BACKDATED COMMUNITY CHARGE LATEST

Just got an email from Carol who has - in her own inimitable style - informed me that she 'has just been to speak to twit and tw**' about the meeting on 20th Feb and they told her that our community charges are to be backdated to a month after we completed - in my case that would be August last year - EEK!  None too happy as, as far as I am led to believe, the other PW resorts only started paying from when their community was established formally.  Anyone got any thoughts on this??  Arlene

Yowza

Or as my dear old dad would have said Bl **dy Hell.

Thats quite a bill if they do that.

We were told by friends who have propertys on other Polaris sites that they too were only billed for community charges once their respective communities were up & running.

I know polaris may be experiencing a rough financial time like everyone else but Pleeeese dont expect us to fund your bank Balance PW.

I think thats a bit unfair of PW to do that! That is gonna be a big bill, and for what?

They done the same thing on Hacienda, lets just hope we don't get saddled with 120-140 EUR a month community charges they have!!!!!!!!!

Dan

I think the fees on Hacienda Riquelme are higher than most as that resort does not have a lot of properties to fund the running costs.  In theory, economies of scale should prevail on Condado and bring the fees down to a reasonably low level.  Of course, as has been mentioned here, PW may just decide that we are bankrolling them!!  Heaven forbid........

I wouldn't mind so much them backdating the fees, if they had been providing the services!  There was no shop on site, few pools completed, electrics and water sporadic at best.  If I am charged back til July last year I will want a full breakdown of the costs to see what it is covering - now really annoyed that I will not be able to make the meeting - no wonder they gave such little notice!!

Ted

I have given my vote to Carol and expressed my concerns to her over the fees.  I feel the same as Ted, we had very little by way of 'services' for most of the time last year.

I have just looked on the Hacienda Owners site - very good site http://www.hrgr.es/ .  Not sure when people started moving in, but their first meeting was June last year, and fees didn't start until 2008 - when they were doing their budget.  I would think the same should apply to us, and they should not start until 2009.  Also wondering how the decisions to delay Mirador etc. will impact on the sharing of the overall community fees, something to watch out for in the budget.

Ted

Hi All

I have just put a response on the General Assembly Thread relevant to this issue please have a look. I think we have to have representation at this first meeting to represent our issues, starting to become clear the reason for short albeit legal short notice.

Phil

Not surprised about the back dated fee's. I brought this up on a thread in January because we'd read about owners on other resorts having many hundreds of euro's of back dated fee's due. They will say that all the gardening, road cleaning, rubbish collection, security and pool maintenance has been set up so fee's have been paid for that since the start of people completing on their apartments.

Best hope is back dated payments can be staggered into current payments.

Hi all,  we completed in November 08 on Los Naranjos block 5 without certificate of habitation, so we will not be expecting to pay any community charges until we have this. Friends of ours are on La Torre and pay about 100euros a month but we are hoping ours will be less than this as there are considerably more properties to take into consideration.

Does anyone know who actually decides this or who we get in touch with to query this??

Thanks matt

Hi Everyone

I will try to explain how they ( Victoria & Alex ) explained the way community fees will be decided - bearing in mind, they do speak English but not terribly well or not enough for me to get my point across and receive an acceptable answer !

Here goes, each Jardin will be given a budget, that budget will be divided between how many apartments on that particular Jardin - however, a 2 bedroomed apartment will pay less than a 3.

I asked about the back block of Jardin 13 ( where I am ) and was told that we will then pay less than the pool resident Jardin 13 owners due to lack of pool ???

My own personal view

Now what has annoyed me is that not only were we not given ample notice to make arrangements to attend, but they will not provide information regarding what will be discussed fully AND what exactly we will be voting on, which makes it difficult for anyone to think about which way their vote would go or discuss options.  How can yu attend a meeting prepared if you have no clue to what will be held to ballot ????? Crazy !!!

I do think PW have most of you over a barrel reagrding this meeting, as most wont be able to attend and unless you give someone your proxy to vote, things will be passed by those that do attend or by PW themselves on your behalf......Which is probably what they are hoping for and the obvious intention of the short notice invite.

Any suggestions ????

Carol

Hi Carol, are you going to attend?, if so could we not give you our proxy vote? at least then we are not wasting it.

Dan

Hi Carol,

I think you are going to have to be the thinking cap for all the people on Jardines that want you to be their proxy.  In other words because you or we don't know what we are voting for,  anything that comes up, you will vote the way you think everyone will want to go. That is everyone will probably be happy with whatever you are happy with.  A bit of a responsibility but better than losing all those votes.

Have just posted on the agm thread, that whilst we would have been happy to have you for our proxy vote, I don't think you will be able to. For one thing, the meetings are at opposite ends of the day, so we can't expect you to be there all day, and it will probably be better if someone from Naranjos represents us. Any ideas?

Regarding the back pay, again on the other thread ( I think ) Noreen says it's illegal to ask for back pay of community fees before the community is even set up, so how can they do this?  Or would they go back to when they gave the general the reins for anything regarding the community, remember the dog issue? That was the first time I had seen anything mentioned about communities, but how long had they actually been there?

Hi Dan and All

I have already been asked by a number of owners to carry their vote by proxy, as requested on the email you have been sent.  I am quite happy to do this as I think all the remarks and comments so far reflect my own in a very similar way, in other words we all seem to be reading from the same script so to speak.

I will be attending the meeting, taking notes and reporting back on here as soon as I can.  I believe that one meeting is held in the morning and the other at night,  I will let you know June if I can arrange things to be taken care of here for me to attend both, as I feel this is most important for those on both phases of this development.  If anyone can get me hard written evidence of this law that states the illegality of charges prior to the setup of a commuinity then please PM me for my email address.

I think if we can go with as much evidence and information as possible it can only help and also give them pause for thought.  I am going to try and visit the team at the portacabins again tomorrow or Friday to discuss this matter further and try and get them to give me as much info on meeting agenda as possible so at least some items can be discussed between us all on here before the meeting.

Carol

Hi ajw and everyone,

I am on Hacienda Riquelme and completed in Jan 08. Community set up in June 08.

Our fees were backdated, first month free ( how nice !!) so we started paying from Feb 08. As the meeting wasnt until June ,these fees were backdated, so quite a bit came out of our bank account in staggered payments.

The fee was based on square meter size of the apartment ( if I remember rightly ) The fee is only for gardeneing/ pools/ rubbish/ cleaning common areas/ maintenace tennis courts etc. IT has nothing to do with shops /restaurants etc of anything Polaris has not bothered to build yet.

We were only given short notice of the first meeting, so was unable to attend, however the date for the AGMS in March, have been organised and publised on our community website for months.

The community are doing a good job in keeping us informed of what is happening, as you will see if you have a look at it. They have also changed some of thethe contracts to obtain a better service for the residents.

Hope you find the useful.

Thanks for that update Paul and Jane.  I agree, the Resortalia info on the Hacienda Riquelme development is good for info.  It is well worth any Condado residents looking at - you can see the link below posted by Ted H earlier today.  Some interesting stuff on it.  Arlene

When did people receive e-mails about the meeting?  We completed in June and haven't received anything about a meeting - don't mind if it means I don't have to pay the community charge but I don't somehow think that will be the case!  

Could someone please let me have a copy of the e-mail so that I can respond to them and see why we haven't heard anything.

Many thanks

Debbie

Ours only arrived today- and we completed September. Could they do this alphabetically? We are H.

Hi Debbie - I have forwarded it to both your email addresses.  Arlene