Maintenance and Landscaping joint meeting minutes 8/11

In attendance: Vicky (for the first few minutes), Lila, Joe, Cheryl, Kellie (notes), Michael a (first hour),  Sara, Christy (at 7pm), Alex (at 7pm)

Topics:
     Maintenance portion: Common House Linseed Oil dilemma,New roofing vendor Roof-It Next Steps,  Stucco prioritization,  Parking Lot sealing,Drainage around Unit 19, Drain Inspection, Site Maps of Main Water Shut offs, Safety Updates, Ticketing system, Deck cleaning/caulking 
    Both: Work Parties/Priorities for next 3 months
    Landscaping portion:

Decisions:
   Choose Roof It to wrap the wood fascia with bent aluminum fascia on the back of Chelsea E's unit (19)

   Start with  $3k on tree work in November and  December using Arbor Concepts.  Christy is ok being the liason. 

Action Items:

 - Action Item: Kellie will let Kathleen and Starla know they are good to go continue linseed oil,  just remove all the steel wool first. They do not have to put it all back. Can use a wine corkscrew to remove!

  -Kellie will reach out to Roof Doctor about warranty info

  -Lila will talk to Laraine to ask if she can call landscaping companies for a walkthrough and give a quote for grading around unit 19. 

  -Kellie will look for flags in workshop, and ask community to mark their water main shut off

  -Lila will talk to her neighbors and see if there is appetite to purchase solar lights

  -Lila will look into getting a "slow, children playing" sign from Salt Lake City. 

 -Kellie will put out a reminder to deck owners about deck cleaning

  -Kellie and Cheryl will go on lowes and purchase Large and mid size loppers. One set of brush trimmers and pole saw from ego. 

-Cheryl will research to see if we can utilize maintenance budget for tree work as well. 

-Kellie will reach out to Vicky and Mike Wason to see if they can be the liason with Roof It, and schedule them to install aluminum over the fascia in the back of unit 19.

Open Tasks: 
-Trim the rose bush on the east entrance

*

Maintenance Portion of Meeting:


Vicky expressed her appreciation for the hard work done while she was away. She and Mike W are retired and available to help. Also noted that their son Paul could be asked to take down some of the tree debris behind their unit if he has help.

Common House Linseed Oil dilemma

       Steel wool is flammable, introducing that and linseed oil is a huge fire hazard. We have carbon steel wool which is more flammable, stainless steel wool is less of a fire hazard but doesn't remove the hazard entirely. What about spray foam? That also presents hazards.  We don't have to solve this now, but we should not put linseed oil on beams without removing the steel wool first, which is really time consuming (can be done with the aid of a corkscrew). After the beams have at least 48 hours to dry, the steel wool can be replaced, but that will be a lot of work, unsure if that's necessary. There is steel wool in beams in front of common house, in front of Lynda's, Lil and Joe's, possibly Starla's.

Back porch and dumpster enclosure has already been linseed oil-ed.
   Action Item: Kellie will let Kathleen and Starla know they are good to go continue linseed oil,  just remove all the steel wool first. They do not have to put it all back. Can use a wine corkscrew to remove!

New roofing vendor Roof-It Next steps

  Cheryl is overwhelmed with coordinating maintenance tasks and is asking for help from the community. She has researched, vetted, and done walkthroughs with several replacement roofing vendors, and needs help with a few tasks for them. Roof It asked for everything that falls under warranty from Roof Doctor and let him know. Our first project for them would be the bent aluminum fascia in the back  of chelsea E's unit, which. This would also be a good time to test if we like working with Roof It. Roof It said most of the fascia around the community can simply be painted, and he can refer us to a good painting company (Unforgettable Coatings, the company that did paint for us in the past, was dissappointing).

   Do we choose Roof it as our vendor? They had a highest Better Business Bureau rating, good google reviews that said Roof It was very responsive, which is a high priority for us. Our large spend process asks for three quotes, but that is very time consuming,likely won't exceed the large spend process threshold ($1,000). Roof It inspected every roof and are prepared to give us a report. We offered to pay them for inspection, which they refused saying they would prefer to partner with us and not necessarily charge us for everything they do. 

Decision: Choose Roof It to wrap the wood fascia with bent aluminum fascia on the back of Chelsea E's unit (19).    

Tasks:
 -  Need to get warranty information on roof (labor, shingles, roof membranes, etc). Concerned that roof doctor may not be responsive to emails because of how our relationship ended. Kellie will reach out to Roof Doctor via email, if that doesn't work we will need to go through work invoices to see what the warranty is for roof work, labor, and materials.

Action items:

  -Kellie will reach out to Roof Doctor about warranty info

  -Kellie will reach out to Vicky and Mike Wason to see if they can be the liason with Roof It, and schedule them to install aluminum over the fascia in the back of unit 19.

 Stucco prioritization

    Next building to be worked on is Bldg M (units 16 and 18). Coleman will notify TJ construction and get them to come out.

Parking Lot sealing

     Michael A having issues getting companies to respond to him, but will keep trying. This is difficult time because school is starting for him, but he will try to get this in place before winter. 

Drainage around Unit 19 
   Unit 19 is in the middle of a pit, essentially, and when it rains or snows she gets pools of water on all sides of the unit. Cheryl tried to contact landscaping companies in the spring to get a walkthrough and quote, but never had calls returned,  likely because it was their busy season. Laraine talked about taking this over, but Cheryl hasn't had time to get together and pass along the information.  Should be pretty simple to pass along info, since this project is at the very beginning stages.

Action item: Lila will talk to Laraine to ask if she can call landscaping companies for a walkthrough and give a quote for grading around unit 19.      

Drain Inspection
     We haven't cleaned the drains in a couple years, and now would be the ideal time of year to do so, but we also don't know the state of the drains on our property or what issues to look out for.  We need to get someone to scope the drains and give us an evaluation.  We will delay drain cleaning for now, and prioritize getting inspection done. Then  we can priorize cleaning on based on what the inspection returns. 

Task: Need to find vendors to do a drain inspection . Is there a city entity who can do the inspection ? 
 ****Note: after meeting, maintenance has decided to not put the call out to the community for help contacting vendors at this time. Will use maintenance members for now
 

Site Maps of Main Water Shutoffs
     We want more site maps for reference, which Michael A can do, he just needs to know what we want. First we need to know where water main water shut offs are, as we had two recent examples of residents having difficulty finding theirs. Mcihael says construction drawings only has the approximate location. We will need to find and mark the physical location of each unit's main water shut off and then Michael can create a map. If we can get even half of them marked, that's a starting point. Decided we will get flags, ask people to mark their water mains and Michael can make a map. 
   Action Item: Kellie will look for flags in workshop, and ask community to mark their water main shut off

Safety Updates

   Lila suggested that solar lights, like those on the border of the common house lawn, could be placed around the community to better light the common path at night. She wonders if other would be interested in purchasing in bulk and placing them in front of their units?

   Action Item: Lila will talk to her neighbors and see if there is appetite to purchase solar lights

    Concern expressed about an individual from outside community who rides his bike at high speeds down community path, isn't responsive to neighbors trying to get his attention.
Action Item: Lila will look into getting a "slow, children playing" sign from Salt Lake City. 

       

Ticketing system

For small repairs reported around community: do we want a ticketing system and if so what do we want reported?  When do we handle ourselves vs call in a handyman? We have a google form, but it's fallen out of use and it sends a report to a separate spreadsheet that needs to be checked.  Decided that yes, we do want a ticketing system through discord, where we are keeping track of most maintenance items. We can use the current google form as the basis for questions, but add a segment where reporter can suggest photos. 



   Deck cleaning/caulking 

  The following units have decks: 1, 5, 11, 15, 16, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, and 26. It is best practice to clean under the deck once a year, ideally when the weather is dry and debris can be blown out easily. Now that summer is ending, it's time to follow up with units with decks and make sure they complete the cleaning task (with the except of units 11, 16, and 18 who were recently cleaned/replaced.  Will need to pair up more knowledgable / experienced people with deck owners who have never done it before. Cheryl bought wasp dust to kill wasps within 3 days. Note: we should also be caulking around decks at every opportunity, including when decks are being cleaned. Regular caulking is necessary to keep water from infiltrating.

Action Item: Kellie will put out a reminder to deck owners about deck cleaning

Work Parties/Priorities for next 3 months

   It has been helpful to look a few months ahead and try and coordinate scheduling of large work parties with other committees. This helps foster a sense of collective ownership of large projects, and also to avoid overscheduling. What work parties are needed in the next few months?

     Deck cleaning- people normally do these on their own, but for people who need help with their deck cleaning, is it easier to schedule a weekend in advance? Table for now 
    -Caulking? Make it part of another work party?  

Landscaping work parties? Need to clean up trees to 6 ft up, pull out weedy trees before they get too large to remove ourselves, and prune overgrown bushes and shrubs. 
Decided to do this work party in Oct
    Action Item: Kellie will anounce work party to community first week of october
    Task: look into wood chip rental (diamond?)

What equipment should we get:
   Large and mid size loppers. One set of brush trimmers and pole saw from ego. 
     Do we need a wood chipper? We keep having branch piles left around, which are a fire hazard. We don't want to have branches go to waste, can we find a wood chipper for our needs? Would need to buy, store, and maintain it, and workshop storage is already tight. Decided to rent one for now.     

Task: trim the rose bush on the east entrance

Action Item: Kellie and Cheryl will go on lowes and purchase Large and mid size loppers. One set of brush trimmers and pole saw from ego. 

Landscaping portion of meeting:

Review tree bids
  Christy has reached out to Arbor Plus, Arbor Concepts, and Organic Choice, we received bids from all but Arbor Plus  (screen shots of bids are attached to these notes and available on discord). There was some difficulty getting other companies to come here because Wasatch Commons has a reputation of being a bid factory. Note: Wild Bill's isn't certified, it is not recommended we work with them in the future.
       Christy had experience with Arbor Plus, but hasn't heard back from them.  Wasatch Community worked with Organic Choice in the past.  We have experience with Arbor Concepts.  Each company was old to prioritize human safety, structure safety, and tree health. No one saw any "five alarm fire" problems, mainly trees that need more care and attention. This should be part of a yearly budget for tree care. Trees need their canopies lightened so limbs don't get so heavy they break off. Some companies suggested giving growth restrictors to trees like Siberian Elms to keep them from growing exponentionally, impinging on structures.  It was also suggested that if we apply some disease treatment to some of our ailing trees, the tree can start to heal itself.

What's our next steps? We have $5k in the budget for landscaping, and we could do research to see if we can utilize any of maintenance's funds for this as well. We need to decide between Organic Choice and Arbor Concepts, then get on the schedule.  Alex reminded us we had to spend nearly $14k on elm removal years ago because we had neglected tree care for so long. Recently, however, we have kept up with tree care so we are in a better position now. Arbor Concepts gave us detailed notes and has familarity with the community. 

Decision: Start with  $3k on tree work in November and  December using Arbor Concepts.  Christy is ok being the liason. 

Action Item: Cheryl will research to see if we can utilize maintenance budget for tree work as well. 


NEXT MEETING: Tuesday Sept 8th 6-8pm