Tiny fliers appeared under many doors this weekend.  While unsigned, they use the same fonts, writing style, and printing technology as a certain former director’s namesake newsletter.

While small in size, these fliers packed in quite a few pieces of information.  We will try to address the other (mostly dubious) items in a future post, but the most significant was a prediction of a 10-15% maintenance increase.

If true (and based on recent financial statements, we believe it is entirely possible), this would be the largest maintenance increase in quite a few years.  It will be painful for everyone.

That said, we do not see what other choice the Board has.  While Boards in recent years have taken several commendable actions to decrease expenses in certain areas (investing in our own boilers for the first time in the co-op’s history, bringing security in-house, etc.), many non-controllable expenses continue to go up.  Property taxes alone went up over $4MM (net of abatements) between 2008 and 2015.

During that same period, maintenance collections increased by less than $2MM, a cumulative increase of only 16%.  There were many years during that period where the Board staved off maintenance increases by spending flip tax receipts, flipping apartments, spending down reserves, and avoiding paying off debt.  But their avoidance of maintenance increases has left us with an empty operating account, outstanding debts that are as large as ever, and a big gap where predictable recurring expenses have increased by millions more than predictable recurring revenues.

So as much as we hate to see an increase in our monthly bills, we believe the Board will be doing the right thing if they take action to plug the hole left by their predecessors and balance the budget.