Dear Directors:
Season's Greetings! December finds us with the majority of Annual Meetings completed, budgets finalized and 2010 coupons ordered. The shortened hours of daylight cause us to yearn for a long winter's nap, but with seasonal family and company activities, that won't be happening anytime soon.
Plans are well underway for the 2010 State Convention of the Community Association Institute (CAI) scheduled for March 12, 2010 at the Rock Financial Center in Novi, Michigan. We are bringing this news to you early as we strongly encourage each community to plan to send representatives to this important conference. For the first time, the "ABC's of Community Association Volunteer Leadership" will be taught in a private session during the conference. Nationally certified instructors will be speaking at this instructional event. The normal fee per person is approximately $90 dollars (includes a text book) for this course but on March 12th, the course fee is included in the admission fee to the conference. This opportunity is too good to pass up so we are encouraging each community to plan to send 2 or more representatives allowing at least one person to attend the conference and breakout speaker sessions and the other one to attend the ABC course. Your manager is your first person to notify if you have interest.
Cummings Property Management has representatives on the State CAI Education Committee so as updates become available, we will be sure to notify our Directors. It is the goal of the Educational Committee to provide Professional Development Training six times each year, geared at the professional property manager. We are excited to be in the forefront of this innovative educational movement here in Michigan.
Our procedure for handling automatic payments known as ACH will change effective January 1, 2010. The change automatically allows withdrawal of any additional assessments from the owner's account at the due date for such fees. This change may or may not affect every community but we have followed this process in the recent past. However, this process will now be company wide going forward. To disclose this change, we will be sending a letter to everyone on the ACH process to inform them of the change.
In October and November, numerous communities reviewed our new Association website option with many communities expressing an interest. We will be following up soon with the communities that took the time to investigate the website. Should a representative of your community not been able to review the website, I encourage you to visit our demonstration website for a better understanding. To do so, go to www.CummingsManagement.com options: Our Services>Online Web Services>Grande Villas.
Our office will be closed on December 24, 25, 31 and January 1 in observance of the Holidays.
Wishing you and yours a joyous Holiday Season,
Kay | 
