+34 695 223 964
On the 22nd of March we will have the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of our urbanisation. At the meeting, the President, César Contreras, will summarise the most relevant events of the last 12 months. The audit will be explained as well as the accounts and what the neighbour’s money has been spent on. Matters of general interest will be discussed (matters regarding a certain area or property will be dealt with at the office of the urbanisation) and we will choose, from amongst the candidates presented, the owners that will represent us until March next year, a total of 7, who will fulfil all the decisions adopted at the AGM.
The owners of communities are represented by their President, who will have the right to vote. Anyone unable to attend can give their proxy to another person to act on their behalf. We hope you can all attend.
President’s report:
Dear owners:
As you all know, this has been my first year as president of the E.U.C. of Sitio de Calahonda, and I could not begin my report without saying that it has been a privilege to be at the head of this organisation that does not stop working to make our urbanisation a wonderful place to live in. Throughout this report, I will try to convey everything that has been done in the last year to achieve this, as well as comment on some of the new projects for this urbanisation.
At the beginning of the year we had a meeting with the Town Hall, in particular with the Mayor Juan Carlos Maldonado and some of the councillors of Ciudadanos with the intention of signing a collaboration agreement in which we asked them to assume some minimum services that we understood should be municipal. Services such as cleaning, maintenance of parks and gardens, self-protection plan, pests and maintenance of pavements and asphalt of the roads, plus the public lighting of the streets that they are currently already taking care of. We also proposed that they take over the construction of the road that connects Calle Jose de Orbaneja with Avda de Europa, and that these works be linked to the construction of a sports and leisure area “for people” in the area of the dog park. This area is very large and would allow creating an area for walking with space for football, basketball and French bowls. After several meetings, they answered that they would not sign anything and that therefore they would not assume anything. The reason for this is that they planned to carry out audits to know the status of the urbanisations and that depending on the state they were in they would begin to receive them. Although we were informed that it would be ready by the end of December, to date we are still waiting.
On the other hand, we asked for the possibility of signing another agreement that would enable us to continue doing the pavements that we had planned. Unfortunately we didn’t get a positive answer until January this year, although we presented all the documentation in March 2017. This is the reason why these projects will be carried out in 2018, charged to the budget of 2017.
Also, as we did with the previous governing teams, we have requested that they repair the access to the beach in the area of Calahonda Beach. I think it is the only access to the beach in the whole of Mijas that is not fixed, they just fill it in with gravel and when it rains it just continuously breaks up and washes away. It is unpleasant to see how people have to access the beach by the stream, sometimes through water and canes. They have not answered about this either. We still hope that something will be done when the coastal path is completed, although we have verified that there is nothing detailed on the pathway project in that area. On our part, we will continue insisting.
We carry on suffering with many problems and damages caused by wild boars, they run free through our community destroying both private areas and public parks. As on previous occasions, the Town Hall takes no notice of our claims and just looks the other way and doesn’t even reply.
More or less, the same thing happened with the Christmas lights, after not allowing us to put Christmas lighting last year, this year, once again we asked what was required in order to have Christmas decorations. An email arrived saying that they would give us some decorations for us to use, as long as we installed them ourselves. Later, they told us that we wouldn’t be getting any decorations after all, and that’s why we had to install them ourselves, but they had to be decorations without lighting on Avda de España, and the lit up Christmas signs at the entrances, had to be connected to private electric meters.
To top it off, I can’t go without mentioning that in 2017, the Social Council of Mijas was created, an organisation that allows the needs of citizens to be transmitted and decisions to be made for their solution. Its constitution was approved, without even having invited us and approving in a plenary session to leave out all the urbanisations, since only the neighbourhood associations are allowed to form part of this Social Council. We do not understand how the main urbanisation of Mijas, with about 7,000 dwellings (I say this because of the IBI that we generate), can be left out of this Council. We have presented allegations in order to be included, but up to date we haven’t had a reply.
After this long prologue on the Town Hall, I have to say that unfortunately we have taken a big step backwards in the relations with them. We do not receive help with cleaning (the sweeping machine doesn’t come). The basic income program, which in previous years helped us with two workers for 6 months for the self-protection plan, has not appeared. The streams, in which we do not have competences and therefore we cannot clean them, have barely been touched, except in some sections because they were dangerous.
Leaving behind what concerns the Town Hall, and returning to our urbanisation, to begin with and in terms of security, I will only mention that the contract has been renewed with the company Franjus Security, S.A., as we are very satisfied with their work. Several of their guards have received special mentions from the Civil Guards and the Town Hall for their effort and collaboration in security tasks. It is true that during the summer we had a series of continuous robberies, carried out by a criminal gang that lived near our homes. After an intense work done by our guards and the Civil Guards, to which we are especially grateful, they were arrested and we have not had any more incidents of that kind since. On this contract, and, amongst other requirements, we requested the acquisition of a defibrillator and that they gave the appropriate training to the guards for its use. It’s a very simple piece of equipment that can save someone’s life in the event of a heart attack. It is already available and has already been used on several occasions.
As for Environment, as in previous years we are working on the maintenance and cleaning of green areas. We have three children’s parks and over 500,000 square meters of green areas, most of them full of trees that delight our life here. We even have interpretive trails of our fauna and flora that we take care of and maintain ourselves.
In this matter we can point out that the parks have been improved a little with some gravelling of the grass areas, improving the paths to make them more passable, like the one on Avda. de España where we have recently created some concrete paths. Some sections of fencing have also been placed in areas where wild boars are crossing, with the intention of limiting their passage and causing less damage both in communities, on the golf course and public parks. Remember never to feed wild animals, it only attracts them even more to stay in our areas and on the long run and as we are verifying, they only bring problems.
It is important to mention that we continue having some problems with people leaving garden rubbish on public roads and on some green areas. We are working hard to minimize these incidents and signs have been placed at the authorised points. Any garden refuse deposited outside authorised points will not be collected and in addition the depositor (gardener or owner) can be fined by the Local Police or Mijas Environment Department as it goes against municipal ordinances. We have already had some cases. If you notice that someone is not following these rules, do not hesitate to notify our guards.
Should you carry out a large pruning job and need to deposit the refuse on the street temporarily, pass by the office where you can fill in a form for authorisation and we will arrange the collection on the agreed days.
As for treasury, I would like to mention that we have a favourable audit report and that we enjoy a high percentage of collection, so the situation is good. There is an item on the agenda that will explain the economic balance.
Last year’s AGM mentioned the possibility of doing something about the property on Avda de España – Calle Sevilla, because it was abandoned and in a terrible state. This will no longer be necessary as it has finally been acquired by new owners and we hope that throughout this year they will repair and refurbish it for use.
I hope that with this small preview you will be able to get an idea of the year 2017 and prepare any questions you may have for the day of the assembly, where we will certainly try to answer.
As for me, I only want to thank both the management team and all the workers of the E.U.C. Sitio de Calahonda for their daily effort in resolving our projects and problems.
Cesar Contreras-president