Subject: Budgets, dues, and office staff: Part Two
Hello Queen’s Landing,
As discussed in Part One of this series, we have a number of options on the table for the Budget next year and how it will affect dues.
The Budget committee has met a number of times to discuss that and brought to the Board a number of different proposals that would raise the dues anywhere from about $2 per month up to about $25 per month. These proposals WILL go out to the community for review. They WILL be discussed again at the next Budget committee meeting and also at the Board’s September meeting. And then at the Annual Meeting in October, the Board votes on implementing one of those budgets.
Of the different proposals, the $2 option is basically the ”keep up with inflation” option.
The next option was to add on top of this $2 another $9 to add a full-time admin specialist. Today our Budget already covers the part-time salary of an office admin, and the proposal here is to bring the admin up to a full 40 hours a week. The idea is that a full-time position is more appealing to an experienced and qualified candidate able to assume more of the day-to-day tasks allowing the manager to focus on maintenance issues which includes finding qualified contractors and providing oversight on work completed as well as completing property inspections.
Now you may feel like we don’t need more staff working in the office, but this is also at odds with a lot of the complaints we get about how the community is run: Not enough communication, emails aren’t answered fast enough, maintenance requests not updated, etc. We agree these things aren’t getting done as fast as any of us would like, but there simply isn’t enough manpower to do them. We would also like all unit owners to understand that we do not pay the management company a lump sum for the onsite management staff. We are billed by the management company for monthly payroll expenses based on actual payroll and taxes.
So, appropriately staffing the onsite office is one of the proposals on the table.
Any questions so far? Email [email protected] and he will try to get it answered.