Hi all.Sorry for the delay but we have obviosuly lived in Spain too long and got the manana bug! Anyway, please find below our brief summary of the latest community meeting. For anyone interested you can see the official minutes for the meeting in Spanish on the edir webste
www.edir.es. You go into Accesso Clientes with the password, and click on Juntas de propietarios. Then click on ver acta for that meeting.
Our notes
Community meeting 14th June 2008
The meeting lasted around 4 hours and much was discussed. I will try to summarise the main points a briefly as possible so not to bore you!
The main topic to be discussed was what we are going to do about Arenal. After the last meeting Edir have written to them twice asking for information about the urbanisation and pool and called each week to ask for the money they owe the community, which increases month by month and is currently over 7.000 euros. We have had nothing back from them.
We discussed starting legal proceedings against Arenal to claim back the money they owe us. Unfortunately, the legal system in Spain does not help us on this. If we commence legal proceedings to ask them for money, they only have to acknowledge us and pay us as little as 1 euro for us to have to start the process all over again. However, we voted to start this process, the president will appoint a solicitor to do this.
Another topic for discussion was the water supply and pool. Someone had been to the town hall and got the plans for the pool, which have been approved, so we can technically start to use it. HOWEVER, at the moment we are on builders water, and this supply does not provide adequate pressure to properly service all the apartments, let alone adding the pool to this. The water contracts have not been started, as Arenal owe the water board lots of money and have a tax bill to pay. Also, the pump, which is supposed to pump all our sewage to the main drain, has not been connected to the electric. As a result, our sewage is currently going straight into the stream at the bottom of the hill untreated.
In order for the pump to be connected, the electricity board need to approve the plans for it and they are with them at the moment, and it is expected to be done soon. From this point we can apply for our own water contracts. There is expected to be a fee of around 50 euros for connection, but there was also talk of having to settle this tax bill, which we may need to share out, but I don’t know how much that will be. Once the first person is on a water contract, the builder’s supply will be disconnected, so we all need to be ready to do it together.
From this point we can use the pool. There are many maintenance jobs which need to be done such as cleaning the pool and pump house, putting up signs, testing the water etc, which we went through.
We also discussed whether we should start the maintenance contract for the lifts. They are expensive to maintain, and without the money from Arenal we will struggle to pay for it. They will take a few months to get up and running though even if we start the process now as they all have to be inspected. We voted to begin this process and if necessary pay an extra 5 euros or so per month on our community fees for a period of about three months to see us through the tight patch which may arise if Arenal don’t cough up.
Other issues we voted on was to give the president, Patricio, powers to make decisions on changing contracters if there are problems, and also to not change our bank account to a local one as the existing one is fine.
Regards to all
Keith and Julie