Treasurer's Report - 2009 IFA Annual Meeting

Last night the Inverness Forest Association held its annual meeting. Three seats (each for a three year term) needed to be filled. The only incumbent running, Sal Presti, was elected. Two residents, Stephanie Cooperstein and Evan Foster, agreed to run for the remaining two seats and were elected. The board now has all nine seats filled.

I presented the Treasurer's report, which described the year to date operational spending, next years budget, and the historical level of capital reserves over the past decade.

The four pages of charts and tables are in the PDF file at this link:
http://www.box.net/shared/8j0em3hhrx

If you have any comments or questions, please click on the "comment" link below or send me an email.

A brief commentary on the report follows:

Page 1: This is a line-by-line comparison of the operations spending to date and the corresponding budget projection for the year to date. The bottom line (literally) is that we are about $3400 under budget. So far, so good.

Page 2: This is the 2010 budget that was attached to the announcement for the annual meeting.

Page 3: A pie chart based on the previous table and showing the major areas of operations spending expected for 2010.

Page 4: A graph of the capital reserves level over the past decade. As can be seen, we've done a good job or rebuilding the capital reserves over the past few years. The board has established a goal of $1000 per household as the reserve requirement. We are now just about at that target. To put this goal in perspective, the three separate years of special assessments to pave about 50% of our community (2006 -2008) raised a total of $1050 per household.


Harvey
ifatreasurer@mac.com

Can You Extend the Life of Your Roof?

Is it possible to treat your roof so that it will last longer and therefore save you money? Some people say that powerwashing your roof will extend its life while others say that the force of the spray or the harshness of the chemicals will actually shorten the life of your roof. Who's right? If you have a reference to research done on this issue, please post a comment to this article so others can benefit from this information.

There is an alternative roof treatment called CedarSave that claims to be more gentle on your roof while extending its life. Inverness Forest Association board vice-president, Sharlene Shugarman, tried CedarSave four years ago. She has send me the following email to share her conclusions with Inverness homeowners:

There is an alternative to replacing your old cedar shake roof. If the physical condition of the shakes are not too deteriorated, Escobar & Robb offers the following service:

Cleaning with low pressure application of “CedarSave” solution, a blend of detergents and fungicides, which lifts out wood-destroying organisms. Applying a clear color, high quality oil-based preservative to restore the natural oils, can promote water repellency and provide protection from the UV rays.

I had my mansards cleaned and treated 4 years ago, and two of my neighbors more recently have treated their roofs. We are all very pleased with the results. We saved a lot of money doing this treatment instead of replacing the shakes and our roofs look almost brand new. I highly recommend this option if your shakes are not beyond repair. I would also recommend that the plants around the home be covered by drop cloths for protection from the agents. Escobar & Robb will provide free estimates.

Sharlene Shugarman


If you would like to comment, please click on the comment link below. If you have a problem with the comment's anti-spam protection, email me your comments and I'll be happy to post them for you.

Harvey
ifatreasurer@mac.com

Online Delivery of the Minutes - The First Time

For the first time ever, most of the Inverness Forest Community is getting the board meeting minutes online. The advantages of online distribution are that it saves trees, saves the cost of printing paper copies, and for those volunteers delivering the paper copies, online distribution saves time and shoe leather.

When I started Inverness Forest Today in April 2008 I didn't think it would grow so quickly and have such a large audience. The mailing list now has 239 email addresses! The are only 304 townhouses in our community. There is some double counting since in some cases more than one member of a household receives IFT and in other cases both an owner and their tenant receive IFT. Still, most of the residents in Inverness Forest are on our mailing list.

I've put the PDF file of the minutes online in the "cloud" (As always) at a location where you have a choice of reading the file online or downloading the PDF file to your computer for printing. Here is the link:

IFA Minutes 8-13-09

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Note that there is a request for more information on the Da Vinci roof material posted as a comment on the previous posting (below). I've some answers (also as a comment), but perhaps someone who has researched these issues can provide a comment with additional information.


Harvey
ifatreasurer@mac.com

Alternative Roof Material Approved by the IFA Board

Click here for a larger picture



The Inverness Forest Association Board of Directors has been researching alternative roof materials for quite a while and has decided that there has been significant improvements recently in materials and manufacturing techniques. It now makes sense to expand the ACC regulations by providing at least one additional choice to cedar shakes.

To that end, board members have made trips to Avenel to see several different alternative roof materials on Avenel houses. Also the board and members of the ACC met earlier this month with representatives of Da Vinci and EcoStar, two prominent manufacturers of alternative roofing materials. We examined many different samples and borrowed some of them to see their appearance in bright sunlight. Ultimately the board whittled the choices down to three.

At the August 13th meeting the board voted on these three alternatives to cedar shakes. The Enviroshake material was not approved nor were the two variations of the Eco Star product. The board did approve the Da Vinci material in the "Autumn Blend" color. This material comes in both a uniform nine inch width and in multi-width tiles. Both of these choices were approved.

The picture above, which I took today, is of the Da Vinci product on an Avenel roof. The picture below is a closeup of that roof. One of the reasons the Da Vinci product was approved was because the tiles show considerably more variation in both color and texture than the Enviroshake or Eco Star roof materials.

Click here for a larger picture

Harvey
ifatreasurer@mac.com

How Much Did an Inverness Forest House Sell For?

I hinted in the last post that I would tell you how to find the purchase price of any house in our community. The State of Maryland Office of Assessment and Taxation maintains a state-wide database containing the names of all property owners and how much they paid for the property. The ownership and purchase price of every house in the State is public knowledge. Virginia and probably most other states make their home ownership and purchase price information public as well.
To access the database click on this link:

Montgomery County Property Database

In the window enter the street number and street name. For example, for my house enter "10743" and "Deborah" (without the quotes). The website tells you not to enter the suffix, the "Dr" or "Rd", just the name (Deborah or Inverness Ridge).

Clik on the search button and the information is presented. If you enter in my house address, you'll see that I am the owner and that I paid $135,000 on 8-5-1983. Often there is a whole history of sale prices and previous owners, but since I bought my house so long ago, that information is lacking.

So, don't tell your neighbor that you only paid $200,000 for your house five years ago if you really paid $400,000. They can easily find out the truth.

For your convenience, I've added a link to the Montgomery Property Database in the right-hand column under "Inverness Links".


Harvey
ifatreasurer@mac.com