Content

72 Church Street
Bud Bugs
Kitchen Stacks
Bell Fibre
The Elevator Project
Violations and Deficiencies … please help!
The Upcoming Garage Project
Money Matters and USS

72 Church Street
This 10+ year saga has come to an end this year, and we have unfortunately lost. The owner of the lot at the NW corner of Church and Kenneth has made various attempts to replace the house with a 4-storey building. We have fought these attempts by citing safety, traffic, noise, privacy, and a host of other negative impacts on our community. This year, however, the City approved the owner’s plan and we lost. Nevertheless, I would like to thank the residents who voiced their concerns, in writing or in person, to the City. In particular, I thank Donna who kept the Board abreast of all the details and even arranged one-on-one meetings with the Board and the Chair of the City’s deciding committee.

Bud Bugs
If you have or even suspect bedbugs in your casita, inform the management office right away, and they will get professionals to deal with the infestation. Do not delay or try to deal with it yourself because bedbugs spread quickly within your casita as well as to neighbouring ones. In a recent incident, delays in reporting have led to tens of thousands of dollars charged back to the owner.

Kitchen Stacks
The drainage system in our complex is not ideal because pipes are shared between cascaded units as well as other units in the same block. This means a blockage can lead to a back-flow in a unit other than the one that caused the blockage. Recent incidents have confirmed this and we are looking into solutions. The main culprit is dumping used cooking oil down the drain of the kitchen sink. I am therefore asking all residents to throw it in the garbage instead.

Bell Fibre
Bell Canada has agreed to upgrade the infrastructure of our complex for free by adding fibre optic to our existing conduits. This means each casita will have a fibre outlet in addition to the existing cable and telephone outlets. Residents can choose to keep their existing phone, TV, and Internet providers and cables, or to switch (now or in the future) to Bell and its fibre services. I take this opportunity to thank Mary for bringing the Bell offer to the Board’s attention.

The Elevator Project
For full details about this $500K+ project, see my blog.

Violations and Deficiencies … please help!
Our condo corporation has a number of by-laws and rules intended to ensure safety and enable residents to enjoy their units. It is very important that we (1) observe these rules and (2) that we report any violation we observe to the Management Office or to the Gatehouse if the Office is closed. This also applies to reporting deficiencies. Please help keep our community special. If something is not right (perimeter door hard to open, elevator not working, bulb burned, renovation with no notice, …) all it takes is a one-line email.

The Upcoming Garage Project
We have been dreading this for years but the time for repairing our garage slabs is looming. The roof slab of the garage, the suspended slab between P1 and P2, and the slab on grade at the bottom have a waterproofing system to protect the concrete and prevent leaks. This system has a lifespan of 30 to 35 years, which means around 2025. Indeed, we have been noticing localized leaks in the garage and have installed drip pans and other measures to divert leaks away from parked cars and utility rooms. An engineering survey was done this year and it found moderate water penetration, high chloride levels, and steel carbonation, particularly in the expansion joint that runs along the south side of the entire 700/800 block and along the entire east side of the 100 block. Our (shared) reserve fund has funds earmarked for repairing and replacing parts of the waterproofing system between 2025 and 2030. It remains to be seen whether work will start next year or the year after but regardless, we should all be aware that this comprehensive multi-year, multi-million dollar project will be quite disruptive. We will endeavour to minimize the disruption.

Money Matters and USS
The so-called USS (Utilities, Sitework, Savings) view is my way of looking at the financial health of our condo. Its thesis has been covered in my earlier blogs (cf. 2021, 2022, 2023), so I will just state its findings for this year:

USS	%	TREND	FEE%
UTIL	18	4.5%	0.8
SITE	38	4.5%	1.7
SAVE	44	12.5%	5.5

(The FEE% column is the percent product of the % and the TREND columns)

Roughly speaking, we see that utilities is ~20% of our expenses and has been growing at ~5% per year, thereby leading to a ~1% increase in our condo fees.. Sitework is ~40% of our expenses and its growth rate is also 5%, thereby increasing the fee by ~2%. Our savings (reserve fund) has become over 40% of our expenses and it is growing at over 12%, thereby leading to over 5% fee increase. Adding up the entries in the FEE columns yields a predicted condo fee increase trend of ~8%. Indeed our fees this year were in that range had it not been for a 30K transfer from our accumulated surplus. It is my hope (based on the latest study) that our reserve fund contribution percentage increase will taper down to the inflation rate in a couple of years, which would keep fee increases in the 7% range.

Views expressed in this blog do not necessarily reflect the official position of MTCC 1113. They were written by Hamzeh Roumani, the President of the Board, and reflect his personal take on things.