DECATUR SQUARE CONDOMINIUMS at Glenlake Park

Thank you all for attending our annual HOA meeting!  We had a very productive, positive meeting, and everyone was excited about the possibilities for the coming year.  We reviewed our accomplishments in 2011 and our goals and budget for 2012, and we elected a new board.  Konny Light stepped down after many years on the board, and Dante McCommon joined the board. Thank you, Konny, for your service to our community.  (And welcome to the Board, Dante!)  

2011 accomplishments included 1) finishing sealing / repainting parking lot, 2) consolidating and enclosing dumpsters, 3) cleaning/painting upper pool area and setting up the garden spaces, 4) reviewing and changing management companies, and 5) reviewing our other service contracts (legal, landscaping, pool, insurance).  Our contract reviews and changes are projected to save us over $10,000 in operating expenses for 2012, while also yielding what I believe will be significant improvements in service.  

Plans for 2012 so far include 1) sidewalks and steps repair, which has been on our agenda for a while, 2) some new landscaping, and 3) improving park entrances (possibly with signage), plus many other minor projects like promoting the gardening space, possibly adding another bike rack, outdoor grills, and other things.  

We are still committed to FHA approval, and I hope we will be able to work through the process this year with our new management company's help.  It is a complicated (and expensive) process, as the rules have changed at least once since we began our research. 

We easily meet basic FHA criteria; however, we are borderline on our dues collections because a few homeowners tend to pay their dues a month or so late, while FHA rules require that we have no greater than 15% of homeowners at any one time delinquent on their dues, and we are usually at about 15-20% each month.  We have 6-7 homeowners that are substantially delinquent and in various stages of collections (either negotiated payment plans, personal judgment, or foreclosure), and so with 86 total units, if we have only 6-7 more who pay their dues late, then that pushes us over the FHA minimum < 15% delinquency rate (which means < 13 units for us).  Our new law firm should help us to improve our monthly on-time dues collection process, and we are working on other ways to improve the process, such as encouraging auto-pay. 

After reviewing a large field of candidates and then listening to presentations from our top picks, we have chosen Community Management Associates (CMA) as our new property management company.  Thanks to all of you who attended our special meeting last month to hear the presentations.  CMA manages several other local Decatur condominium communities, and I believe CMA will provide us with a superior level of service at a significant annual savings.  New website features should make management easier and more transparent, as well. 

CMA will take over from Access on December 1.  Letters with information about how to pay dues or ask for maintenance and other issues are going out this week sometime.  This website will be updated with new information over the next few days, as well.  Our new property manager is Jay Devlin (at 404-835-9199 or jdevlin@cmacommunities.com), who lives in the Decatur area.  Welcome to our community, Jay! 

We are excited to make this change, and we look forward to working with CMA to continue improving our community. 
 

As most of you already know, our property manager of many years, Rick Laws, has left Access Management.  Access has assigned Kim Coomer as our new property manager. 

The Board is taking this opportunity to review our community's property management options, as we have not done so in many years.  We will have a special public meeting on October 18 from 7 - 8 P.M. to hear presentations from candidate property management companies and to allow homeowners to ask them questions directly. 

Please let us know via the contact form if you have any information or comments that might help the Board in making a decision.  Thanks!

On Monday, July 11, our contractor will begin sealing and restriping the parking lot.  They will do half on Monday and then do the other half on Tuesday, July 12.  Please move your car during those days to the half that they are not paving. 

Here is a map of the north (1200) side that I modified so as to be a little easier to read than the one that was already posted: 

The 2011 property value appraisals for Dekalb County tax purposes were dramatically lower than in previous years because of a new rule that requires them to include distressed property sales in their calculations.  These new appraisals are inaccurate measures of property values in our community, however.  Here is a memorandum I wrote after researching the issue (.doc). I encourage you to appeal your property value assessment if you want at http://web.co.dekalb.ga.us/PropertyAppraisal/realSearch.asp. (Be sure to enter your parcel/property ID in a format with all spaces included.  You will need your Annual Notice of Assessment mailing so you can type in your Access Code located in the bottom right.) 

Hi everyone!  We have put in four Square Foot Gardening plots in the upper pool area, and we can add more if there is a demand.  We also have a small amount of money to spend on things for the garden like hoses or sprinklers, so if you think of something, please suggest. 

To learn more about Square Foot Gardening, visit the website: http://www.squarefootgardening.org/whatissfg#!__whatissfg .  

If you would like to sign up for a 4x4 plot (16 squares) or a half- or quarter- plot, then please send a message saying so via our contact form. 

Give it a try!  Square Foot Gardening lends itself to year-round gardening and small harvests good for eating what you grow. 

New major projects planned for 2011 include 1) repairing sidewalks, and 2) consolidating and enclosing the dumpsters. Minor project plans include 1) adding park benches, 2) installing new pool signs, 3) improving our landscaping, and 4) reviewing and publishing our Rules & Regs. Finally, we also hope to put more work into 5) improving the upper pool area by adding umbrellas and a grill.  (In the spring, the upper pool area will be pressure-washed and painted/sealed, which was planned for last year but the weather didn't cooperate.)
 

Happy new year, everyone!  We finished the re-paving, but re-sealing (to a clean blacktop) and repainting (parking spaces and zones) the lots will have to wait until spring.  Our contractor thought it might be risky to try to finish by year's end because of leaves and cold winter temperatures, so we decided to wait.  Everything is already planned and the budget allocated to do it asap in the spring.