Treasurer – Page 3

Treasurer News, September 2020

September 1, 2020 by Jan Danner

Discusses 2021 budget and top income & expense categories

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Treasurer News – August 2020

August 2, 2020 by Jan Danner

TREASURER NEWS

AUGUST 2020

Jan Danner

Most of you have noticed a great deal of activity around two of our lakes. Perhaps we should have informed you before the work was started but let me explain what was done and why. In 2017 we commissioned a company, Zoller, to inspect our pipes and ponds for remedial work. All of our ponds are connected through underground pipes and eventually flow into the canal along El Rio. The report identified the most crucial deterioration of the pipes and for the last several years we have replaced pipes, added mitered ends and have greatly reduced the flooding that was prevalent in past years. We have several more years to fully comply with the recommendations of this study and are right on target. We’ve had to be innovative since some of the pipes go under driveways and between houses so it wasn’t practical to dig up and replace so we used a re-line process where a “sock” is extruded into the deteriorating pipe and then filled with resin on the outside to provide a sturdy replacement. This was completed on Puesto Del Sol and Chico in May,was fully funded from reserves and came in under budget. ($82000 vs. $100,000)

The shoreline restoration recommendations were folded into the landscape team for ideas. Our goal was to restore the shoreline, add irrigation, electrical and planting beds. The shoreline was budgeted for $60,000 and the recommendations from Zoller were rip rap, mats over laid with sod, geo tubes or graded dirt with sod added for stability. While many of us liked rip rap but it is cost prohibitive-$60-$70 a foot, mats were impractical and very expensive so the board decided to use dirt and sod for Lake Marisma (rec hall). When Bravado was milled this spring it was discovered that we had to replace the base down to 12”. The park manager wisely decided to store this old base for use in the future. The company we chose to do the shoreline restoration came in at $28,000 for Marisma- well under budget so the manager asked for a bid on Puesto Del Sol lake(deemed the worst eroded) using the fill from Bravado and it came back for $37,000 so the board was asked-and agreed-to add this, even though it was above the $60,000 budgeted. The work was completed on both lakes by July 1 and is now ready for landscaping. We are assembling bids for electrical, irrigation and landscaping for Marisma which should come in somewhere in the $70,000 range. The work will be done before our seasonal residents arrive this fall. Most of the total cost of the projects will come from reserves although the capital asset fund will be tapped for some electrical and all of the irrigation. These are the last of the big projects for this year and will keep La Casa as beautiful as ever. The ageing infrastructure is slowly being rebuilt so that the work no one sees will keep our park up and running for many years. Till next month