2014 May Hacienda Riquelme Newsfeed.........

Optimistic beliefs?
                                

We are frequently asked how all of the problems arose at Hacienda Riquelme Golf Resort and whilst we are not privy to all that has gone on within the confidential committee meetings, we are aware of the communities culture and substantial resort-wide material matters that exist today.

The presidents and the various members of the committee over the last five years have predominately consisted of retired expats that have very little to do having sold up or retired to the resort.

Back home in the UK, they would have had their own properties and gardens to look after, jobs and a local community to interact within. However, at Hacienda Riquelme it is really a ghost town apart from the two busy summer months when the occupancy of the resort grows from less than 100 residents to over 4,000 holiday makers. This was recently commented on and confirmed by a Telegraph Reporter from the UK.

In some parts of the resort it is so quite that even spotting a car moving within the resort is commented upon in the winter months. It can be days and days before anyone sees a new face or for that matter a friendly face out by chance.

So we have a group of expats that are bored out of their minds wanting to be within a committee to relive their boredom. That would be all well if they were to listen to fellow owners suggestions, ideas and problems but this is not an open, honest and transparent resort. It would also be wise if they had the necessary skill sets to manage a multi-million major operational site however, they do not and are lost with the "keys to the sweet shop" attitude.

Time and time again the committee have been asked to live within its means and not spend more than the cash it receives. To chase aggressively each and every debtor and not leave this difficult issue to Resortalia, a local small administration set-up that really does not have the international or for that matter local breadth and knowledge to chase 1.2 million euros of debtors. A clear example is the polaris debt where upon local sub communities were asked not to budget for these garage spaces in the 2015 community fees yet the general resort budgeted for the substantial town centre community fees for polaris based upon the committee decisions!

For every penny spent the committee really need to understand that it is not their money, their pockets but ours, each one of the 1,864 owners within Hacienda Riquelme. Time and time again they have signed contracts with insufficient local expertise or local benchmarked costings resulting in higher prices and profits to a select few companies

They really do need to engage and listen to the locally born population of owners that do have valid opinions and expertise, they can always help if they are ever called upon to be part of the decision making process.

Instead, their views are sidelined and material matters such as the empty lakes, the gardening contract, the workers compound, polaris strips and local costings are never considered.

We have previously called for a boycott of the Sub Community president positions as taking part in thee elections when the sub community presidents are never listened too or communicated too is really a complete waste of time. It is encouraging to note that a substantial number of owners took part in this boycott with the lowest level of attendance at the AGM in March 2014.

As we move forward the committee will move somewhat in our direction as can be seen by the implementation of the EUCC which we have called for some 2007. Now that this is implemented then perchance the golf course may start to pay their community fees having been a free loader for the past seven years.

The polaris lawsuit settlement was another clear example where the committee took the first offer on the table at 10% of the awards required to correct the building defects. This award now looks to be opportunist as the first instalment was not paid on time in Feb 2014. How on earth each sub community will fix their buildings defects with only 10% of the funds required beggers belief.

In closing,  a lot depends on the golf course company and their use of the water in the lakes to irrigate the golf course.

Now that one of the major lakes is now bone dry then it will only be a matter of time before all of the lakes are empty. Now is the time to grap the bull by its horns and clearly challenge the status quo otherwise we will end up with similar messes as other resorts.

Time will tell……………….. But sadly not within the Presidents monthly newsletters as these no longer appear, we wonder why no comments since December 2013!

So much for open and honest transparency and communications!