The board’s first ten months

The elected board of directors have been in power for the last ten months. Have they been successful? They think so and one director, Shah Jahan Khan, published an e-mail listing their accomplishments in which, he compares the board's performance to the top five of all condo corporation boards in Canada.

Here is what Shah Jahan Khan has to say:

“Since last one year we had too many disputes, issues among Board members but thanks to GOD we all were sincere in the best interest of YCC 42 community that is dispute of personal differences, the current BOD miraculously achieved a lot in ten months like:

1.	Took charge of YCC 42 accounts and properties from Vero/Atrens.
2.	Paid  the $1.5 million debt that Vero/Atrens did not pay including City of Toronto water bills approx $800,000.
3.	Got a rate of 16.7 cents for natural gas from Enbridge Gas Mgt instead of Vero/Atrens 32 cents/cm. Now YCC 42 is saving around $700,000 a yearly in future with gas and from Nov 01, 2013 the gas price after removal of middleman Superior Mgt Inc will go down to 10.7 cents /cm and YCC 42 community will save another approx $150,000 annually.   And I would like to inform you that our neighbor Mark Cianferani (YCC 60) is paying 20 cents/cm for same gas.
4.	Termination of Vero/Atrens Lee Compactor contract whose rate was approx $18,000 /month and current board got another big contractor WM Inc with a maximum flat rate of $6,700 month including all taxes where as our neighbour Mark Cianferani YCC 60 is paying $12,000 monthly.
5.	YCC 42 current Board reduced common element fees 20% back-dated to January 2013 (a total of approx $2 million in just in three months after Vero/Atrens regime) and hoping to reduce further 10% from January 2014.
6.	INSTALLATION OF 300 CAMERAS IN ELEVATORS, P1, P2, EXIT, ENTRANCES, FLOORS, GATE HOUSE, COURT YARD etc.
7.	Property values increased more than 30% in just six months.
8.	Current Board is seriously working on CHMC  approval.
9.	Current Board transferred a total of $1.2 million from operational  account to update RESERVE FUND AS PER ATRENS/VERO RESERVE FUND STUDY
10.	At the end of one year current Board operation till Oct 2013, YCC 42 will be in a position to access $1 million cash.
11.	It is challenge that nobody has proof of one dollar corruption or against current Board just accusations.

YCC 42 community had a habit of accusing Board members but you can compare current Board achievement with any top five condo boards in Canada.
 
No more accusation, we should draw a line some where--------????? No one is perfect we should learn from past

REGARDS:
DIRECTOR YCC 42 BOARD OF DIRECTOR”

Reality check
The board focused on one item and that was to cut costs so they could lower the common element fees. They did great in dropping a couple of very expensive contractors that they inherited from the administrator and they got a huge drop in natural gas prices.

They did even better in getting the City of Toronto to forgive $249,000 in penalties for not paying the water bills for months.

However, they are cutting maintenance, reducing contributions to the Reserve Funds and reducing payments to cut the accounts payable in order to make the lower fees possible.

Political stability
The board members may fight among themselves for the power to grant contracts, provide jobs and over the harassment of the contractors and employees but I believe that they have the political support of most of the owners.

It is hard to beat a board that has cut the maintenance fees by 20%.

Bigger picture
Everything else is not so rosy. The increase in property values shown on the MLS listings may have more to do with there being not being any Power of Sale units on the market than anyhing the board did. (YCC #60 right next door also had a 30% increase in property values.)

Then there are the maintenance, social and political problems that have plagued this corporation for the last 20 years. As I show in the next two pages, this board has inherited a big bag of problems that needs to be addressed.


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