Re: Costs for Shared Services [was Shared community internet service
From: Muriel Kranowski (murielkvt.edu)
Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2014 18:50:46 -0700 (PDT)
We do charge for using the CH laundry equipment - 50 cents for the washer, and the dryer cost was just raised to 80 cents IIRC, to encourage people to hang up their clothes to dry. The charge is supposed to be just enough so machines can be replaced when they fail. I believe that a minority of our residents use the CH laundry room, though it can be handy at times as Liz says even if you have your own W&D as most of us do.

We also charge for use of the guest rooms and I'm glad we do. Some people use them a great deal, because their parents and/or siblings live close enough to visit frequently; others of us scarcely use them at all. I think it's fair to ask people to pay for this amenity to defray the cost of using the rooms. We employ a cleaning person to do serious cleaning in the guest-room area once a month, and we need to replace bed & bath linens every so often. My neighbors who are barely making it financially shouldn't have to subsidize much better off members who heavily use the guest rooms, IMO.

We have a community-wide internet arrangement via a T-1 line, but I don't know how it works from a technical standpoint. I think at this point all the homes are hard-wired for it - I recall the front yards being dug up to lay conduit a few years ago. The T-1 started as a private initiative rather than a community good, as just a subgroup wanted it at first, and we still treat it that way in the way we pay for it, by each household that wants it. It started when a resident who needed high-speed and reliable internet service as a telecommuter arranged to get it and share it with those who wanted it. The cost has dropped over time to be really cheap. Last year it cost $36 for the year; this year, in order to pay for a piece of equipment, it was raised to $72 for the year. Most outages (rare as they are) are due to factors outside our control, but someone is always on top of it - I think we have 2 tech-gurus at this point. They help newbies as needed, and also help non-techies who need to install a new router or the like.

We don't offer our own ISP - we did at one point, but it was not universally used. When the guy who was running it moved away, the next techie-in-charge closed it down. About 10 people still have an email account related to that ISP but are actually getting their email through a Google service (a grandfathered arrangement), the rest of us are on our own.

   Muriel at Shadowlake Village, Blacksburg, VA


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