Sunday 25 November 2007

Garden Rubbish

Two skips were ordered this week, and several Owners toured the Park and collected all the garden rubbish that had been dumped in various parts. The skips were very quickly filled and have now bee removed.

It is very pleasing that Owners are volunteering their time and effort into helping keep Mi Sol a nicer place for all of us.

Sunday 18 November 2007

Letter



Included with the minutes of the Annual Meeting of Paco and his supporters is a letter which is attached here. This is entitled "Essential Minimums For A Reconciliation"

An inspection of the accounts provided by them, reveals that only 12 Owners paid them any money last year, why do this small minority think they can dictate to the vast majority, what should or should not be done on Mi Sol by the Democratically elected President and Committee?

Very conspicuous by it´s absence is their fundamental demand that the rest of the Community should pay the Euro 36616 . 00 they owe to THEIR Administrator. They employed him, we did not.

1. I recall our Administrator advising me that Pepe would not be eligible to stand for President for 5 years, but after that, as an Owner, and having paid all his bills, it would be his fundamental right to stand if he so wished.

2. The Committee and myself take advice from our Administrator and Lawyer on rules and Statutes under Spanish Law that is why they are employed by the Community.

3.
Regarding the term of Office, the period of one year was proposed, seconded and approved at the AGM on September 29th 2007.
I can only carry out transactions and administration agreed at
their General Meeting. I don´t think so !!

4.
Election of President and Vice president, one British, one Spanish, with equal rights. They would probably have had a Spanish Vice president if Paco had kept his word and voted with the rest of the Community at the AGM in September.

5.
Dismissal of the Committee or the Administrator. This would would only occur with the application of Spanish law. See point 2.

6. This had already been done before the AGM.

7.
Committee meetings are held on the first and third Tuesday of the month at 4.pm, any Owner is welcome to attend. At every Committee meeting held so far, there have been some Owners attending to listen to the proceedings.

8. Should any plots become available, they will be sold, after
taking advice. Again see point 2.

9.
An Extra Ordinary Meeting will only be called when there is a reason to hold one. If anyone other than myself wishes to call such a meeting they must gain the sanction of at least 25% of the Owners, who must have paid their fees up to date and be legally entitled to vote.

10.
Considered as Urgent Make Mi Sol a Limited Company. Apart from my job as a Self Employed Electronics engineer, I am also the Gerente (President) of a Spanish S.L (equivalent to an English Ltd) Company, registered in Madrid. Whilst leaving the financial and legal matters to the people employed to do this work, I can tell you something about it.
Even though I am in 50/50 partnership with a friend, I am the Gerente,
you can only have one President. My signature alone is required on any cheques signed on behalf of the Company.
Tax has to be paid by the Company on the salary received by the Gerente, this amount is determined by Hacienda (Tax Office). This tax must be paid even if the Gerente does not actually receive any payment from the Company. The Company must pay the Social Security payments due on behalf of the Gerente. The Company must register and pay I:V:A (VAT) , in the case of Mi Sol the only Customers would be the Owners, who of course would all be shareholders, including other taxes, the bills would have to be increased by up to 20% to cover these costs. Any money left over after "outgoings" would be classed as profit, and of course subject to tax. The accountancy fees for administering a business the size of Mi Sol would be considerable. Even if making Mi Sol a Limited Company was considered desirable, due to the legal situation of Mi Sol at this time, it would be impossible to achieve.

Reorganization of the drainage system supervised by Aguagest. Whilst this is something that would be an advantage to Mi Sol, by diverting the sewerage to Parque Naciones it is going to cost in excess of Euro 52000 . 00, and does nothing to address the sewerage problems that many circles experience. Neither would it be a perfect solution, Parque Naciones have problems themselves with sewerage.

Closing of the gates on Mi Sol. The vast majority of Owners are in favour of this, but it needs to be done properly, with a system acceptable to all Owners. I am still waiting for advice from our Lawyer regarding a recent Court decision concerning the gates. This Court decision arrived after a judgement period of over 10 Years.

Revision of the contract concerning Mi Sol Bar
. A strange one this as the letter mentions it twice. Very few, if any, of the people complaining about it actually use the Bar.
I understand that the present contract is for a period of 5 years, normal under Spanish Law, and that subject to all fees being paid to Mi Sol, there is an automatic right to renewal by the Bar tenant. This subject will be discussed in a separate post later, when I have all the facts from Mi Sol Lawyers.

Regarding the Swimming pool, although I did negotiate a contract with the Bar tenant to run the pool area last year, there ware no transfer of rights. The contract has finished, and the pool is again under the control of the Committee.

Revise the condition of the "Strength Box"?? and Transformer. The transformer and the main distribution cables have already been uprated this year, and are at present adequate for our needs.

For any work three estimates will be produced. This is already being done, where practical, there are times when three quotes are unobtainable, for example in the case of contractors for the gardening. We have been unable to get three contractors willing to submit quotations.

For all of these agreements, the spirit will be more fulfilled than the interpretation of the words. If a written agreement is made, it should mean what it says, not decide what you think it means.

The opening of a new Bank account for water and electric payments. This is completely impractical, there will never be enough money in the account to actually pay the bills.

Finally we ask for a new appointment. They have been informed several times, by me, by Mi Sol Lawyer, and Administrator, that we want a meeting immediately, but I will not condone the expense of Lawyers being employed at such a meeting when they are irrelevant to the exchange and inspection of accounts for the purpose of reaching agreement. This is the advice from our own Lawyer.

Thursday 15 November 2007

Interesting Minutes











Here are the minutes of the meeting held by Paco and his supporters on the Bar terrace at the same time as the the Official AGM on the 29th September 2007.
Some interesting points arise.
On their list of those "attending", several people seem to have attended their meeting more than once, two of those down as attending had previously given me their proxy votes, I still have the voting cards.

Under the heading "Represented" Paco is listed as having 18 proxy votes. At the time of printing, July 2007, it would seem from their own accounts, 15 of the 18 are ineligible to have a vote under the Law of Horizontal Dwellings, not having paid their Comunidad charges for 2007.
It is entirely possible of course that these Owners paid their fees before the meeting, in which case the total paid would have been Euro 12121 . 10, add this to the Euro 3804 . 20 in cash and Euro 4735 . 61 in the Cambank account as shown, they should have had Euro 20660 . 91. Yet only one week after the General meeting there was only Euro 9000 in their Bank account.

Looking at their statement of accounts it would appear that during the year August 2006 to July 2007 they received 13 payments from 12 Owners amounting to a total of Euro 9472 . 50 and spent Euro 12453 . 57. There seems to be no mention of plots 93-94-95-96 Owned by their Vice President, who has made some of his payments this year into Mi Sol Banco Popular account. It would also seem plot 444 does not exist according to them, I am sure the Owners will be delighted they are not in debt !!

It also seems that they owe their Administrator Euro 36616 . 00, many Owners will recall this is the same Administrator who at their very first meeting when Antonio Escudero was elected their President, said he would work for free.

It is interesting to note that according to the last paragraph, the first step in negotiations to resolve the dispute between the two sides would be the suspension of legal action. At this moment in time, as far as I am aware, they are still pressing ahead with the Court hearing due in February next year in Elche.

Monday 12 November 2007

Insurance Update


As mentioned in a previous post, Mrs Lynne Jimenez has contacted the brokers in Montesinos regarding the insurance policy that Pepe had apparently taken out on 20/6/2007 to cover liability claims against the Community.

Mrs Jimenez was informed by the broker that NO premium had been paid concerning this policy.
An initial inspection of the Bank account would seem to bear this out.

Several questions could be asked regarding this situation, most prominent amongst them:-
Why did Pepe not pay the premium when the Policy was taken out?
Why was the policy issued when payment had not been received by the Company?

Above is a copy of the Policy details, this would seem to indicate an inadequate level of cover.
Enquiries are being made to find a policy more suited to our needs.

AGM Minutes English

Attached the Minutes of the AGM 29th September 2007







Minutes of AGM Spanish

Attached are the minutes from the AGM September 29th2007 in Spanish












Saturday 10 November 2007

Insurance

Recently it was discovered that Pepe had taken out an insurance policy for the Park on the 20th June 2007.

The premium was in the region of Euro 800, but for some reason Pepe did not pay the full premium, despite the fact that there was around Euro 40,000 in the Bank account at that time. I have not had an opportunity to ask Pepe why he did not pay all the premium at the time of taking out the policy. It would seem we still owe around Euro 400.

After studying the policy, it would seem that at best we are very under covered, and at worst the policy is a waste of money, as it appears not to be a policy to cover the Park against 3rd party claims.

Committee member Mrs Lyn Jimemez has agreed to contact the Agents in Montesinos, and find out exactly what the policy does cover, and what we need to do to in order to make it suitable for the needs of the Community. I will post the results of her investigation here in due course.

Friday 2 November 2007

Court Case

A Court case for debt was to be heard against an Owner on Wednesday 31st October 2007, in Torrevieja. After consulting with Mi Sol Lawyer, Rosario, and Alberto the Administrator, it was decided Rosario should petition the Judge to cancel the case, to allow more time for negotiation between the two parties. This she did, and the case was duly cancelled. This was done on the understanding that the case could be brought before the Court at an unspecified time in the future, if the claim for debt could not be resolved by other means.

An informal meeting then took place outside the Courtroom between Paco, the Lawyer for the other faction, Rosario, Alberto and myself. This seemed to be an ideal opportunity to make some progress between the two sides. However after a considerable period of debate, I regret to say we are no further forward.

Their Lawyer asked me to attend a meeting between the Administrators, Paco and myself, with the Lawyers from both sides present, I declined, for reasons which will become clear later in this post.

He later asked me if I would attend a meeting of the same composition, except the Lawyers would not speak. I declined again, saying what was the point of them being there if they were not going to speak? He was told that I would not be bullied into something that was not in the best interests of the majority of the Community.

I then gave to their Lawyer a copy of the Banco Popular statement obtained that morning. The same one attached to the last posting here. He studied it and asked some questions. It was clear he was surprised, I am sure they have no conception of how much money is required every month just to pay the basics of running the Park.

The reasons I declined the meetings asked for by their Lawyer are simply this :-
The first meeting should be for an exchange of accounts between the two Administrators, to see where the money has been spent during the last few years. Once this has been resolved we can then move onto other things, such as the money we have received through the Courts from their supporters. It would seem Paco and his supporters do not want this, they want to mix everything up at once. A good example of this happened during the meeting outside the Courtroom when Paco suddenly insisted on seeing a copy of the Bar lease agreement. I explained that when I had it myself he would be given a copy too, but that at this moment in time there were far more important matters to resolve. As Alberto pointed out to me, over the last 5 years the administration of the other faction should have received at least Euro 100,000 from their supporters. What has happened to this money? Given they have not contributed to the running of the Park, not even paying for the Water and Electricity they have used, why have they only around Euro 9,000 in the Bank? On top of this they seem to owe their Administrator a large amount of money, which they want the rest of the Community to pay...Why?
Since APYME have been our Administrators I am confident that the accounts of Mi Sol have been kept in accordance with the law, any Owner can visit their offices and inspect the accounts, to see where the money has been spent and what it has been spent on. The bank statements are regularly displayed on this web Log, and explanations of expenses given where required.

Their Lawyer asked me to agree to set up a separate bank account for the Water and Electric bills, with Paco and myself as signatories to any payments. Not wishing to be confrontational, I agreed in principle, but pointed out that in practice it had no chance of working. There are Owners who do not pay their bills on time, the amounts we pay to the Water and Electricity Authorities include the running of the street lights, the shower blocks and the swimming pool water, therefore there would never be enough money in the account to pay the bills on time.
In addition why should Owners be subjected to deciding which account is the right one to pay different amounts of money into?
Paco has said he has paid his current Water and Electric charges, however he has paid them into their Cambank account. This is not helping the Community, why do he and his supporters not pay it into the Banco Popular, that is where the money is taken from to pay the bills.

Their Lawyer then said that the former Committee and myself were culpable for allowing Pepe to spend Euro 14,500 on the refurbishment of a shower block. I pointed out to him that the Committee were unanimous in their objection to this work. He then said we should have taken Pepe to Court. I replied that we were not made aware that we could do that, and in any case, he had seen for himself we had no money to do it, but that more importantly the Community were "sick and tired" of wasting money on Lawyers and litigation which could be much better spent on improving Mi Sol for all owners. I then gave him a copy of the open letter to all Owners Pepe had written, dated 22/5/2007, condemning Committee member Mrs Pat Olive and myself claiming we were trying to manipulate him and working against the interests of the Community.

I tried to ask their Lawyer why we could not draw a line under the past and go forward together, given that they now had what they always wanted .... a new President, that Paco had said he was going to use his proxy votes in my favour at the General Meeting in September, until he stopped him from doing so, that they could have put their own candidate up for election, but did not, thus implying that they agreed with the rest of the Community in supporting me. Therefore what was his objection now? Surprisingly, I did not seem able to receive a reply from him.

After nearly 5 years they still seem obsessed with Lawyers and Court cases, I must leave you to draw your own conclusions as to why that is.

Bank Statement



Attached is the Statement from Banco Popular for 31st October 2007.

You will notice a payment taken out of Euro 516 - 59. This was for Taxes due to the government.

Very Sad News

It is with much sadness I report the death of Mr John Paul, a former Owner on Mi Sol.
His funeral took place at the Tanotoria, Torrevieja on Wednesday afternoon 31st October 2007.
The service was very well attended by his family and many friends.