Contractors have been around the community and will be continuing work on the balconies, wood repairs, and painting. This work will cause disruptions to the use of balconies as they undergo the work as well as temporary disruptions around the building where wood is being repaired.
The new wood will be stained to match older pieces. We are coordinating with the contractor on whether that will occur immediately or in the Spring, weather dependent.
Several of the wooden retaining walls, especially the ones located near the entrance are in need of replacement. The board has approved a bid to replace 3 of them with block masonry, and we are coordinating with the contractor for a finalized date.
Due to changes in all prices and to avoid future problems, the board commissioned a updated reserve study. The links in the Documents section of the site have been updated, and an executive summary is available here.
As a result of this report, we have discovered that insurance companies have made a change as to how they are handling aging roofs. Previously, roofs were assumed to have a 25-year life expectancy. All of our previous reserve studies and our budgeting was done under that assumption. Now, insurance companies are requiring detailed inspections of roofs after 20 years, and our oldest roofs are 17 years old. If a roof fails the inspection, we must replace it or the insurance company will not renew our insurance. The end result is that we must now plan for potentially needing to replace our roofs at 20 years instead of 25 years.
This has had a negative effect on our reserve projections, as reflected in the report. Overall, it means that our reserves will potentially be drawn down more than we would like in the future. The board plans on taking corrective action during our budget meeting in November to begin building our reserves up more aggressively to avoid this potential issue from becoming a crisis.
The full reserve study report is available here.
The next board meeting will be the on November 10 at 6:00pm over Zoom.