Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Westmoreland Terrace Condo Annual Meeting

At the Condominium Association's annual meeting on April 28, Clayton Taylor was newly elected to the Board, and Condo Association President Jose Calvo was re-elected to a new 3-year term on the Board.

The Board noted the 5% condo fee increase, described the financial situation as healthy, and outlined plans for roof and facade repairs in the coming year. Roof repair will start with the 1336 building.

The Zalco after-hours emergency number is 301 585-0088, and is listed on the front door of the Manager's Office.

Residents expressed an interest in having the opportunity to receive electronically minutes from Condo Association meetings. I offered to post on this blog minutes emailed to me. I also offered to set up a group to distribute the minutes by email to interested residents. A Board member suggested that meeting announcements could include an indication of what was to be discussed in the meeting, which might help attracted more residents to meeting. I also offered to distribute such meeting announcements through the email group. The Board seemed lukewarm about this proposal, for reasons that are not clear. Helping to keep residents informed should be an important goal of the Board. Moreover, these proposals require very little work to implement.

Installation of Fios is not imminent, but a contract is under consideration. The Board still does not know whether the proposed contract provides an exclusive right to Verizon to install optical fiber (which is different from coax cable) in Westmoreland Terrace buildings. Dennis Freeman, the property manager, said that he would check into this.

Meeting attendance: 3 Board members, 7 other residents.

3 comments:

22209 said...

Hi, I tried commenting to this post earlier but am now thinking that something failed in the process as I can't see the comment now. If the comments are held for review before posting, please ignore this one.

I live in 1336, and found your blog today via the Post Express article. Five years ago I also tried to get the Board's meeting minutes and announcements distributed electronically, and also to set up an online bulletin board. I asked the Board about it at an annual meeting, and when they were not overly enthusiastic about the idea I told them I'd do all the work and they consented.

I had, and still have (though it has been dormant for five years), a Yahoo Group for Westmoreland Terrace. Phil used to drop copies of announcements under my door, and I'd type them up and post them on the Yahoo Group. The intent of the online bulletin board, which was separate from the Yahoo Group, was to share contractor recommendations, rental listings, etc. Both of them flopped. Phil eventually stopped remembering to leave me copies of announcements, and I did not push the issue because neither venue had much traction.

I had posted announcements about the forum and Yahoo Group emails in each of the buildings, but only about a handful of people signed up for each service.

But that was five years ago, and there has been a whole lot of turnover in the the condos since then. Maybe the current owners/residents will have more interest, so it's certainly worth another try. I just thought I'd share my experiences.

Douglas Galbi said...

Thanks for the info. I've set up on new Westmore Terrace list (Google Group). You can sign up in the box on the sidebar of this blog.

Judging from condo meeting attendance, I'd say the trend has been if anything negative on participation. But the group is easy to set up and I probably won't do much other than forward relevant posts to it and any official notices I get via email. If few people use it that's fine.

22209 said...

Great -- good luck! I just signed up for your list. I think I'll send an email out to the Yahoo Group telling them about yours, and then close that one down.