State of Communities: Prince George's County, Md. Water Emergency Alert ...

State of Communities: Prince George's County, Md. Water Emergency Alert ...: If you have not already heard Prince George County Maryland is facing a water emergency. PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY, Md. (WUSA9) -- W...

September is National Preparedness Month

This September: A Time to Remember. A Time to Prepare.
By Darryl J. Madden, Director, Ready Campaign

This September will mark the ten year anniversary of 9/11 and we ask you to take time to remember
those lost as well as time to make sure you are prepared for future emergencies. September is National
Preparedness Month (NPM), which was founded after 9/11 to increase preparedness in the U.S. It is a
time to prepare yourself and those in your care for an unexpected emergency.

If you’ve seen the news recently, you know that emergencies can happen unexpectedly in communities
just like yours, to people like you. We’ve seen tornado outbreaks, river floods and flash floods, historic
earthquakes, tsunamis, and even water main breaks and power outages in U.S. cities affecting millions
of people for days at a time.

This September, please prepare and plan in the event you must go for three days without electricity,
water service, access to a supermarket, or local services for several days. Just follow these three steps:

1. Get a Kit: Keep enough emergency supplies on hand for you and those in your care – water,
non-perishable food, first aid, prescriptions, flashlight, battery-powered radio – for a checklist of
supplies visit Ready.gov.

2. Make a Plan: Discuss, agree on, and document an emergency plan with those in your care. For
sample plans, see Ready.gov. Work together with neighbors, colleagues and others to build
community resilience.

3. Be Informed: Free information is available to assist you from federal, state, local, tribal, and
territorial resources. You can find preparedness information by: Accessing Ready.gov to learn what to do before, during, and after an emergency Contacting your local emergency management agency to get essential information on specific hazards to your area, local plans for shelter and evacuation, ways to get information before and during an emergency, and how to sign up for emergency alerts if they are
available

Contacting your local firehouse and asking for a tour and information about preparedness
Police, fire and rescue may not always be able to reach you quickly, such as if trees and power lines are
down or if they're overwhelmed by demand from an emergency. The most important step you can take
in helping your local responders is being able to take care of yourself and those in your care; the more
people who are prepared, the quicker the community will recover.

As FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate reminds us, "Individuals and families are the most important
members of the nation's emergency management team. Being prepared can save precious time if there is
a need to respond to an emergency." For more information on NPM and for help getting prepared, visit
Ready.gov or call 1-800-BE-READY, 1-888-SE-LISTO, and TTY 1-800-462-7585 for free information.

This September: A Time to Remember. A Time to Prepar

There's a national level emergency event planned are Condo & Hoa's included

National Level Exercise 2011 (NLE 2011) is scheduled for May 2011. The purpose of the exercise is to prepare and coordinate a multiple-jurisdictional integrated response to a national catastrophic event.

NLE 2011 is designated as a Tier I National Level Exercise. Tier I exercises (formerly known as the Top Officials exercise series or TOPOFF) are conducted annually in accordance with the National Exercise Program (NEP), which serves as the nation’s overarching exercise program for planning, organizing, conducting and evaluating national level exercises. The NEP was established to provide the U.S. government, at all levels, exercise opportunities to prepare for catastrophic crises ranging from terrorism to natural disasters.

NLE 2011 is a White House directed Congressionally-mandated exercise that includes the participation of all appropriate federal department and agency senior officials, their deputies and staff; and key operational elements. NLE 2011 will focus on regional catastrophic response and recovery activities between federal, regional, state, tribal, local and private sector participants.

Click for more information. 

If you interested in getting your community involved please visit our website and register so we can include your community.

International Community Association 

Distributed Generation Workshop “Generating electricity near where it will be used”

Distributed Generation Workshop “Generating electricity near where it will be used”

Saturday, May 7th 2011

9-130 pm

Walter E. Washington Convention Center

Come to learn about how we can together reduce our utility bills and make DC just a bit greener.

Question for DC At Large Candidates~ Do you or don't you support.

To learn more please look at a blog post we published way back in 2007 about this which means this has been brewing for years and no one has done a thing accept pass the ball on the owners that brought homes in these communities.

State of Communities: Beware of the Ides of March in CIC land.

State of Communities: Beware of the Ides of March in CIC land.: "So if you think about the state of the condominium market right now with both FHA & Fannie Mae basically not able to back loans in what 100 ..."

Community Manager Project: We sent our plan to Startup America

Community Manager Project: We sent our plan to Startup America: "So Friday Feb 11th we where able to pitch our idea to several officials while attending a Tech@State event at the State Departme..."

DC Electric: District Public Service Commission Pepco hearing T...

DC Electric: District Public Service Commission Pepco hearing T...: "We have to start with the fact that Pepco doesn’t recognize homeowner & townhouse associations as a Party of Rights*. This is evident by loo..."

Storm Water Ponds are back! Everyone run it's an unfunded mandate.

This caught our eye and we know what has to be done and why is it won't be solved in Maryland or any other State anytime soon.   In the 1999 Clean Water Act there was a provision for Storm Water Management Pond testing and standard levels that must be maintained.    The only problem is that no one ask or even thought for one minute about who owns the majority of them.

Did you guess?  If your read our StateofCommunities.org blog you sure would know the answer.   Common Interest Communities are the owners of these in most cases.  The Congress that decided to establish the testing and maintaining of these ponds~ don't have to pay the bills in these communities.  We're pretty sure that most CIC have no idea about this, most Counties are scrambling to comply with the State's demand, and the FEDs are fining everyone.

Here is the major issue. Almost no one has put all the pieces to the problem together into workable solution.  If the Associations don't have the funds and most will not even have a clue about this issue how are they going to fix them. Another Special Assessment because the Congress stuck them with an UNFUNDED MANDATE

BTW all to often these ponds where already environmental hazards created by the developers. Which once they reach the magic number of units sold leave they get to turnover the community, aka they bugged out. Leaving a new group of homeowners with a lot responsibility including these ponds. The cycle just gones on because of the nature of board turn over,  new local officials and a lack of any communication plan.

BTW the Gov response is to fine them except in the case of Montgomery County and we believe a possible solution.

Way back in 2001 then Montgomery County Chairman Ike Leggett had the vision to put together legislation that allowed the County to fund a program in which the County could enter into an agreements with these communities to take over roles mandated by the Clean Water Act. We recommend that anyone that is serious about cleaning these ponds take a look at it. BTW all new CICs in Montgomery County are required to have this agreement in place.

We think the hallmark of this was a parthership with Community Paperworks and the Department of Environmental Resources. It was established to help with the assembling of the land records, communication to the associations, running meetings to approve the agreements. In some cases extra work is required because the developer many not have deeded the land over to the community or the records where never filed in the first place.

This is something that clearly is still vexing Maryland and every other state and it is time to look into this solution that what  established in Montgomery County and both the International Community Association and Community Paperworks look forward to working with all officials and CICs;  So that Clean Water is not an unfunded mandate and a working solution is co-created.

Maryland’s Montgomery Council hearing on Pepco 2/7/2077

Considering 3 out of 4 homes in Maryland fall within a Common Interest Communities “CIC” (aka Condominium, Cooperative Single Family Homeowner & Townhouse Associations.)  and utilities specifically electricity is one of the largest budget item all CIC’s face. This is a huge issues to these communities and considering the cost bore by them as rate payers and the treatment they presently receive, or lack of it, from Pepco we need to get them some help.

Our partner, Community PaperWorks, Inc. “CPWI” has been working with Montgomery’s CICs  since CPWI opened it’s doors in 1989. Through this long history we have seen whether this is by design or neglect that Pepco doesn’t recognize CIC’s as a Party of Rights.  Where are the representatives to speak on behalf of these Communities?

We at the ICA are specifically interested in plans by Maryland’s public officials with regards to Pepco’s restitution of funds to be paid back to customers and how it will be administered.  In-light of the fact that Pepco treats most of the CIC’s as a hodgepodge of different baskets:

1. Consumer accounts for the owners units,
2. Business accounts for common electrical utilities
3. Street lights are in yet another account  

We worry that Pepco and public officials will by this confusion be prevented for analysing the true cost to the CIC. ERGO, the CIC’s will not get the correct restitution of funds.   

An ongoing tangential issues is that this present system prevents these CIC’s from gaining discounts that energy users of similar aggregation profiles have been getting for years like AOBA, local & federal governments, and of course big business which we believe would improve if Pepco faced a real Distribution competitor in this marketplace while not being discussed today it is an issue and need to be addressed sooner then later.

Until these issues are resolved the Condominium, Cooperative, Single Family & Townhouse Associations will continue to receive a very bad deal. For the amount of money these owners & their CIC’s pay in Pepco bills it would behove both business and community leaders to start working with CICs.  If left in the dark owners will be compelled to vote politicians out for not being “Community Candidates.” As we already saw in Maryland’s last election this is on the ballots even if Pepco is not the politician.

We know that the issues of the day and tomorrow will not resolved until the inequities are identified and made to reflect the highest Marginal Utility of Public Good.   The International Community Association and our partners like CPWI stand ready to work with CIC Boards, Community Leaders, Pepco and Maryland’s Public Service Commission.

With the new year upon us we want to reflect on the Condo Crisis

The Condo's that have been damaged by the recent actions of the very agencies that are citing them for nothing less then a lack of money. That is what the end of this blog is going to state. Let get to how they don't have any moneny.

Yes the Condo's have no reserves because not enough people are paying their required dues. This includes the EVERYONE, Banks, Fannie, FHA, Freddy, Investor owners grandma & pa.

Why because the markets are not addressing this issue let alone discussing it. So when someone says X cities condo market they are not including the financial health of the Condos. Hence 25 thousand Condominiums just lost FHA underwriting. Which means that what 200 thousand (+) units are not as sellable.

BTW I have to ask. In the Condo's that are delisted and FHA is the owner via default of their note holder. How is FHA going to sell their units if they cant finance them?

This will be the same undoing for all the Condos in the US that are required to recertify with Fannie, which they where by eoy 2010. If the condo is not getting all the assessments in the checking account they are not paying all of the bills.

The budget of a condo (if it was done right) is a line by line numeric rendering of the cost to run their condo. Each line item corresponds to an obligation sited in the community documents that is payable to a vendor of some sort to carry out at x cost.

So right now FHA is asking about reserves and most communities are just trying to figure out how to keep some utility or another from cutting them off. All they while they face fines from authorities on all levels for not doing such and such mostly caused by not having the funds to do it in the first place.

We need to have an adult conversation with everyone Agencies, Congress, Communities, Developers, Lenders,  and anyone else that feels they have meaning ful input to the realities that these Condo's face aka State of these Communities

BTW if your a Condo and what some help with Community Collections on Past due assessments try something besides lein & foreclosure to solve this issue and help reward those that are paying on time.

Some big announcements coming

Just wanted to let the world know that we are in the process of recruiting some brilliant minds to our board and as consultants and look forward to seeing them become active agents in the great change we think is happening in communities.

One of the roles we believe that the International Community Association will serve is to offer a collective wisdom (that has real world experience in Common Interest Communities) to the communities themselves as well as local state, federal and international agencies, governmental bodies, and NGO's.

This is not just a US issues after spending two days with members of the US Government, World Bank and various international NGO's at Tech@State / CivilSociety 2.0 it is plain to see that development the world overs is being carried out as common interest communities.

The ICA is now ready to serve and offers over 100 years of direct community service to draw from to help the condominium, cooperative, single family & townhouse owners the world over.

We call upon District CIC's to stand and speakup

The Public Service Commission and the Utility Pepco have not done one impact study or even one outreach attempt to the Boards of Condominiums Cooperatives, Single Family and Townhouse Associations about the impact of these smart meters or any other issues that the Public Service Commission has ruled upon over the last few years.


To these Common Interest Communities CIC!  


We are calling up on the residents of CIC to meet with us before this meeting and then to attend it with us as a collective voice of the Common Interest Communities of the District of Columbia.    DC CIC's need to be part of this process now and any going forward that are going to have any impact on their collective and individual Interest.


The ICA provides that vocie and if you are reading this because of a recent mailing a special welcome.  Now join us.




Public Hearing Notice 
October 27, 2010

Council of the District of Columbia
Committee on Public Services and Consumer Affairs
Notice of Public Roundtable
1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C. 20004
____________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _
ABBREVIATED NOTICE 

COUNCILMEMBER MURIEL BOWSER, CHAIR
COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC SERVICES AND CONSUMER AFFAIRS

Announces A Public Roundtable

On 

PR 18-1070: Board of Industrial Trades Richard Jackson Confirmation Resolution of 2010, 

PR 18-1071: Board of Industrial Trades Shell Carter Davis, III Confirmation Resolution of 2010; and 

Deployment of Advanced Metering Infrastructure in the District of Columbia (Smart Meters)

On

Wednesday, October 27, 2010
1:00 p.m.
Room 500
1350 Pennsylvania Avenue NW




If you are interested in participating please let us know about your community by answering a few questions and reviewing some information we have about the public service commission and their interactions with CIC in DC. We will have a downloadable white-paper on Smart-meters and CIC's before the meeting. 




InternationalCommunityAssociation.org/dcsmartmeters 

ICA is launching a Community Manager Project

CommunityManagerPoject is gong to be a major undertaking of ICA and we welcome anyone to ask, comment or participate if you think the idea of training Veterans to be community managers is one of the best ideas in a long time then what are you waiting for.  Join US.

Just to catch folks up on our Vet's job plan.

Our major project is the Community Manager Project.  This started for us back in the Bush Adm in when our Chairman Nelson Jacobsen was asked to take part in the Coming Home Project under VA Sec Nicholson.   During this project Nelson presented information about the need to fill thousands of vacant community manager positions.   More importantly that some kind of training be establish, since there is no academic or technical training available to independently train American job seekers in Residential Property Management.
Our present plan is to select a community college in the Washington Metro area to start a two year program. We will be looking to specifically bring Veterans into this programs.  With the idea that these individuals have already received excellent training and that with the additional skills and knowledge the CMP will impart to them will make them highly sought after candidates for a occupation that will serve them a lifetime and the communities that their VA loans are placing them in now.   Visit our page for even more news

State of Communities: Now even HUD knows that there are BIG problems in Communities.

State of Communities: Now even HUD knows that there are BIG problems in Communities.


We started back in 2002 talking about this and still to this day no one in DC is paying a lick of attention.

#hud #va #fha #fannie #freddy #cic

MetropoltianCloud - Google Docs

MetropoltianCloud - Google Docs

The International Community Association is pleased to blog that it will be working hand, blog, website and twittering to help everyone understand the Business of Cloud Computing and the value of the MetropolitanCloud.com

Our first Youtube. There will be many more.........

The Storms of 09/10 and the impact on communities.

The ICA is currently working with a number of communities on storm damage to unit owners homes and common area elements that one in particular stands out as the worst train wreck of conditions and the best possible community  to deal with them  we are going to follow this community and hopefully make some of their hurdles a bit lower and help other community that are dealing with or will be dealing with at some point in time.

So for the sake of naming the community I will call them CondoX  and for the time being well just leave it at CondoX.  Basically the names are not important its the issues and answers that we all can gleeme from this experience.

So please  back to see what happens and we'll be providing a link to a separate site for the fully immersion into CondoX

Declaration of ICA

ICA, Intercommassoc International Community Association

www.twitter.com/intercommassoc

Represents the owners in Condominium, Cooperative Townhouse & Single Family Homeowner Associations from all over the globe.