Nightmare AGM...again

We had our annual community meeting last Thursday and in true fashion for our community....it was a complete nightmare.

I don't konw what it is about our community but most don't seem to suffer the same way we do. Everyone dreads the AGM after the first one took over 4 hours, the second one resulted in a chair being kicked across the room and the administrator walking out, the third one was quite civilised by comparison but last week's was another of those dreaded AGM's.

Guess what happened? No, no chair got kicked but....our latest administrator resigned. So in three years we've had two administrators walk out on us. This has to be a record. Normally communities sack the administrator, it's not normal for the administrator to leave....twice!

What was it all over?

Every AGM is always taken over when discussing the next year's budget. Now, we're not a wealthy community by any means. In fact, we've only got enough money just to get by. There is no emergency money in the kitty. We've had a really tough year and it keeps getting more and more difficult.

This year we put the budget up by 7% compared with last year, mainly just covering increases in lift costs, electricity costs, etc. We knew people would react badly but the majority voted against the new budget. As a consequence, the administrator stood up and (rightly so) declared that she would be unable to run our community on last year's budget and hence made her exit speach.

And good on her too. This is a nightmare of a community with no money and some really difficult people and if I'd been in her shoes I would have done the same.

That just leaves me, as president, in rather a tough spot. We need a new administrator. But having been dropped by 2 so far it means it's not going to be easy explaining why we have no administrator.

So, seeing as it's not my fault they've walked out, I've decided to let those that voted against the new budget (and hence causing the departure of the administrator) to find a new administrator.

I will be putting signs up around the urbanisation later today to this effect. I have no time to go hunting for quotes.

We will then need to call yet another AGM with the new administrator at which point I will step down as president. I've really had enough of battling my way trying to keep this place going with little or no appreciation from anyone and with mounting debts.

It's time someone else took the stress on.

Anyone got a worse community that ours?

Glass curtains Spain

I was round a friend's house today and he's got a really good glass encolsure around his terrace in Duquesa. I have seen these becoming more and more popular as it allows the terrace to be used all year round.

In our area it's particularly good for keeping the terrace clean! It's so dusty around here that especially in the summer you end up cleaning your terrace nearly every day just to get rid of the dust.

I saw this website about glass curtains Spain whish shows some examples of glass curtains. Have you seen these glass curtains yourself? What do you think of them?

I like the fact that they don't change the look of the terrace much but I wonder if as part of a community you could fit these without it needing to be approved by the community?? Will take a look into that but I assume each community has it's on policy on them.

I know, I'll paint it pink

As many of you will know, I am the president of the community in which we live in. As any fellow president will appreciate it's a very tough task which is also very time consuming.

One of the main problems I've found is that many people don't understand the concept of a community and how it's supposed to work. Many people still have the mentality that as they've bought their property then they can do whatever the like with it.

From an internal point of view I really don't care what they do, but when they start defacing the exterior then that's a big problem, and totally against the horizontal laws which govern communities in Spain.

The other day I just couldn't believe what one owner has done. They've painted the outside of the apartment in pink! What ever possesses anyone to do that? And pink....the rest of the development is white.

I dispair. Why oh why did I decide to stay as president for another year.

Anyway, that owner has now been sent a nice letter telling him to get his paint brush out again and buy some white paint quickly.

Whatever next? Every week someone decides to do something to the outside of their property and it's tough to keep on top of it.

Let's see what happens this week....I can barely contain the excitement...not!