Cohousing-L Mailing List: maintenance fees

[don i arkin (shardon5]

Hi,  At Sonora in Tucson the fees cover residential water besides
landscaping costs, Common house maintenance and utilities, and all other
exterior maintenance including the pool and spa and care of the roofs and
outer walls of all the townhomes and of course the parking areas and high
speed internet connection.  Because we have a lot of volunteer efforts
are dues average about $112 month after a significant increase this year
partially to pay for some outside landscape labor.
        I second Sharon's recommendation to attempt to get bulk water and
gas rates.  Since this is an area where water conservation is a major
topic many of us were reticent about approving a system where someone had
absolutely no monetary incentive to conserve so we installed our own
private meters on each house which are read periodically.  The cost of
this was repaid with 6 months in my estimate.  I believe we researched
doing the same thing with the gas supply.  I cannot exactly remember the
result except that we didn't do it.  I have a vague recollection that we
were told that we would need to use some huge commercial gas meter that
would have cost us too much to be practical.  
        don 
_______________________________________________
Cohousing-L mailing list
Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org  Unsubscribe  and other info:
http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L