residents group

Strategy & Business Plan 2008

DISCUSSION PAPER

We are now reaching a crossroads in our development as a Residents Group and we are
asking for your views and inputs on how we progress from here.

We now need to agree our strategy, what we want to achieve this year, and, just as
important, how we are going achieve it.

To take stock, we are only several weeks old, indeed our AGM 2008 came a couple of
months too early for us, but nonetheless we have achieved :

• Membership of thirty two apartments.

• Three of the six Committee positions filled : Treasurer, Secretary, and

Operations Director.

• None of the four support committee positions filled.

• Three of the eight Capitaino’s appointed, Khios, Samos & Tasos.

We need to fill out the rest of the Committee but I think we have exhausted our
current gene pool, so we therefore require more new Members from which to identify
possible candidates.

To do so we need to actively recruit new members, particularly full time residents as

these are the people we need to serve on our Committee for the next two years.

However, we need to act on several other issues concurrently while this is all going on,
and we need to prioritise these.

We need to decide tactics as each one may require a different approach.

As we see it, the issues outstanding can be grouped as follows :

• Accounts & Budgets

• Security

1. Urbanisation

consisting of thirty five Owners on the

Urbanisation

secretary will fleming mips, aib, treasurer reina maconie

operations director dr. mark wilkinson miee
 residents group
2. Apartment

• Maintenance and Repairs

1. Normal Maintenance and Repair items

2. Extra-ordinary Maintenance and Repair items

which due to either design or building faults are being debited to the
Community Accounts. In other words we should not be paying for them
and we should be re-claiming these at a later stage.

At the AGM AEA committed to provide a separate list of works that were
required as a result of poor commissioning and handover, poor design, or poor quality
installation.

For example, for those at the AGM this was when the discussion centred around the
lifts and the holes in the lift shafts allowing in rain.

AEA said that THYSSEN had agreed to recommission the lifts. That should mean a
credit to the accounts for the Maintainence paid to date.

(This same process was committed on other items also. We need to ensure that is in the
Minutes and acted on)

• Edificio’s Issues – items specific to individual buildings and not covered

elsewhere.

• Community Services

• Capital Improvements Programme

• The Missing Bits - facilities and features in sales material for the Urbanisation
but not built.

• AGM 2009 We need to ensure we are all across in advance in March 09 so we

can prepare and ensure the Agenda is what we want rather than have it dictated
to us.

The whole situation is compounded and frustrated by four other factors :

consisting of thirty five Owners on the

Urbanisation

secretary will fleming mips, aib, treasurer reina maconie

operations director dr. mark wilkinson miee
 residents group
• The total inability of either RYF/AEA to recognise our concerns or indeed to
even understand the rudiments of a meaningful customer service concept.

• Nobody at RYF/AEA who has direct hands on responsibility and authority to

expedite outstanding matters.

• The length of time it is taking to complete and finish the development

• that we have several full time residents who have been living on site for a couple
of years and who have now quite understandably reached the end of their
patience and goodwill.

An unstable and fraught cocktail of matters which we now need to tackle.

In the Committee’s opinion, we don’t yet have any firepower to take this straight to
Court today, so in practice we are left with the following Business Plan/Battle Plan
which we would like you to comment on :

1. First of all, we need your approval to myself, Mark and Reina to get down and dirty
with RYF/AEA, from receipt of the AGM 2008 Minutes, on items contained in the
Community Master Log.

(I will look after the non operational aspects like AGM 2009 etc., Mark on Operations
and Reina on Accounts and Budgets.)

2. We separate out and box off Urbanisation Security and The Missing Bits for special
attention.

• We now officially notify RYF of our non acceptance of this state of affairs – no
sabre rattling or dramatics – but it legally puts this into play in a non
confrontational manner.

• We continue to build up the database and register of all Owners who have been
affected by The Missing Bits.

While that’s cooking away nicely on a very low heat, we concentrate on extracting all the
repairs and work from RYF that we possibly can over the next two years on a
professional and cordial basis and working to our Master Log.

3. We now request a Structural Engineer’s Report from AEA.

• With any luck we won’t have to pay or fight for it as AEA have suggested this
very same thing for Duquesa Village, so we appear to be pushing an open door.

consisting of thirty five Owners on the

Urbanisation

secretary will fleming mips, aib, treasurer reina maconie

operations director dr. mark wilkinson miee
 residents group
• That will also confirm and identify those further items which are of a design or
building fault which we can strip out for further action.

• It will also identify those items that we know nothing about at all but may show
up in the years ahead and affect our property values.

4. We build up the Community Master Log, as we are doing, and keep a record of every
request, every chase up, every reply, every action.

• For that purpose the Committee have created a separate email address,
crdgrg@aol.com which the Secretary will cc a copy of every email on
CRDGRG/Coto Real business sent to either RYF or AEA.

• We want every Member to add crdgrg@aol.com to their email address

book – then please send a copy of your own emails that you may send to
RYF and AEA.

(This will be very very important in future if we ever, regrettably, have to take legal
action)

5. We professionally and firmly start to hold RYF/AEA to account for each and every
item, starting from receipt of the official Minutes.

• I will liaise with our Operation Director, Mark, and Capitainos

Debbie, Steve and Aurelio, on the structure and system we need to
achieve and report on this.

• I hope to be over four times a year, and I know Mark is a frequent

visitor.

• Until we identify and appoint our Chairperson, I am happy to devote

one day per trip for a meeting with RYF/AEA both in office and on-
site to chase up all outstanding items. Mark, I’m sure, will do the
same when he is over.

• In addition Debbie and Aurelio have been co-opted to a regular

committee set up between RYF/AEA and Coto Real to identify and
fix outstanding items.

We intend that everyone from the Committee meeting or corresponding with RYF/AEA
use only the latest edition of the Log, and since we will be working from the same hymn
sheet, the process should be consistent, prolonged, and a huge advance to what has been
happening to date.

consisting of thirty five Owners on the

Urbanisation

secretary will fleming mips, aib, treasurer reina maconie

operations director dr. mark wilkinson miee
 residents group
6. The Secretary will find the email addresses of the most senior persons who are
dealing with our Account that have real authority at both AEA and RYF. We will also find
the email addresses of the relevant board members at AEA and RYF and cc a copy of
each correspondence to them for added measure and pressure.

7. We will be constantly updating and refreshing our Community Log noting all actions
and sending it to RYF and AEA once per month asking for their formal progress.

8. Every Owner, every month, individually sends an email to both RYF and AEA (with a cc
copy to crdgrg@aol.com) asking them what progress has been made since last month.

• (we will supply you with the email addresses and reminders)

9. And so we work at this for the next two years and when everything has been wrung
out as far as we can, then we can be more aggressive and confident over any
outstanding items that have not been resolved to our satisfaction :

• we are much better established and stronger as a Group

• indeed we should have morphed into the Management Committee by then and
have access and authority to use Community Funds to pay for legals.

• we have given RYF every opportunity and time to rectify all outstanding items
over a reasonable time period.

• we have a written account of all issues stretching over two years using both our
Master Log and our email box – this will be invaluable as a resource.

10. We use 2008 as a lost year for sorting all these teething problems, and then pencil in
2009 for more sexy and exciting bits, like improvements, changes and additions to our
Urbanisation and ideally how we want it run.

11. We devise a Recruitment Plan to recruit new members during 2008.

(We have just this weekend placed a small announcement in Manilva Life looking for new
Owners.)

We appreciate that this all sounds doom and gloom but in reality it is no different to
that of thousands of other developments.

consisting of thirty five Owners on the

Urbanisation

secretary will fleming mips, aib, treasurer reina maconie

operations director dr. mark wilkinson miee
 residents group

Indeed, we are in a much better position than most but that won’t stop us from being
the best development that we can be.

We thought it might be a good idea to come up with a Coto Real Duquesa Golf
“corporate” logo that we could use on letterheads, business cards, t shirts, web site,
entrance sign, staff uniforms etc. etc. Even underwear for the really keen. Roy Milos
202 could even have umbrellas for his Golf Association.

It would give us a sense of ………., well, a sense of Community maybe ?

I’ll circulate several professional designs and we can all vote.

When our own Management Committee is elected we gift them the logo etc and it
becomes the official emblem for the Community.

WE NOW NEED YOUR INPUT SO AS WE ALL HAVE A CLEAR AND

PRECISE PLAN OF ACTION FOR WHEN THE AGM 2008 MINUTES
ARRIVE.

consisting of thirty five Owners on the

Urbanisation

secretary will fleming mips, aib, treasurer reina maconie

operations director dr. mark wilkinson miee