President's Message - May 2006

Norman Salisbury
President

Dear Fellow Owners:

Your Board of Trustees recently sent to you your annual budget and assessment. Please carefully review the information and keep it for your files. Your Board also alerted you to two very significant policies that have been approved in concept and will be reviewing specific language for changes to the Rules and Regulations.

The first policy is designed to require owners to obtain and keep personal liability and personal property insurance. As we previously discussed, the insurance policies of the Association do not cover these and the Declaration of Condominium limits the Associations liability in these matters. If you do not have this type of insurance in place, please obtain it. Our experience indicates that the premiums are not expensive.

The second policy is proposing to eliminate work requests from owners and residents for our maintenance people to only respond to requests that are of an emergency in nature. Their time is frequently consumed by these requests to fix thermostats, running faucets, heat and AC units, changing lights and filters or other miscellaneous work requests that are the responsibility of owners and residents. We wish to focus their time and energy exclusively on the maintenance and upkeep of our operations, our plumbing and mechanical equipment and our common areas. Please do not call or contact them for work or maintenance that would or should require the services of plumbers, electricians, painters or other outside handymen.

There has been some recent confusion regarding the operation of our fire alarm system. Your Board strongly encourages all residents to not take any alarm for granted and ignore it. There will continue to be frequent alarms that are not emergencies. We attempt to verify all alarms as quickly as possible and alert you. It is never prudent to not respond to an alarm. In addition, please be aware that when a smoke detector or pull station has an alarm, our system only sounds an alarm on the floor of the alarm, the floor above, and the floor below. Only a rare general alarm will sound the alarms for an entire tower. We have also verified that when the system is in alarm, the stairwell doors all automatically unlock allowing residents to go down the fire exit stairs and re_enter the building on lower floors. It is not necessary to exit the building by walking all the way down to the street level.

Please be aware that next month, we will be conducting a garage power wash and cleanup during the weekends of June 10th and June 17th. Residents will be requested to park in the public garage during one of those two weekends while the cleanup and powerwash is conducted.

Our angle valve replacement program is still in process and we are about half way to completion. If you signed up for the replacement but have not heard from our staff, please be patient the work is still in process and we will get to your unit.

We have learned much in recent months regarding our Legionella bacteria. The Health Department and our consultants informed us long ago that complete eradication is almost impossible but that the bacteria can be controlled. Our monthly testing indicates that our periodic "cook & flush" operations are effective in keeping the bacteria to levels well below the OSHA thresholds that warrant further action. HOWEVER, the effectiveness of these treatments is highly dependent upon the level of participation of residents. It is incumbent upon all residents to assist by actively participating in these cook & flush procedures and by flushing even more frequently any water outlet or faucet that has been unused for several weeks. This is extremely important for your own protection and is very beneficial to our common water system.

Thank you all again for your cooperation in our common endeavors to keep American Towers the wonderful vibrant community we all enjoy so much.

Sincerely,