A Report of Meetings with the Board of Aquarius and the Director of Operations of A|P

This is a summary of meetings between some Aquarius Board members, the Atlantic Pacific Director of Operations and Aquarius Initiative Group:

1. The Bord of Directors – BOD represents the Aquarius Condominium owners, and are held accountable to them. The Board and Management aren’t informative enough to residents about projects executed, spending, or financial operations. Condominium Owners would like to know in detail the contractors’ election procedures, invoices paid (not year’s later, when residents become debt hostages). At meetings we ask Management and Board members to communicate better in regards to new project details, financial assessment and bill payments. We also ask the Board to be more open using emails, websites, open discussion, taking advice or opinions from residents who had professional skills in construction, legal, technical and financial fields. The Board is an elected organization and should have a mutual understanding and trust with residents. Mismanagement: yearly maintenance requirements, hiring engineering company which caused conflicts of interest, and negligence in some ways. (So, it should be called bad Management). Why claim “Irma” only to the insurance company? No one called the construction company and engineers responsible for water damage, electrical problems, or for the negligence while removing the balconies. Nor for the roof condition after the construction left. This resulted in huge engineering and legal Fees.
2. It was confirmed that the payment schedules presented are based on $9.3M and include an additional $1.8M reserve for possible future projects. Mr. Gupta acknowledged receipt of a letter from Aquarius residents with a request to not include these “Reserve” funds in the new assessment. It was confirmed that the collection of a reserve fund would be voted by all residents since currently it’s not a mandatory FL state requirement.
3. The new assessment will include funds according to Mr. Coleman’s presentation: a total deficit of $5,311,101 and additional funds for new projects $2,112,800. Total of $7,423,901. The new assessment will be discussed and approved at the next Board meeting.
4. The hallways expense of $2,385,708 was questioned since it exceeded the budgeted $1,500,000. It would be helpful if the Board provided a break down: work and amount actually included and how they were paid. A similar break down should be provided for the Elevator Modernization and Professional Fees since they substantially exceeded original budget projections.
5. It was confirmed that the amounts for new projects are budgetary estimates. Actual work estimates will be solicited and selected based on a public bidding process. All bids obtained and scopes of work included will be presented for owners to review before acceptance.
6. It was explained by Mr. Gupta that three financing instruments were presented in Mr. Coleman’s presentation: #1-New loan $4M, #2-Remainder of $15M loan and #3. $2.5M credit line would be consolidated into one loan.

Mr. Gupta informed that the Board had hired an independent structural engineer to verify completeness’ and accuracy of structural work managed by Hillman according to the contract as-built drawings.

Opinions here expressed do not necessarily represent the opinion of the editor of the aquariusuno.com site.

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Laughing matter:

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