Accounting Practices in the Utilities of Hunter Creek

A blog versus email because of its transparency, it levels the playing field. It encourages me to be more factual and gives anyone the opportunity to respond and call me out on wrongs. Quite often I hear stories about the disarray at employee housing HOA's here in Aspen. I would like to tell a story that reflects otherwise, at least when it comes to accounting practices.

As part of my own investigation as a recent homeowner in Hunter Creek, I was looking into our utilities - in our case 38% of our recurring monthly bills. I wanted to see how much we spend in amounts of money, volume or energy quantities as a function of historic precedence. I must say how much I appreciate the forthcoming of our management company to give me a look into our books.

What I found was rather shocking to me. On 1980s matrix printer type font, photocopy of photocopy a hand written ledger. Some were corrected it with white out but no entry had a unit of measure attached. I could not tell if it is in dollars, Btu's, kilowatt hours, miles per

hour or whatsoever. I politely asked: "No spreadsheet?" I was told just as politely:"No spreadsheet…"

What is a spreadsheet?

A spreadsheet is an interactive computer application for organization, analysis and storage of data in tabular form. Spreadsheets are developed as computerized simulations of paper accounting worksheets. The program operates on data entered in cells of a table. Each cell may contain either numeric or text data, or the results of formulas that automatically calculate and display a value based on the contents of other cells. A spreadsheet may also refer to one such electronic document.

Spreadsheet users can adjust any stored value and observe the effects on calculated values. This makes the spreadsheet useful for "what-if" analysis since many cases can be rapidly investigated without manual recalculation. Modern spreadsheet software can have multiple interacting sheets, and can display data either as text and numerals, or in graphical form.

Besides performing basic arithmetic and mathematical functions, modern spreadsheets provide built-in functions for common financial and statistical operations. Such calculations as net present value or standard deviation can be applied to tabular data with a pre-programmed function in a formula. Spreadsheet programs also provide conditional expressions, functions to convert between text and numbers, and functions that operate on strings of text.

Source: wikipedia.

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But getting back to the 1980s hand written letter. I would like to point out that Hunter Creek is a multi acre, 14 building, hundred plus million dollar development in Aspen. And here I would like to refer to my opening statement: Hunter Creek is for two thirds free market development. The disarray is not confined to just employee housing... I only blame myself as a homeowner, nobody else, for these accounting practices. Because it is up to us, us as homeowners to pay attention to where the buck stops.

oorvijg — My mother would grab me by the ear

My mother would grab me by the ear and tell me how this is the most expensive thing I've ever owned, and this is how I do my books? I do agree if we were to pay someone else to do these books and this is what we get, I would ask for my money back. Nobody probably even bothered to have a look in the books before, or run an analysis of future scenarios with utility prices escalating.

I'm glad I figured it out after almost living here for 3 years, how do you feel after 10 or more years of owning here? This is knowledge that we as homeowners need to have and need to know. I think we can do better.