January 2 / 2014
Alpine
Strata Council Letter to Owners
Happy New
Year to Everyone at Alpine Village!
Since being
elected to Strata Council on Nov20th/2013 at the Annual General Meeting, we
have been very busy. Our first order of business was to elect from amongst
ourselves a President, Vice President, Treasurer and Secretary. Of the five
persons who were elected, only three persons made themselves available to stand
for those positions. In accordance with
the Strata Property Act, we elected Derek Fullerton as President; Beth Beeson
as Vice-President and Treasurer and Sharon Hordy as Secretary. Peter Schut and
Kerry Godwin were ‘Directors at Large’ until Peter resigned from Council on Dec
9th and on Dec 19 Kerry Godwin was excused from participating on Council.
Also on Dec 19th, homeowner Emily Bain was appointed to Council.
Our next
order of business was to meet with the bank and arrange for us to have signing
authority so that Alpine Village employees and bills could be paid. With that
important task accomplished, we secured the Strata Office by changing the
locks, alarm code, and all computer files and emails were backed up and an
Administrator password was set on the office computer.
We directed
the Accountant, Shahid Admed, to prepare the 2013 Financial Report and that has
also been accomplished. At this time, we are preparing the 2013/2014 Budget and
Contingency Reserve Statement.
We have
reviewed the Oct 2013-Sept 2014 DEPRECIATION REPORT that was prepared by NLD
Consulting Reserve Fund Advisors and we want to make that report available to
every owner. “A Depreciation Report is a financial document which provides the
basis for funding major repairs and replacements of the common elements and
assets of the corporation”. As the
report is lengthy and is written using coloured font, it would be cost
prohibitive to print and mail it. For all owners who have not already done so,
please provide our office with your email address and we will send you the
Draft Report. We are in the process of calling every owner that we do not have
an email address for. Please call us or we will call you because it is very
important that EVERY OWNER reads and understands the Report as it directly
identifies the major repairs and replacements, funding and Special Assessments
for Alpine Village. The Report clearly defines cash flow tables for Full
Funding, Adequate Funding, and Minimum Funding models. The estimated Reserve
Fund Deficiency is (negative) -$3,258,00.00 and the deficiency/contribution quotient is
77.9
Quoting directly
from the Report: “This quotient is not
the number of years before the reserve fund is fully funded; though highly
unlikely, the DCQ technically represents the number of current annual
contributions that would eliminate the deficiency and fully fund the reserves.
Practically, it is a stable measurement of the relative size of your
contributions compared to your “debt”. A strata corporation that is making
progress towards reducing their reserve fund deficiency will see their DCQ
decrease, though their deficiency may in fact still be increasing. A strata
corporation that is fully funded has a DCQ of zero. As a rule of thumb, A DCQ
above 40 is indicative of a strata that has not prioritized reserve fund
contributions - though it is still possible that they proactively maintain
their building through different funding methods. A DCQ between 15 and 40 is
normal for stratas that have started to seriously consider their reserve fund
within the last handful of years. It is also normal for stratas that haven’t
had much time to accumulate a deficiency. We consider any DCQ under 10 to be
relatively stable, though it is still possible to incur a special assessment
with a low DCQ”…….They conclude, “The reserve fund contribution should be
increased to $60,000 per annum in the year Oct 2014-Sept 2015 and thereafter by
the amounts detailed in the “Cash Flow Table” each subsequent year, in order to
achieve a funding plan which best aligns with the goals of the corporation”.
The report notes “(the) current budgeted Reserve Fund Contribution is $37,803.00
…….(the) opening balance is $267,238.00 ”
(*1)
We have been
your elected Strata Council for a very brief time and already we have attended
to some very serious business that we would like to highlight for you to be
aware of:
-On Nov 25th,
at 4:51 PM, our Office Manager tendered her resignation effective Dec 20th.
-Also on Nov
25th at 7:00 PM, we held our very first Strata Council meeting.
Helen DeGroot (an employee of Licar Strata Management) was present as a guest
to assist us with our first Council meeting.
-On
Thursday, Dec 5th, we ran an employment ad in the Citizen newspaper
seeking a professionally trained Office Manager/Executive Secretary.
-On Dec 6th,
we agreed to reschedule our scheduled Strata Council Meeting to Dec 19th
due to our President, Derek Fullerton being required to be at the hospital. His
friend was tragically injured.
-On Dec 9th Peter
Schut resigned from Council.
-On Dec 10th
we received a petition from owners holding 20% of the votes in Alpine Village.
The purpose of the meeting, according to the petition, was to elect a new
council.
-On Dec 14th,
we held an Emergency Council meeting to accept the proposal against council for
the Special General Meeting and we planned to send out the notice for the SGM
on Jan 3 2014 and the meeting was to be held on January 29th at 7PM.
-Also at the
Dec 14th Emergency Council Meeting, we accepted Office Manager,
Karrie Cookhouse’s verbal agreement to remain as office manager until a
suitable replacement can be found.
-As soon as
was possible, we contacted C.D. Wilson and Associates for legal advice. The
response from Cora D. Wilson Law Corporation was, “Since the Demand fails to
strictly comply with the provisions of the Act, the Demand is a nullity. The
Strata Corporation is not under any legal obligation to call a Special General
Meeting in these circumstances.”
We have
advised the petitioners that their petition is not valid and that the notice
for an SGM will not be issued.
We also want
you to know this: We take our jobs as your Elected Strata Council very
seriously. We have NEVER contravened any part of the Strata Property Act or the
regulations that apply. We are working for you. We are home owners at Alpine
Village, and, like yourselves, we care about the management of Alpine Village.
At the AGM, we were elected to Council because we said that we were willing and
able to try to make Alpine Village a better place to live. We understand
business, safety, and regulations. We are fully capable to continue to
represent you. Please give us a chance to do our jobs! We were only on the job
a few weeks and some owners were calling for an SGM because they said “Council
has conducted themselves outside the provision of the BC Strata Act, not just
once but time and time again.”, yet they were unable to name a specific
instance or any infraction...
We may be
new to Council but we are not inexperienced. We may be new to Council but we
agree that we want to remain being your Council and we want to continue to keep
doing what we believe is the right thing
to do and this is - working for you. Please give
us a chance and when you are called to vote, try to be present to hear for
yourself what we have to say. If you just give your proxy away to someone, you
might never know what has been said and what has been done and how do you know
if your interests are truly being served? If you have given your proxy to
someone, do you know if it was for a one-time vote or was it for an entire
year? If you want to rescind your proxy, you can contact the Strata Office by
email: alpinevillagestrata@gmail.com or send a fax to the office at
250-562-1122, and state who you gave your proxy to and that you want to rescind
it.
At the AGM
that was held on Nov 20th/2013, we were instructed to lay out a
Budget for the Contingency Reserve Fund, have our Accounting Firm prepare the
Financials in accordance with Strata law, hire a professional office manager,
to hire professionally for contracting and networking, to have our alleyways
cleaned so that they are free of dangerous debris, and to have better
communication with owners and Strata utilizing technology: Blog and emails. On
your behalf, we have been working on all of this and more. To keep yourselves
informed of everything that we have been working on and for the latest info, please
read the Blog at http://alpine-village.blogspot.ca/
Now that the
Financial Statement for the year ending Sept 30 2013 has been completed, we will be preparing the Statement
of Entitlement, the 2013/2014 Budget and the 2013/2014 Contingency Reserve Statement. Once
that work has been done we will be calling a Special General Meeting to present
everything to you and then you can determine what is important and what needs
to be done and YOU can decide.
We welcome all constructive ideas,
comments and concerns at any time, and we welcome your
help and encourage your attendance at Council Meetings.
Thank-you
for your consideration,
Alpine
Strata Council: Derek Fullerton; Beth Beeson; Sharon Hordy and Emily Bain.
(*1)Permission
was given by NLD Consulting to reproduce the Depreciation Report in whole or in
part for the legitimate purposes of providing information to the strata
council, unit holders and others, who have an interest in the project.