Welcome back, snowbirds! / 2016 Budget Preview

I’d like to take this opportunity to welcome all the snowbirds back to International Village. I hope you’re enjoying our warm South Florida weather as well as some of the improvements we made while you were away.  As you can tell, we’ve been pretty busy, and I thought this would be a good opportunity to recap just a few of our accomplishments over the last several months:

- First, we continue to make significant progress on the building renovations, as residents in the Orleans, Grenoble and Zurich buildings can attest – all, as promised, without a special assessment.

- Second, our newly installed Maytag washers and dryers are saving money by operating better and more efficiently – without the need to put your clothes through a second dry cycle. And because we decided to purchase the machines instead of leasing them, we’ve more than doubled our laundry revenues every single month. 

- Third, I’m sure you’ve noticed the improvements to our landscaping, thanks to the hiring of an excellent new lawn company, which also restored the ficus hedges at our entrance and throughout the property by treating them for whitefly, and did a very thorough job of trimming overgrown trees throughout the property. 

- Speaking of landscaping, you’ve probably also noticed the beautiful new bougainvilleas along the Inverrary Boulevard wall courtesy of the Inverrary Master Association. These attractive plantings, which came at no cost to International Village, were the result of significant lobbying by former property manager David Friedman, and they’re not only increasing our curb appeal but also improving safety by deterring wall jumpers. 

- As I announced recently, we’ve also had significant success on the legal front, including securing $71,000 in settlement money from our insurance carriers after we sued them for wrongly denying us coverage in a lawsuit filed by Ilan Weiss. 

- And finally and most importantly, I’m pleased to announce that just last month we passed the third and final phase of our 40-year certification by completing the inspection and certification of our last two buildings at a cost of about $4,000. That’s a savings of over $400,000 compared to what it would have cost us if we had gone along with the now infamous Criterium Report recommended by AMG, which called for hundreds of thousands of dollars in unnecessary repairs. Let me repeat that: the association saved over $400,000 on the third and final phase of our 40-year certification by getting an honest second opinion. Combined with the approximately $800,000 we saved on the first two phases completed last year, that brings our total savings on the 40-year certification to more than $1.2 million!!! 

The bottom line is we’ve been keeping our promise to save money by doing a lot more with a lot less. We also recently finished crunching the numbers for the 2016 budget, and I’m happy to report that thanks to all the savings, International Village unit owners can look forward to a modest cut in maintenance fees for an unprecedented second year in a row! 

Check your mail in the coming days for your 2016 budget and proxy. Be sure to vote Yes in favor of waiving reserves and mail back your proxy or drop it off at the association office as soon as possible, because we’ll need it to approve the maintenance fee reduction.

John Labriola
International Village President