For Householders, Blainroe Estate                               

From Terry Neill, chair – Blainroe Estate Management Company board

May 3^rd 2022                                            

BEMC status update

This is a status report following the May meeting of the board of BEMC.

May meeting of the 2022 BEMC board

The meeting took place at 5pm on Monday May 2^nd in the Blainroe Pavilion

Amanda Collins, Pat Hinkson, Philip McEnroe ,Katie Mooney, Gordon Murray, Terry Neill, Craig Whelan and Robert Patton attended. They were joined by Marie Byrne, Bernie Nelson and Billy Nelson

There were apologies from Anne Nugent

The meeting lasted 2 hours and virtually all of the time was spent on the Blainroe planning initiative which was discussed initially in April.

Planning for Blainroe’s short, medium and long term

Robert Patton leads the initiative which aims to focus on the short, medium and long term issues and opportunities to be addressed in maintaining and – where appropriate – enhancing the foundations and facilities which make Blainroe Estate special.

15 different areas (*) were identified and agreed in April. Each board member took responsibility for producing a 1-2 page document for the May meeting, structured thus

• Summary
• Description of Issues and opportunities
• Short term priorities
• Definition of Success
• Summary of Costs and Benefits
• Actions for moving forward
• Specific next steps

All board members delivered on their commitment for the May meeting. It’s work in progress, but we now have a next step in thinking about Blainroe and its development.

(*) The areas include: The long term financing of Blainroe, Future management and staffing, The future of Blainroe energy, Funding ideas – other than the service charge, Board recruiting, BEMC systems and IT, Ideas for future facilities, Ideas for the Pond area, ….. and several more.

Different scenarios will be explored. The board understands that- as ideas, priorities and plans emerge – there must be wide consultation with householders about benefits, costs, risks and priorities. This will include, in the short term a survey of householder views.

Why is this initiative important?

Recent Blainroe house sales are in the range €200-400,000. With other assets, that places the asset value of the Estate in the range €35-50 million – the housing wealth that we own together.

We need to be thoughtful about how we maintain, and where possible , enhance the Blainroe environment – both for current enjoyment and for sustaining the value of our houses.

We are all grateful for those who have managed and stewarded Blainroe assets over many years. We have a healthy balance sheet, but our key infrastructures (especially water and sewerage) are over 40 years old. There is a potentially malign scenario within which our current sinking fund could fall significantly short of the funds necessary to rebuild or regenerate Blainroe infrastructure.

We need to consider the challenges and how we respond to them, as well as generating and considering ideas for sustaining Blainroe and making it an even better place.

Work in progress, but the BEMC sees it as vital work. We will report further as progress is made.

Other business – a brief formal BEMC board meeting

The last part of the meeting was a short BEMC board meeting. There were no major issues to be considered: various items of routine correspondence were reported; finances are being soundly managed; some draining problems in the Monk’s Glade area are being investigated and are being followed up

The meeting closed at 7pm.

The next BEMC board meeting will be on Tuesday June 7^th