Cohousing-L Mailing List: a question about hiring landscapers

[S. Kashdan (s_kashdan]

Hi all,

The Jackson Place Cohousing community in Seattle, Washington has a question 
about whether your cohousing community considers it necessary or
important to hire licensed, bonded and insured landscape
contractors/professional gardeners for the work that community members can't
or won't do.

What requirements do your communities have for determining which
landscapers/gardeners to hire?  Do you always require them to be licensed,
bonded and insured, or do your requirements vary with the nature of the
work?"

The JPC landscape team and our coordinating committee have been discussing
this issue because of the difficulty of finding licensed, bonded and insured
landscape contractors/professional gardeners to help with the maintenance of
our property. We have 27 units, a bit smaller than most of the licensed, 
bonded and insured landscape contractors seem to want to bother with.

>From the landscape team's  understanding, the most important thing seems to
be the licensing (not bonded or insured) since licensing would result in
Washington State Labor and Industries coverage for on the job injuries.

One of the landscape team members emailed the question to the Washington
state Community Association Institute director and received the response
that they recommend licensed, bonded and insured, but didn't give any
details of the reasoning.   Some members think that this answer may stem
from the fact that most of the communities involved in CAI are very large.
I do know that some of the communities/condos/homeowners associations are
smaller than JPC, some even as small as five units. But, CAI may not be 
considering all of the concerns of the smaller communities, and they may 
very well
have different landscape challenges and visions than are group.

So, whatever you can tell us will be greatly appreciated.

Cohousingly,
Sylvie

Sylvie Kashdan
Community Outreach Liaison
Jackson Place Cohousing
800 Hiawatha Place South
Seattle, WA 98144
www.seattlecohousing.org