignored by the then mayor of Orihuela was the reason that some representatives of the OCPA decided to found a political party which they named C.L.A.R.O. I designed the logo and the website of C.L.A.R.O. and also helped with public relations to get this party well known in the area. C.L.A.R.O had success, very soon it was very known amongst the international residents. This success was the reason that Mónica Lorente, the possible future mayor of Orihuela, offered C.L.A.R.O. a definite deal: one councillor and two assessors in her future governmental team.
This offer was not accepted by certain committee members of C.L.A.R.O. and also my wish to call an EGM to inform the members of her offer was completely ignored and undermined. I draw the personal conclusion that certain committee members of C.L.A.R.O. had personal interests and were not thinking about the opportunity they were going to loose. I do not wish to go more into politics here but I am available after this meeting in the case some of you would like to know more details.
Before I start with the detailed report I want to express my thanks to the following people.
Of course there are many people I wish to thank for all their assistance and hard work during the last year – but it would take too long! Please accept my apologies if your name is not mentioned. However, I have to mention a few –
First of all I would like to thank all the neighbours and the committee who have helped me the last year in solving any problems and defects within the urbanisation.
Thank you Pamela for being the secretary for the committee during the last year, we all appreciated your efforts for the community. And please do not take any criticism personally you may have received from a couple of members. Certain people are quick to criticise but would not dream of volunteering themselves to do what is at times is a difficult task. I am sorry that she has decided to resign from the position but I completely understand. I also wish to thank Angela, Peter Fraser, MaCarmen and Mags for their contributions during the year and Tid who was a very active member of the committee and who played the major part in redesigning the rules and regulations of the urbanisation.
I wish to thank Peter Hemmings for his support and the excellent job he did with the message boards.
Also thanks to Marjorie and Richard, not forgetting Roger and Wendy, who have taken over the Casita after the resignation of Linda Sims earlier this year. They reorganized the administration of the Casita in a very professional way, and are promoting new activities for you all to participate in. A thank you to Christine for cleaning the casita weekly and the toilet daily for the ten weeks of the high season, also for unlocking the swimming pools daily throughout the summer months. I doubt many people knew that!
Thanks too to Gerald, Jan and the Neighbourhood Watch volunteers.
Not least, I wish to thank Ana Rosa, our Administrator whose help and advice on the legal and practical issues has been invaluable. She has attended every committee meeting thoughout the last year, has had every copy of letters written on our behalf. And costs available for all committee members should they wish to question anything. She was very instrumental in advising the council on our behalf that the electrics are not up to standard yet on the urbanisation and that we would not accept the handover of the urbanisation until matters were corrected. For this we thank her and at a charge of less than 2 Euros per house per month including tax, one of the lowest on the Costa, it is remarkably good value.
I also wish to thank Pat Farnaby for providing and constantly updating his Dream Hills web-site. This is an excellent source of information concerning D.H. with an active message board, as many of you will know. However, I must point out that the web-site is not the official voice of the President & Committee and at times misleading information appears which purports to being official, and it is not!
Similarly, thank you to Mick Clifford for his assistance during the year and for launching The Dream Scene which is a wonderful and unselfish contribution to the community.
Please remember, if you have concerns to bring them to your appropriate Committee member (Vice President) who is your representative and should be approached in the first instance. They will then report to me. I also conduct regular surgeries in the community centre, the dates of which are advertised on the notice boards, should you wish to discuss appropriate matters with me. Questions and queries can also be put in writing and placed in the community letter box.
I will commence now with an outline of the main achievements throughout the last year. Firstly for your information, I want to tell you that the town hall has still not taken over the urbanisation and I don’t think this will happen until after the local elections on the 27th of May. Repairs are taking place to the electrics at present and should be completed shortly. I await feed back on this matter from the residents.
I hope that the handover will be achieved this year.
I Swimming Pools
a) Swimming Pool Attendants
Last year the AGM approved only one attendant to cover both pools from mid June until the end of August.
However there were many complaints during the peak season that one person was not enough.
b) Swipe card system and pool gate locks
In general the system was working well. We had to call a mechanic in a few cases to re-adjust the doors in order that they slide smoothly into the locks. The swipe card technician changed, it is now done by Pedro Hernández Caballero, C/ Piscis, J5, 69, Urb. La Florida, Tel.: 96 532 85 03, Mobil 629 82 95 28.
c) Maintenance of swimming pools
After receiving several complaints of children cutting their feet in the top pool it was essential to get it repaired. Instead of releasing the water we ordered temporary water tanks for storage which were cheaper than replacing the water. All the sharp tiles were replaced and all the walls were cleaned and renewed. Some committee members checked the thoroughness of the workmanship.
A new palm tree was planted to replace a dead one in the pool area.
There was a handrail/stepladder broken inside the pool and it had to get replaced.
The cotegran on one wall of the top pool was falling off (plants were growing up from the inside of the wall) and we had it redone.
d.) Steps to top pool
After receiving several complaints from people with problems on using the steps to the top pool, a handrail was installed to assist people.
II Urbanisation Problems
Before discussing these, I must point out, again, that individual problems with your house or a dispute with your neighbours or a problem with their dogs is not a community problem. That is for you to resolve and there are established means for doing this. Similarly, any problems you may have with the visitors to, or the owners of, units in Via Park 5 or Via Park 3, are not committee issues. Although I now have a dialogue with Via Park V, we have no authority in these instances. It is only the issues relating to common urbanisation areas such as adopted green areas, swimming pools, private streets and private street lighting etc., which are within our responsibility. However, I will always assist in any emergency.
a) Sewerage Problems and Sewerage Covers
Many problems in this area have been rectified and many broken covers have been replaced with metal ones. I want to inform the owners in the new phase that according to the A.G.M. 2005/6, the cost of unblocking drains in the private street areas must be shared by the responsible bungalows and between the relevant blocks of houses. If you have a sewage cover/lid which is broken, please let me know and I will have it replaced.
In the new phase we had several sewage problems and I had to call companies to fix them three times.
b) Waste and Recycling Bins
I have had a lot of communication with the Orihuela City Hall requesting additional bins for the main streets. The result is three new Recycling Bins for glass and three more rubbish bins. I have had to call the collection firms repeatedly to get the recycling bins emptied. The telephone numbers are available for everyone who wants to help in reminding the companies to empty these bins. Naturally, the phone call has to be made in Spanish. I had a meeting with the owners of the commercial units in Via Park 5 and they assured me that they also will call when necessary.
c) Fumigating against Cockroaches
After receiving many complains about cockroaches we decided to fumigate against them. I supervised the workers and after the job was done we have had very few problems with them any more. It was agreed that this spraying will take place annually when the problem starts. But cockroaches are nature’s true survivors!
d) Mailboxes
We installed doors for the mailboxes in the new phase and renewed certain ones in the old phase. The locks in the old phase were repaired and replaced where necessary and key copies were produced and handed to all owners. If you do not have your key yet, please contact your Vice-President in your phase.
In the new phase we did not put locks because the post office refused to take any more keys. It is possible that very soon they may force us to remove the locks from the old phase mailboxes.
The post office confirmed that they would install two outgoing mailboxes, one to be in the area of Via Park III, the other one at Via Park V.
e) Private Street Lighting
We are still having too many problems with the private street lighting especially when it is raining. As advised in previous committee meeting minutes, if the lights in your street do not come on please inform your committee representative, but please do so preferably early in the evening, because at that time, if it is not a simple fuse problem, I can contact the electrician who will fix the matter the same evening. We are constantly referring the problems back to the installing company and the committee have agreed on further action to be taken prior to the City Hall taking over responsibility for the urbanisation. Last week I saw the electricians working through the failure list on the urbanization. Again I want to thank everyone who has been helping to reset the fuses.
f) Bollards between new and old phase
Cars were illegally using the pedestrian path to go from the old to the new phase or vice versa. In order to block vehicular access, bollards were installed.
g.) Presidents Surgeries
During the last year I have held many surgeries at La Casita often accompanied by a member of the committee. In many instances either nobody or only one owner attended the surgery. I encourage new owners particularly to visit these surgeries. Most of the matters raised have, to date, been resolved to the owner’s satisfaction and some items raised have been placed on the A.G.M. Agenda. The unresolved issues mainly dealt with the raising of walls for which I cannot give approval. There have even been occasions whereby residents of other urbanizations have visited my surgery in the hope of solving their problems.
h) Street Signage
The installation of the urbanisation murals was done by the Developer. Dream Hills Urbanisation can now be recognized by both murals from both entrances. We also planted trees by the main mural at the entrance of Dream Hills. Grafitti has also been removed from a number of road signs and the Iberdrola box.
i) The Community Centre for the Dream Hills Urbanisation
After the resignation of Linda, Margery and Richard have taken over La Casita. There are many activities taking place there which include the committee meetings and neighbourhood watch meetings, a book swap, art club, cribbage and dominoes, bridge classes, line-dance practice and the very popular petanca on Monday afternoons. A special thanks to Margery and Richard for coordinating these activities.
We have also made a new entrance into the casita from outside, so that pool users could use the toilet facilities in the summer time, without interrupting casita activities.
j) Continuous Communication and Difficulties
During the past year I have had copious meetings with the Administrator relating to all of the above mentioned issues and others. In addition I also co-sign all of the cheques drawn on the urbanisation account each month or where necessary. I am also in continuous communication with the City Hall, Iberdrola, Aguagest, all of the maintenance/cleaning companies, Muñoz & Espinosa, Pastor Medina, the swipe card technician and Torrevisa.
As many of you will be aware I have been active in politics and as Orihuela Costa president’s representative responsible for Zone I which covers Dream Hills, La Florida, Andaluz I & II, Los Altos etc., right up to Playa Flamenca, I made a lot of useful contacts especially with the town hall which I hope will help Dream Hills in the future to get more benefits. The extra bins and bus service are a direct result of lobbying of the new regime in Orihuela. I hope that we will be able to get additional bins soon together with the introduction of a new minor emergency 24 hour clinic for Cabo Roig. If one wants to get services or favours from City Hall, you have to go direct and often and be prepared to argue your case in their language.
III Conclusion
The committee and I do our best to keep you all up to date on developments. After every committee meeting approx. 90 copies of the committee meeting minutes are distributed throughout the urbanisation. A limited number of copies are also produced in Spanish and distributed. An English copy is placed on all three notice boards and a copy is also placed on the Dream Hills web site. However it is unfortunate that some people will not pass-on the minutes to their neighbours.
Although postal voting does not feature in the Law of Horizontal Property, at this AGM, absentee owners have, for the first time, been given the ability to vote on many of the agenda matters. This is unprecedented in any other urbanisation.
It is obviously in everyone’s interest that our urbanization fees remain at a reasonable level and that the expenditure is controlled and relevant to the needs of the owners. But please bear in mind that an urbanisation that does not implement improvements is a stagnant one and there are plenty of these visible around Dream Hills. This would not be good for you or for your property investment.
Ladies & Gentlemen, that concludes my report for the last 12 months. Thank you for your patience and understanding. I now hand over to Ana Rosa for the Financial Report.
Stefan Pokroppa