Dear Homeowners,
Long Lake Heights Estate is a bare land strata including 229 individual lots. Within Long Lake Heights, there are two smaller stratas (Widgeon – 18 lots and Starling – 8 lots) that contribute a percentage of their monthly fees to maintain our common property. There are 20 suites in the strata and the homeowners pay double the monthly fees. Taking into consideration the above, 275 units are sharing the cost of maintaining our common property.
The strata fees charged are mostly used to maintain the strata’s common property/infrastructure including roads, sewer, water, streetlights, and our landscaped and forested areas. The fees are also used to provide homeowners with a variety of additional services to support the safety of our homeowners and enhance our common property.
Some benefits of living in our bare land strata include:
- • sense of community where everyone is responsible for following bylaws specific to our community, and have opportunities to receive and share information through communications systems such as our Facebook page, our website and email communication as required through our management company Colyvan Pacific,
- • greater sense of security as our strata is private property with appropriate signage and limited through roads,
- • the beautiful land on which we live with fabulous views, surrounded by nature with access to Long Lake,
- • regular maintenance of common property and 24/7 response to emergency situations involving common property,
- • private waste management that maintains a consistent schedule of same day pickup all year except around Christmas,
- • private snow removal that far exceeds the snow removal provided by the city of Nanaimo that uses a three-tier priority system where residential cul-de-sacs and dead-end streets are priority 3,
- • specific free services to homeowners to support the maintenance of their private property including FireSmart bins in the Spring, Fall Bin Cleanup and Invasive Species disposal twice a year, and
- • having a management company and strata council that responds to concerns of the homeowners, e.g., installation of street/traffic signage to decrease vehicle speed, Children at Play (just delivered), traffic mirrors installed at blind corners, Private Property signage installed to increase safety and deter trespassers, removal of unsafe trees on common property, Bear Alert pamphlets delivered to all properties, and the list could go on.
Because our fees support many of the services that Nanaimo homeowners pay for through municipal taxes, we know our taxes are less, but it is difficult to provide specific information as to how much money is saved by living in a bare land strata. To give us a partial idea of savings, a Nanaimo resident who pays $3700 in taxes per year after grants did provide us with some information to work with:
City of Nanaimo VIS 830
Garbage $20 p/m $15.40 p/m
Water/sewer $50 p/m $41.00 p/m
Snow removal ? $16.34 p/m – This is based on this year’s proposed budget of $50000.
On a final note;
The current strata council encourages you to attend our next AGM on Tuesday, November 14th with Registration starting at 5:30 pm and the meeting starting at 6:00 pm. The AGM will be held at The Oliver Woods Centre in Monarch Room 1. It is a great opportunity to build on our sense of community by meeting fellow homeowners, getting to know your council members and our strata management. The council is always looking for new homeowners to get involved either on council or on one of our committees. If you are thinking of putting your name forward to run for council or to join one of our committees, you might want to refer to our website for further information. You will find the Terms of Reference for both the Grounds and Communication Committee (GCC) and the Capital Assets Replacement Committee (CAPRC) on our website.
Looking forward to meeting you next Tuesday.