If you hired someone to paint the inside of your home and he left one-half of a wall unpainted, would you pay him until it was completed? If you hired a painter and, after painting one wall of the fifteen you contracted with him to paint, he asked you to pay the whole bill, would you?

Of course you wouldn't and neither would I! Yet, that is exactly the way we in Baywinds are paying our landscapers.

We homeowners fill out those little pieces of paper called work orders and send them to our management company and we wait, and we wait, and we wait. After we lose patience we call our management company and they tell us they will check up on the problem. They do, of course, because it is their job to do so and they tell us that the landscaper has agreed to do it by such-and-such a date. The date often comes and goes but the work does not get done. However, each month our community presidents agree to pay the landscaper for his contract work because he is inexpensive, because he is no worse than another landscaper, because the Board is fearful of having the landscaper quit, and because the current contracts we have are "standard" contracts offered by that landscaper. Does this sound familiar to you?

In another life, I managed contractors for a computer company that hired me initially to negotiate contracts and automate the process of corporate real estate management. I have a procedure that works and I wish to propose it to the homeowners here in Baywinds.

It will require discipline from all concerned. The homeowner will have to fill out a work order when there is a problem, will have to keep a copy of that work order, and will have to be prepared to go to a neighborhood HOA if it takes longer than 30 days to complete.

The Management Company shall report outstanding AND completed work orders to its neighborhood’s Board or relevant committee one week before the bill is due to be paid. The Management Company, at the Board's direction, will inform the landscaper of any open work orders that might cause his bill not to be paid. The Landscaper will have to PROVE to the Management Company (possibly with help from the Board or an appropriate committee) that it has been done, or else the bill will not be paid.

If the Board’s best efforts to get the landscaper to complete stuff on a timely basis fails (for example he fails two months in a row to complete 30 day old work orders), I suggest that the Board modify the DATE when the bills get paid as follows. Let us say, for example, that he regularly submits bills on the 1st of the month and they are due by the 15th. If he fails to complete all work orders one month or older twice in a row, then he does not get paid until the following bill is due and only if he has completed all required 30 day old work orders. This part may need refinement if your landscaper does not adhere to a regular billing schedule.

Since landscaping issues remain one of the most consistently voiced problems for every neighborhood and the Master, I suggest that each Board report in detail to the community every month what is being done to get landscaping problems resolved. If a specific neighborhood homeowner is having problems, we should work as a neighborhood to help resolve it and the knowledge of that problem, as summarized in the Board Minutes, will achieve the required communication and will help us to empathize with his complaint and the Board’s effort to resolve the issues.

One other vehicle exists for each Board to exert maximum pressure on the landscaper to complete work orders. Any time he fails to complete the work orders within a month of receipt or he succeeds in completing the work orders within a month, it gets published in Baywinds Breeze and on the BaywindsLife website. This may be harsh, but neighborhoods will benefit if we find a way to make the landscaper toe the line. Each President will benefit if the landscaper toes the line. The landscaper will benefit if he is successful and even the management companies will benefit if he toes the line.

This process may sound harsh, but it is necessary to push onto the landscaper the responsibility of seeing to it that work orders get done in a timely basis without the Management Company or the Board repeatedly asking. The landscaper will be VERY successful in Baywinds if he delivers.

In summary, here is the total procedure I suggest:

1. One week prior to landscaper’s bill being due, the Management Company shall issue an Open and Completed Work Order Report showing the date of the work orders that are open and those that have been completed during the previous 30 days.

2. The Management Company, at the direction of the Board or the appropriate committee of the Board, shall inform the landscaper of any work orders remaining open longer than 30 days that will cause his bill not to be paid.

3. The landscaper shall PROVE to the Management Company (possibly with the Board or the appropriate committee's help) that the work orders have been done prior to the due date of the bill and the Management Company shall provide a written statement to the Board whether it is satisfied that everything 30 days old or older has been completed.

4. If the Management Company has gone on record that all work orders have been completed, then, and only then, will the landscaper’s bill be paid.

5. If the landscaper fails to complete all 30 day old work orders two months in a row, then payment shall not be made until the following billing cycle.

6. Each month the Board shall report the results of this effort to the community at the Board meeting and incorporate that report in the Minutes. Members of the community who believe that they have work orders not completed within a 30 day period shall be present at the Board meeting or else notify the Board about the failure in writing 24 hours in advance of that Board meeting. Any discrepancy between the report from the Management Company and the homeowners shall also be incorporated into the Minutes. The Board shall notify Baywinds Breeze and BaywindsLife© to publish the results in a format agreed to by the Board.

I invite any and all of you to comment on this procedure.

We must get beyond these frustrations and dissatisfactions. Let us work together to find a satisfactory, workable, and economic solution.

Albert Kolkin