Rimfire Lodge Condominium Association, Inc.
(Mailing address) PO Box 48, Elkins, WV 26241
(Physical address) 6175 Snowshoe Drive, Snowshoe, WV 26209
www.RimfirelodgeatSnowshoe.com
October 31, 2022
Dear Rimfire Lodge Homeowners,
Ski season will be here before you know it! I am trying to make good on my promise to provide more frequent communication to our owners with this newsletter. As always, a lot is happening with our building. First of all, thank you to all those that attended our annual meeting in person or virtually in August. The dinner on Friday night that was hosted by Jeff and Sherrie Moss was amazing. I want to thank the two of them for not only the dinner, but all they do for our building. The minutes from the meeting are on our website as well as the approved budget. The bullets below should fill you in on several things that are going on, have been completed, or to be done leading up to ski season.
• The most important thing to pass on right now is that the board approved the installation of the final 56 fireplaces this fall. The fireplaces have been delivered. The 56 units will be installed in two phases, each about two and a half weeks long. All those being affected are going to be notified by Meredith, if you have not been contacted already. During the install, each condo will be out of service and will not be available for use. This project is scheduled during the fall shutdown, so impact to homeowners should be minimal.
• The semi-annual inspections and servicing of the fireplaces, HVAC systems, water heaters, and toilets has been completed for the fall shutdown. Our maintenance staff replaced filters in the heating and air conditioning systems, cleaned and checked the fireplaces, inspected the water heaters, and checked toilets for leakage or constant running. Since the way Rimfire is now billed for water has changed from a flat rate to how much is used, we are identifying those units that should be repaired. If you have a toilet that needs to be rebuilt or replaced, we will let you know. We are putting the overall results together and will be contacting those needing to have work completed. One thing we are not doing is replacing batteries in smoke detectors as some have long life batteries and some do not. In a few years when we replace all of the detectors, we may start handling that. Please contact your maintenance provider to take care of your smoke and CO detectors.
• Since we are talking about inspections, I need to make sure homeowners realize that you and/or your rental management company are responsible for in-unit maintenance. The Rimfire HOA has personnel for servicing the common areas with a few exceptions. If you have Snowshoe as your rental management company, please call Homeowner Services for repair issues with your unit. If you have another rental management company or self-manage, you need to have an agreement or contract witha maintenance company or person. Some things end up coming back to the HOA, but you need to go through your rental management firm first. Rimfire HOA is still short staffed and not able to handle in-room repairs. Jeff and Sherrie go out of their way and want to make sure everybody is happy. If it is something the HOA is responsible for, they will do everything in their power to help. If there is an emergency that can cause damage to the building or yourself, by all means, call them, they will do whatever they can to minimize the damage.
• We have our new physical address for Rimfire Lodge. This is to accommodate the 911 system. We still have to update it with Google and several other sites, but it will be up soon. The address is 6175 Snowshoe Drive, Snowshoe, WV 26209.
• As most of you are aware, it is extremely difficult to find people to hire. Snowshoe Mountain is more remote than where most of you normally live making it nearly impossible to find skilled labor! If you have somebody that you think would be a good fit for our maintenance team, please have them contact us. We offer competitive wages, a great benefit package, and a place to learn a tremendous amount.
• Also, during this fall shutdown, we will be doing some electrical system preventative maintenance to the main switchgear and electrical panels, which will have power off to the entire building for parts of one or two days. We will keep you up to date on this as soon as we get it scheduled.
• With fall shutdown upon us, there typically are multiple people getting ready to do some upgrades and improvements to their unit. There is now a contractor and vendor policy on our website. Please make sure if you are having work done on your unit, that you and your contractor are familiar with the policy. One important thing for them, and you, to know is that they cannot leave or store any debris or raw materials in the garage or any other common areas in Rimfire. If this happens and we have to handle something left in the garage or another location, you will be charged for the infraction as well as fines and possible loss of garage homeowner parking privileges. We also encourage you to get a copy of their license and have both you and the Rimfire Lodge Condominium Association (Rimfire HOA) listed as an insured with your contractor’s insurance company.
• The new doors at the lower lobby (Snowshoe Drive) entrance and the Village entrance are installed. I think we have worked out most of the kinks on this project. The doors are much tighter than the old ones and should help with energy savings.
• The bike racks have been upgraded. There are now 16 spaces. The previous set up really just didn’t work. If somebody locked their bike on the end, it prevented everyone else from getting another bike in unless you were an Olympic gymnast and weight lifter combined. Due to the limited number of spaces, please do not leave bikes for extended periods. We will be looking at ways to further increase the storage capacity in the future. We have added additional lighting and now have a camera in the bike rack area to help make your bike more secure.
• A weather station for the roof of Rimfire is being installed. We will link the data to our website as soon as it is active. We hope to have this up and running before ski season.
• The Facebook page for Rimfire homeowners is not an official communication page of the Rimfire HOA. If you need to ask or request something of the HOA, you need to do it through email and not through the Facebook page. We will not honor requests through that page. However, if something is going on, to notify people quickly, we may still put something up on the page.
• Snowshoe has approached us about installing an information kiosk in our lobby. There will be maps and other commonly asked information as well as the “What’s happening this week” information that used to be on a flyer. We will keep you informed as we hear more.
• We have entered into an agreement with CityNet to upgrade our wifi throughout the building. We went with a five year agreement. For the geeks out there, we are going to a mesh system by Cisco. All of the routers in the rooms will be replaced with much faster equipment. You will be able to travel all over Rimfire without dropping your wifi signal similar to a cell call. At least that is what we are hoping for!We may have to add a few more routers after the system is installed. Since your smart TV’s and other smart equipment are tied to one router now, your devices will have to be reconnected to the new system. Like everything else now, CityNet is having trouble getting all of the equipment they need. We will keep you up to date when they have information with the projected delivery and installation date.
• The first floor of south building renovation is nearly complete. (Finally!!!!) We are still working on the ramp hallway between the lobby and the first floor. This floor was used for trying multiple designs and styles. It was our canvas for the work of art that is now the renovation layout for Rimfire. On top of that, we have had to deal with being short staffed by two people for quite a while now. Jeff, Sherrie, and Kelly have done an amazing job to keep the building looking amazing and keep up with all of the repairs, cleaning, and other projects that have come along with a building that is over 23 years old.
• Based on all of the work on the first floor of the South Building, a bid spec is available for 2nd thru 4th floor renovation of south building. Meredith has sent it to several contractors and I am sure nobody will be surprised when I tell you that we have not gotten any bids. We have money in this fiscal year to renovate the second floor as per our plan to do one floor a year for the next three years. If there is a significant savings to do two or three floors, we will consider using funds from the Maintenance Reserve. If we can get people hired, we may be able to save money and do the work in house.
• We are having problems with owners loaning their RFID garage keys to renters and service providers. We will be deactivating those cards. Only family is allowed to use the homeowner RFID key card.
• Key card access is administered by Snowshoe. They have control of the software and do not allow us access to it. It is difficult at best to even get keys for contractors doing work for the HOA. It is even harder to get keys for our maintenance and housekeeping employees. The HOA has NO control over how they administer the system and how keys are handed out. If you are self-managing and your guests are complaining about getting key cards, you have to go to Snowshoe. There is nothing the HOA can do about this. I am sorry, but there is no reason to contact Meredith about this as she cannot get Snowshoe to do anything differently. This system and agreement with Snowshoe have been in existence since the building was constructed, so in other words, long before any of the current board, HOA management, or even the current Snowshoe management has been in control. Snowshoe maintains 24/7 access to personnel to make keys. If you are using Snowshoe for your rental management, part of the management fee includes making keys for your guests. Since Snowshoe employs people to be available for this purpose, it does not make sense for us as an HOA to pay for people to be available night and day. Maybe we can consider this later on, but the cost is staggering to have someone at a front desk. We will try to get Snowshoe to improve their service through a collaboration between the HOA’s in the Village. We will be requesting Snowshoe to come up with a better method to ensure people not on the Snowshoe rental program get better and more consistent service with keys being made, supplied, and guests being given keys that are approved by self-management condos. We are hoping that we can encourage Snowshoe that improving that service will also improve reviews for the entire mountain. With that in mind, we are not going to be allowing multiple entry methods through the doors. We have been in contact with the manufacturer of our lock system. They do not make or allow keypads to be included with their system. There is no way to make a keypad to work on our system.
• We are looking for volunteers to serve on the Governing Documents Revision and Updating Committee. Please email with a brief statement with your background and experience that would assist you in this endeavor. This will require a bit of work as our documents are quite dated. We have already established several goals for the committee. All of that information will be presented as the committee is formally started.
• Two electric vehicle (EV) chargers are being installed in the garage near the garage door entrance. These are supposed to accommodate most, if not all EV’s. Charging will require a credit card to use the chargers. The systems are through “Blink”. If you have an electric vehicle, you probably want to go to the website for Blink and sign up for an account. This will make charging both quicker and cheaper. We will let you know as soon as they are on line.
• We have received seven more of the bigger and better luggage carts. They are being prepped and will be in service before ski season.
• For those of you that have been reading my letters for years, and those that are new owners and just seeing these updates, I have been giving you information on saving money by monitoring your HVAC usage and temperature settings through the use of a wifi thermostat. I have a Honeywell thermostat in each of my condos and my electric bill now averages $26 per month in a deluxe studio and $29 per month in a one bedroom. Temperature settings are no longer left on extreme hot or cold settings when there is nobody in the room in our units. That is how we are saving so much. Wifi thermostats run from$80 on sale up to, well, a lot. The typical cost is between $100 and $150. For those of you that are not equipped to install one or just do not have the time to get up to the mountain to do it, we now have a recommendation for an electrician that we have been using for the common areas in the building. The company is EMTEC and is owned by Joshua Bond. Mr.Bond can be reached most efficiently by email at mrbond7@live.com. You can also try either texting or calling his cell at (559) 895-1229. I can safely say that I highly recommend his work. I do not have an estimate for installing a wifi thermostat by Mr. Bond, but will try to give that information after he has installed one or two. It will vary. The easiest and least expensive will be one bedroom units or any unit with a vertical ptac. The original construction included running a thermostat wire with sufficient numbers of wires to make installation quick and easy. Studios and junior studios are not so lucky. A new thermostat wire with more copper pair will have to be run to the temperature sensor on the wall between the horizontal ptac and the bed. It is usually located between the couch and the night stand next to the bed.
• This letter already has a huge amount of information and is getting way to long. In the next letter that I have already started working on, I will include a breakdown of how the budget is broken down in income, spending (in general groups like utilities, maintenance, and repairs). I will also give a breakdown in the fees associated with a unit from electricity, SRCD fees, amenity fees, property taxes, and HOA dues.
I want to apologize for this letter taking so long to get out to everybody. There is always a lot going on at Rimfire! I will try to get another one out with more updates before ski season. If you have questions, please email Meredith or myself, or any other board member for that matter. We will try to get you answers as quickly as possible. One more quick thing, if you have not seen Rimfire at Christmas (between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day), you don’t know what you are missing. The building is always amazing and people come from all over to see it! Make plans to visit and you will not be disappointed.
Sincerely,
Kevin Elvin, President, Rimfire Lodge Executive Board