Hi All,
You may have received a letter (attached below) urging you to vote no to the proposed levy increses at the AGM. The author of this letter suggests that there is no need to raise the levy, and no need for a special levy to upgrade the television reception equipment so that residents can watch digital channels.
The owner also suggest that the council is self-serving and somehow looking after themselves. The reality of the matter is that every member of the council sacrifices much of their personal time managing the property, I would invite the author to join the council himself if he would like to contribute. Another fact is that the council is exactly 50% owner/occupiers and 50% owner/leasee and both of the levy increases were approved unanimously by the full council.
Some factual information regarding the levy increases:
Most strata companies increase their levies in line with the cost of living (~3%) each year to make sure they have enough funds, however The Mews has had only 2-3 levy increases in the last 8 years. This has meant that over the last two years we have needed to have more significant increases to cover costs. I am informed by our strata manager we are well below the average for a property of this age and size.
Previous Strata Levies:
2009: 80.05/entitlement (1BR : 241.50 / 2BR : 322.00)
2010: 90.00/entitlement (1BR : 270.00 / 2BR : 360.00) - 11% increase
Proposed Strata Levies:
2011: 94.50/entitlement (1BR : 283.50 / 2BR : 378.00) - 5% increase
Some factual information regarding the Digital TV upgrade levy:
The strata council (via ESM) has received many complaints over the last two years regarding the quality of the TV reception on new digital channels, at one stage we even received a signed petition from 80% of residents requesting an upgrade. We also received many requests from non-resident and resident owners to have their own TV aerials installed on the building, however as you can imagine it is not feasible to install 54 TV antennae on the roof of the building so these requests had to be rejected.
After discussing the issue with some of the other owners and finding that the majority of owners supported the installation it was decided that a special levy should be recommended for this work.
What you should do now:
If you do not approve of either of these levy increases please either attend the next meeting or send a proxy to ESM stating your preference.
Proxy forms are available here:
/proxy
If you are interested in how the money is spent the last financial report is available here:
/viewtopic.php?t=83
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