17th August 2012, St. John’s Antigua- One of the directors managing the Jolly Harbour residential community has denied reports that Caribbean Developments Antigua Ltd (CDAL) has disconnected sewage services to properties whose owners have failed to pay for community services.
Gaye Hechme, of CDAL, told OBSERVER Media the company sent out notices to a handful of the 800 homeowners who have not been paying for security, maintenance of their properties and surroundings, among other community services.
Hechme said, contrary to another media entity’s reports, “No one’s sewage has been disconnected. Notice was sent out that it would be done but all we want them to do is pay. When they don’t, we CDAL, have to subsidise the shortfall.”
She posited, ”If we don’t pay our utilities to APUA what happens, don’t we get disconnected?”
Meantime, several property owners in Jolly Harbour confirmed Hechme’s comment that disconnections were not carried out.
At the same time, they describe the situation as “complicated” with many saying the community’s managers have also been contributing to the existing problems.
One resident explained, “This problem is being pushed by several individuals who have grudges with the management and they refuse to pay. But, they are refusing to pay because none of us have seen any audits detailing how our community service fees are allocated by the management.”
In an email to OBSERVER Media, another resident stated, “These (problems) have mostly arisen either through straitened economic circumstances, or through retention in long running disputes concerning CDAL’s long-term failure to publish accounts to justify community charge, as required in the purchase contracts of many homeowners.”
A third property owner explained he has been withholding part of the payment and that’s because management has allegedly failed to justify increased prices.
“CDAL raised the price by $39 in 2007 and some people have refused to pay the difference. So it is not that they haven’t paid at all, it is just that they are not paying that extra $39 and I am one of those against that increase because is has to be justified first,” he said.
On the other hand, a fourth community member said, regardless of management’s alleged failure to conduct an audit, it gives no right to any homeowner to withhold payment for services that are still being provided.
Eli Fuller, who also has property in Jolly Harbour, said to his knowledge most of the homeowners have been compliant. He said those who are not ought to pay up, but the managers of the community must also show accountability.
Fuller went on to deny suggestions that disconnection of sewage would lead to health problems.
“Health and environmental problems could only occur if people knowingly use their toilet and bathroom facilities after disconnection. That would be deliberate and wrong,” he said.
Also addressing the issue was former president of the Jolly Harbour Homeowners group, Brian D’Ornellas, who said, “It is difficult and complicated. The relationship between CDAL and the homeowners has deteriorated and has become a big problem. The reason it has prevailed is because the homeowners group does not communicate with the managers.”
He said he hoped the situation would be resolved sooner rather than later.
CDAL declined to respond to homeowners’ concerns over price increases and failure to publish accounts.
Antigua me barn above tells us CDAL owes APUA millions, yet they sent money to try to bail out La Perla, and Kismet tells there are well founded suggestions La Perla drained CDAL of cash. Sounds like money residents gave CDAL to pay the national utility APUA for their electric and water may have been sent off island. If so that is a scandal government should be looking into. CDAL should be made to account for residents payments – and why do APUA not bill Jolly Harbour homes direct (rather than let CDAL handle the money) to make sure the people of Antigua & Barbuda get the money for electricity and water APUA supply Jolly Harbour?
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I hear half the golf course sold (where that money go?), and they try to sell the rest – and then them threaten to shut sewage off from guys that owe a few hundred dollar. Something wrong here.
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Ms Hechme, as CDAL MD, is the public face of the company and as a result tend to take the flack when events like this happen at Jolly Harbour. However, residents are concerned that throughout the ongoing accountability disputes at Jolly, it’s possible that some actions have been guided by other shadowy hands off stage – and mostly off-island. First CDAL was owned by La Perla, controlled by Dutch businessman Geert Duizendstraal Kismet tells us above that both are effectively insolvent. Last year the figure of Mr Albert Hartog suddenly appeared as a major driving force behind CDAL. Mr Hartog sent several direct communications to residents (including a set of radical improvements in homeowner relations and accountability which never happened), then dropped out of public view again. One assumes Mr Hartog would wish to maximise the value of his investment i Joly Harbour. It appears that the influence of La Perla on CDAL may have been supplanted by its Dutch administrator Mr. Bart De Man – and the major interest of Mr De Man must surely be the expropriation of as much capital as can be raised from remaining CDAL asets, in order to gather funds for the La Perla creditors he represents.
What all this means, is that basically, there are forces invlved which may lead CDAL management to actions they would not otherwise contemplate. That does not excuse actions such as the attempted sewage disconnection described here, but it does mean that we may be too hasty in ascribing them to Ms Hechme personally – foreign creditors thousands of miles away just don’t care much about residents of a small Caribbean island. To do Mr Hartog justice, we have heard that he has plans for further personal investment in Antigua – but why has he remained silent on this current issue?
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I can not believe a past President of the Homeowner Association would make a statement that homeowners are not engaged to discuss issues with CDAL. Shame on him as it is funny that he supported the same issues that the current Executive Team of JHHA and the homeowners who support JHHA, which represent around 50% of the 800 villas in the community from has been on the previous blog for the association. The association is very important to the homeowners of Jolly Harbour and at the end of the day, all they are trying to do is get CDAL to provide what our legal covenants all state, audited financial statements and a yearly budget, is that so difficult? Maybe because the homeowners’ money is going not to the services it is suppose to go to, but to LaPerla and their shareholders. Will this ever end? This is a property management company that have obligations to the homeowners, thats right the homeowners to properly provide accounting of their money! If they did that, would you think all this press would even be around? There are a chosen few in the community that have another agenda which is unacceptable to promote a company (CDAL) that needs to do their job as a manager to the homeowners of Jolly Harbour.
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Good explanations!
Meanwhile we owners are constantly being told by various people there will be more development on the place we bought into as CDAL sell of more bits and pieces here and there. And all the time CDAL give no word on this to any home owner. There is no communication from the company we employ.
While continuously there is no respect for the home owner who paid/pays towards the running of the company, many home owners are now asking CDAL to deal with their problems individually. This is ridiculous when there is an established home owner association who has put a lot of hard work into creating one body representing the owner’s best interests. This could, if CDAL really thought about it, make their job a lot easier.
Saying “the home owners group does not communicate with the managers” is TOTALLY misleading and wrong! Their efforts are well documented and saying this is not so is just twisting the facts.
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Quote: “CDAL declined to respond to homeowners’ concerns over price increases and failure to publish accounts.”
Precisely! CDAL just do not see themselves as accountable to the home owner for what they are charging.
This is only complex if you see accountability as difficult. In most places accountability for charging is the norm.
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To understand why some Jolly Harbour residents are saving up their community charge payments for better times instead of giving them to CDAL now, you have to know a few other things – so bear with me hear while I explain.
Sources close to the La Perla administrator and CDAL Directors have suggested La Perla drained Jolly of millions of dollars and left CDAL with nothing to run it on. To that extent we have sympathy with Ms. Hechme’s current problems in trying to keep CDAL going. La Perla and founder Geert Duizendstraal are both effectively bankrupt, so no money can come from them – but CDAL must have big bills, and it’s common belief they owe a local bank $10M.
Homeowners pay Community Charge to cover very specific services, which certainly do not include bills incurred by CDAL for professional services related to development or legal counsel in court cases, or relate in any way to the Commercial Centre or administration of other areas. So where do the get the cash to pay for those? When we hear CDAL owes APUA a lot of money, and La Perla drained CDAL of cash, we wonder whether the utility and Community Charge payments we made over the years have been used correctly, or used for purposes they were never meant and/or sent offshore to try to bail out La Perla. There are also fears that CDAL could still make sales of remaining residents’ facilities, and rumours of La Perla associates putting land on the market.
If CDAL published annual audited accounts, we might see what’s happening. But they don’t, and they don’t even attempt to justify why. So, some residents say “OK, I’m not going to take a risk on our money being used improperly, so I’ll stack up Community Charge payments in my bank until we see proper audited accounts and I know everything is kosher – then I’ll pay them what I’ve saved.” That’s one good reason some residents withhold community charge – and some commentators currently bewailing that action were doing so themselves until very recently when they were asked by CDAL to join the Jolly Harbour Steering Group.
So – the first step to reconciling any of this is for CDAL to publish audited accounts.
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Miss Heschme says ”If we don’t pay our utilities to APUA what happens, don’t we get disconnected?”
It seems that CDAL does not. They are millions in arrears to APUA in spite of collecting the money from the homeowners. But CDAL just send the money back to the bankrupt Dutch people that own Jolly Harbour to pay their debts in Europe.
And Miss Heschme just smiles and does their dirty work. Shame on you!
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As a Jolly Harbour resident, I can tell you there’s a lot more behind this, and CDAL’s trying to gloss it all over. First, as I understand it, if a person won’t pay you, you take them to court. Why has CDAL not taken these people to court rather than take the bizarre action of trying to disconnect a sewage pipe (everybody at Jolly Harbour knows they tried to do so, but failed). Many people received notices of disconnection, and CDAL has mentioned a figure of 12% of home owners not paying – that’s what, 60 houses? If CDAL had disconnected those people, where would their sewage have gone – into the harbour? To say this action did not risk a health issue seems nonsense to me – whoever suggested this juvenile action to them? I sincerely hope CDAL will act like a professional management company from now on, no more sily stunts like this.
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Thank you Observer for a very fair report of the two sides of this debate – I would just like to clarify a couple of points.
First, CDAL have truly reported that they have not disconnected anyone’s sewage pipe. However, what they don’t say is:
1) Residents in arrears of Community Charge were threatened with immediate disconnection in writing, and have email and printed notices to prove it.
2) CDAL did try to disconnect a resident’s sewage pipe but failed, in the course of which they destroyed the garden of an unfortunate lady who had nothing to do with this dispute in any way.
Also, a resident is quoted as saying that ‘..the homeowners group does not communicate with the managers..’. That is misleading – CDAL engineered exclusion of the Jolly Harbour Homeowners’ Association (JHHA) from the Jolly Harbour Steering Commitee, by asking them to sign a confidentiality clause which would have made JHHA responsible for leaks by other Committee members, then CDAL hand picked all the other members of the Committee. Many of these have no representative capacity whatever, unlike JHHA which I believe represents owners of more than 400 Jolly Harbour properties, and is the ONLY homeowners’ representative group there.
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