How does a Community Work?

The Preidente can reclaim his / her out of`pocket expenses and it would be a good idea to have reciepts for these as even ( especially ) the Presidente MUST be accountable.....................for his / her own sake and the sake of the Community.

Somewher there is a thread about Presidente out of pocket expenses------Morerosado will probabley pop up with the location of that for you-----------------------you can vote at your AGM to put a ceiling on these expenses or even to pay your Presidente a wage or fee, but unless this has happened he / she should be able to claim from the Community what he / she has paid out for Presidential business.

The job is unrewarding enough without having to pay for the privelidge !!

4 days passed, and More hasn't pasted the link for out of pocket expenses:  http://www.eyeonspain.com/Secure/ForumPosts.aspx?thread=1719&dev=FB34&name=Running a Community. What a slacker!

How does a community work?

Having reached a decision that our arrogant & lazy gardener had to go, we got various quotes from possible replacements and selected one. Gave the old one the bullet on Friday a.m., as the new one was due to come Friday p.m. to finalise details to start on Monday. Guess what? Never showed up, and his mobile was switched off most of Saturday! Bloody marvellous.  

Thankfully, he did turn up Monday. Time will tell whether we've shot ourselves in the foot or not.

The cleaner wants extra pay this month for cleaning the garage, since it was full of sh1t after the recent rain, because we still haven't got much further with the flooding problem. The water board have written to say they are carrying out work in the nearby plaza which will rectify the problem, but they must be using invisible workers. Meanwhile, we hired a private industrial drain cleaning company to clear 4 years worth of crap out of our pipes to make it even easier for the water in the street drains to flow into our garage when it next rains. The bill we will send to the water board. However, this company discovered (how come it's taken four years?) that the section of our drains that connects to the street is chocked half full with solid cement, that can only have come from the construction of our building. So, armed with their report, I shall now have to make an appointment to visit the developer, to throw the ball back into their court. Somehow, I fancied our chances against the water board better.

"4 days passed, and More hasn't pasted the link for out of pocket expenses:  What a slacker! "

Roberto, do I have to do everything for you lot ?

Take care whilst I'm away 11 days. Try not to miss me.

Talking about communities we are really fed up with our lot. An EGM has been called for 12th at 11am & I was going to Guardamar market  but it's important we go to the meeting especially as it'll be the first one we've been in Spain for. It just turned out that way, usually meetings including AGMs have been arranged with only two weeks notice & our flights have been booked up months before. No way can we drop everything & go. My hubby has work to go to. We said ages ago we needed more time to try to arrange him getting time off so we were told two months before this years AGM that it was going to be held end of May which meant expensive flights as it was a Bank Holiday & we were booked to go out June 11th so another meeting not attended.

This EGM has been called as some owners erected a gazebo (three doors from us) which they are using as a car port on the front of their property & the structure is against community rules but when instructed to remove it, they refused. They want the rules changed to allow it. We have a two bed detached house ourselves with no room at the rear or down the sides for a rotary airer & over two years ago we asked the owners to consider our amended proposal that we put a rotary on the front for the purpose of drying large items of bedding as we cannot get these dry especially in winter months. (We are currently non residents & time is of the essence to try to leave our property without damp bedding over bath ! ) We said we would only put the rotary out when we needed to dry bedding & then remove it as soon as the bedding was dry & it would not be left out whilst we went off the premises. All other washing would be dried elsewhere. We've put a retractable dual line down the side but larger items flap against the house wall & the fencing & we've ruined sheets drying to dry them. In the summer we can fold sheets in four & they will go on the line & dry in the heat even though it's in shade but it's a carry on, it really is.

We have been informed we can request amendments be considered because of this EGM so we rehashed the proposal & resubmitted it. (Last time there was no way the owners could've voted on it as there wasn't any time in which to let them all know before the meeting then & get their proxy votes sorted.) The president has just sent all owners an email asking us to vote by proxy if we can't attend the EGM & she's only given owners the option to vote on "Article 12  Rotary Lines should be allowed for 2 Bedroomed properties to be sited at the front of the property." That is not what we asked ! On that reckoning we'll be voting no as will all two bedroomed property owners as no one wants to look at washing on rotary dryers out on the front. However we have bought a huge steel spike with a screw thread that hubby hopes will screw down into front garden without too much hassle under some small coloured stones. We intend just burying it with a few stones on top to disguise the fact that it's there but we certainly intend using the rotary & what will they do if they don't like it ? Sue us ? I doubt it.  Since day 1 owners have flouted rules but we've complied & now it's rebellion time !

The ironic thing is there are 54 houses on our community of which only 18 are two beds like ours with no side or rear gardens & the rest are three bed houses with ample room down the sides of theirs for rotary dryers, should they want. There are 12 permanently owned houses only !! On our road there's 11 houses on our side of the road, 9 on the other plus our communal pool. On our side of the road there are  three resident owners, one who has this gazebo acting as their carport. On the other side there are no resident owners. Why all this upset over a damn rotary drier that's likely never going to be seen anyway ?

I don't want to hear about how the Spanish have these pull out concertina dryers. Washing gets ruined as it gets dashed against the house wall too. We have cool breezes on our urb but it blows down the sides of our buildings which blows washing all over.

Rant over, I'll go tackle the residents on 12th.  (Or maybe I'll just go to the market  )     

You can recognise Morerosado's house in Spain by the washing !

Have a really good holiday    and mind those  

I refrained from telling forum about the rotary problem for ages as I knew it would cause a certain hilarity. I wished I'd shut up. It's a REALLY sore point with us at the way it's been handled by the community. Karen, don't you dare drag out your sorry pics.

They want us to use this type which buggers up bedding

We are planning to use this type

Not at all, Karen, it's our gripe with the community, not you. See you Sunday.

 Thanks for noticing.

I'll be careful with me balls.......see you Sunday !!

I'm getting my threads all crossed over! I posted on Sept. 05 on this thread about our ongoing problems with flooding in the communal garage, and just posted in another thread altogether (builder versus owners under the Spanish Developer message board) the following:

Our community is now almost 4 years old, but we have been struggling to find a solution to the problem of the underground garage flooding when there is heavy rain, since day one. We have been pushed backwards and forwards between the developer/builder, and the water board/council who are responsible for the street drains, each trying to pass the blame to the other. We finally recently resorted to employing (at our expense) a professinal drain cleaning company to carry out a full investigation. Their study revealed hardened cement in the pipes under the garage floor, which can only have come from the construction of the building. Armed with this irrefutible evidence, our administrator and I (as president of the community), had a meeting today with the developer, who agreed straight away that they were responsible and will get the builder to rectify the problem. 

This is actually only half the problem, as this blockage prevents water draining efficiently out of the garage after the flooding, but the water coming in is still an issue, and we are still pursuing that with the water board. But at least it's some progress, and shows that persistence will (sometimes) eventually pay off.

The developer has also this week been to repair some broken floor tiles in a communal passage, which they agreed, after we presented a report from our building insurance inspector, was due to poor workmanship. At the same time, they re-fitted a large number of bathroom tiles in two apartments which were loose. As the building is now 4 years old, I think this is a bit of a result. I'm sure many developers wouldn't be has helpful. It has taken quite a bit of pressurising from myself, with the assistance of our administrator at times, but I hope this experience serves to encourage others and offer hope that if you keep pushing, eventually you may get somewhere

Hi Roberto, we too still have a big problem with flooding in the garage area........which still officially belongs to the builder, despite some of us having paid for a space some 5 years ago.

I posted some time ago that we had to build a ramp by the car park exit to stop the waterfall, which works up to a point..............now the water enters via breeze air blocks which are postioned 18 inches up the wall!

It's because the road drain cannot cope and we seem to be the lowest level and thats where all the rainwater accumilates.

We have denunced the town Hall, sent the same and letters to the builder......................and all we have is a big fat nothing and lotes of water pumping bills.

If anyone has any ( sensible ) ideas, please share !!!!!

Karen, I didn't realise you also had a flooding problem, among the other problems with the garage you have mentioned. I have to occasionally remind myself that the UK also experienced severe flooding recently, because at times here it feels like we're living in a third world country. Torremolinos centre resembles Calcutta during Monsoon when it rains heavily. People (older than me!) tell me it's been like this for 40 years or more.

One suggested solution (by our administrator, who has implemented this in another nearby building) is to make an arqueta, or well, in the garage floor, so that when water gets in, it will drain into this well. A pump, automatically activated by contact with water, will then start pumping the water out to a higher level (i.e. the street?), thereby keeping the garage floor from becoming a small lake. We had an independent quote for ours of about €16000, and that's for a small garage of about 25 places. We presented this quote to the water board, who replied saying that work carried out within the community is not their domain, but that they are carrying out the necessary work in a plaza just down the hill from us in order to improve the situation in our street. I've yet to see evidence of any work in progress.

Whilst the water board have as good as admitted that the inefficiency of their drains is the route cause of our problem, it is obvious that it is by no means a problem unique to Torremolinos, let alone our building, and I can see that they will treat the floating manhole covers and unpassable main roads in the town centre as a higher priority than our garage, so I can't envisage any solution in the near future. But we will keep trying. In the meantime, if the builder comes up with the goods as per my previous post, I feel like we will have made some progress.

Good luck with yours, and let me know if you come up with any other (better) ideas!

Here are 2 pictures of our road and on of the entrance to our garage on 14.09.2007................good eh??

At the bottom where the gates are is a pump..........the road at the top has been raised with a ramp about 20 inches high..........and still the water flows !!!!!!

 Pretty scary pics, Karen. You posted them well too.

Congrats for being able to do that.

Pretty impressive, Karen! Not sure I can match that. let's see......

Here's the water cascading down our hill. the cars in the foreground are stationary, by the way!

Here's the lift shaft, we've already pumped a couple of inches out as you can see from the stain on the wall

And here's my neighbour taking a paddle in the garage!