Lower maintenance fees and 40-year success story Part 2

International Village unit owners will be getting their first maintenance fee reduction in decades. Of the more than 340 owners who submitted their proxies before our budget meeting last Tuesday, about 97 percent of you voted “Yes” to paying a little less in maintenance starting in January. The Board of Directors heard you loud and clear, and I was very happy to cast my vote for a budget that will make that happen.   

Cutting maintenance fees even modestly was no easy task given the significant challenges we faced this year: First, we inherited a situation in which over half of the community’s residential buildings still had not been renovated after more than two years’ delay due to the previous board’s neglect and mismanagement of funds. Second, the association’s Hurricane Wilma loan with Wells Fargo was coming due, with a $2 million balance. And third, due to the actions of our former property management company AMG and a small group of disgruntled unit owners, we faced a premature and potentially costly 40-year certification. 

But we overcame these challenges by keeping a tight rein on spending, which not only allowed us to pass some of the savings on to the owners, but also put enough money in the bank to enable us to resume the building renovations without a special assessment. These savings also were instrumental in recently helping us obtain an 18-month extension (with 6-month renewal option) on our Wells Fargo loan, which required a $250,000 principal reduction payment at the signing. 

But the 40-year certification threatened to overwhelm all our other efforts, since AMG and Criterium Inspection Engineers (the engineering company AMG brought in) insisted that more than a $1 million would have to be spent to complete all the repairs they claimed were needed to pass the County-mandated inspection. Of course we now know those claims were completely false.

As I reported back in September, International Village saved approximately $220,000 on the first phase of our 40-year certification by getting a reputable engineer to re-inspect our three oldest buildings, which came due in the summer. And I'm pleased to report that we just completed the second phase of the certification last week by passing inspections on seven more buildings using the same well-respected engineer from Ace Flood & Inspections. How much did we save by getting this crucial second opinion on those seven buildings? Almost $600,000! That means we saved a total of about $800,000 on 10 buildings by NOT blindly trusting AMG and Criterium Engineers. Combined with the approximately $300,000 in operational savings that we have achieved this year, that brings our total savings for 2014 to well over $1 million!! And more than a million dollars in savings sounds like a pretty good Christmas present to me.  

John Labriola

International Village Treasurer