Bringing A Knife To A Gunfight

I’ve Met The Enemy, and He is Me


I honored my commitment to be standing in front of the pool house yesterday morning at the appointed time. Actually, I was there at ten minutes before 8 AM.

Surprisingly, everyone was on schedule for a change. I just hate working for free and having to wait on all of the paid people to get there fifteen minutes late, which is usually what happens.

Miss Property Manager was second to arrive. I think that I’ve finally gained her confidence, although I only trust about half of what she tells me right now. (More on that later.)

Being the self-important smart ass that I am, I’m carefully leaking certain Condo Nazi “political” information to her on a “confidential basis” just to see where it ends up going. The good news is that right now I find that she will listen to me when I tell her something important, and that’s all that really matters.

As long as she manages to keep the swimming pool clean and the Condo Nazi’s and their inane rules off my back and away from my grill, I’m happy as a Pig in fresh mud.

Any way, Miss Property Manager told me that she called the mean old bastard retired pawn shop owner Condo Board President to invite him to attend our little meeting, but he was out of town.

Good.

He’s continually a pain in my ass and he knows zero about these buildings except for eating, sleeping, and taking a crap in one of the units for the past twenty years or so.

Then she said that he told her that he (the mean old bastard retired pawn shop owner Condo Board president) didn’t want me to attend the meeting.

Maybe I’m just confused…I thought as committee chairman I was IN CHARGE of managing issues when it comes to property maintenance. The mean old bastard retired pawn shop owner lovely gentleman asked me to head the “maintenance committee”, but now he is lamenting me wanting to “run everything” when it comes to maintenance?

Maybe I’m better suited to chairing the swimming pool committee or the geriatrics committee or something.

After the arrivals and introductions, we proceeded to spend an hour and one half ambling over the property with a civil engineer that Miss Property Manager had invited to give us a quote on doing a site topography survey and producing a revised site rain water drainage plan.

I’ve been laughing in my hat ever since the last board meeting when they decided to go the consulting engineer route.

You see, our condos are situated on a flat piece of dirt about four feet above sea level at high tide. The site topography map wouldn’t have any lines on it unless you used a contour increment of three inches or so.

The real problem is that when we get twenty inches of rain in fifteen minutes, some of the old ladies have been getting their orthopedic shoes pumps wet walking to their SUV’s in the parking lot. A couple of ground floor condos have actually had water enter through the back doors when we’re in monsoon season.

I tried to tell the board last year that all we needed to do was get a contractor to bring a half dozen Mexicans laborers and a tractor with a blade and backhoe in here and spend two or three days cleaning out the swales and existing drainage routes that have been allowed to silt in and grow full of grass over the past thirty years.

But nooooooooooo, if doing nothing won’t solve the problem, they decide to turn 180 degrees around and run out and hire a Professional Engineer.

It turns out that Mr. PE, the civil engineer, was about as enthusiastic as I was about the situation. I got him to admit that the cost of the topography survey alone would run in the TENS of THOUSANDS of dollars, and then we’d have to pay for his design and drawings, and then we’d have to hire a contractor to implement his design…

and then if he was going to guarantee his work we’d have to pay one of his guys to stand around on our site each and every hour of each and every day that work was going to be done.

So much for having a new roof this year, but we’d have the fanciest DIRT on Saint Simons Island when the dust finally settled.

After Mr. PE left, I had a final conversation with Miss Property Manager and another member of the board that is a professional home builder. I reiterated my idea to simply cut out the existing sod, re-grade the contours of the dirt, and replace the sod.

Then we’d step back and see what happens in the next rain storm. I figure that for $5,000 we can move a hell of a lot of dirt, and it's clear to me personally that I could manage the project and make a major improvement if they would just let me.

Now I suspect that as usual, now MY idea is THEIR idea, until if and when it fails. Then and only then I'll own it again.

Oh well, at least they can’t fire me, and they can’t cut my pay because I’m already working for free.

I have to be the poorest philanthropist on the entire planet.