This is a true story about my 89 year old mother who is sitting in her single bedroom condominium without heat in Maryland.  Mom had just completed a week of rehab and returned home to her condominium after spending Christmas in the hospital with a severe bronchial infection.  Because of multiple serious health problems and her frail condition, she had come dangerously close to the end of her life.  When I dropped by the next evening, a note stuck to her door declared that her heat had been turned off due to leaking pipes.  The HVAC plumbing in the 14 story building has rotted out, and residents are now paying a 25% surcharge on their monthly condo fee as a special assessment to pay off the loan that the condo association has had to take to fix the pipes.

I just wanted to mention this as a real life example of what happens when infrastructure is not adequately managed.  I hope people will not find it a huge leap of logic to envision Meadow Brook Estates in a similar or worse situation should we experience a catastrophic bridge failure.  The expression "out of sight, out of mind" applies to the pipes in my mother's building, and equally to a bridge that people pass over every day without incident, but also without inspections, maintenance, or planning.

By the way, Mom's condo fee is $622 per month.  Although this includes all of her utility costs, hopefully people will still find this a useful perspective when considering how easy we have it with our $8 per month road maintenance fee.  I also hope people will support the road committee by contributing their knowledge and abilities, and consider increasing the level of commitment to proactively managing our community interest in a way that reduces risk to all residents, and puts our infrastructure on a path of continuous improvement.

State code 55-514.1 requires property owners assocations to "conduct at least once every five years a study to determine the necessity and amount of reserves required to repair, replace and restore the capital components."

written by Guy Swartwout