Workshop on ‘Managing public money’ exchanges ideas on best practices

R K Misra, a successful entrepreneur-turned-politician, recognised the participants as leaders in their communities and encouraged them to be active in ward-level politics.

Residents and representatives of many apartment communities understood the technicalities and exchanged ideas at the workshop. Pic: Krishanu Mukherjee

A workshop on ‘Managing Public Money’ was conducted for Treasurers of Apartment and Villa Complexes in Bangalore on October 5, Saturday. The Workshop conducted by ApartmentADDA – the Online Software for Society Accounting, attracted participation from over 40 Apartment & Villa Complexes, who utilised this platform to share challenges and best practices used by treasurers who manage funds to the tune of multiple crores in modern apartment complexes.

The workshop keynote was an inspiring speech from R K Misra, a successful entrepreneur-turned-active-civic-leader and politician. Misra recognised the participants as leaders in their communities and encouraged them to be active leaders beyond their gates as well, by not only voting but also contesting ward elections.
 
He shared information on the BCLIP (BPAC Civic Leadership Incubator Program). The workshop topics covered Maintenance Budget Structuring, Financial Governance, Vendor Management, Transparency to Residents etc.
 
It also covered ambiguities in Service Tax for residential communities. Clarities were arrived at related to TDS, Income Tax etc. Interesting case studies were presented by management committee members.
 
Arathi Manay of Brigade Millennium, an apartment community in JP Nagar, outlined how they said NO to ‘facilitation money’ paid to Electrical Inspectors, instead took his fault report seriously and ensured those faults were fixed even though it meant substantial supervision effort on the part of the MC members. This led to establishment of sound electrical maintenance and supervision discipline that is beneficial in the long term for the Building.
 
Anil Danti and Anil Agarwal of Brigade Metropolis, a 1600-unit Complex in Whitefield, shared the best practices utilising which the community has been able to hold the maintenance contribution at Rs 2/sqft/month, relatively low for comparable facilities, without impacting the reserve funds or corpus fund.  

The workshop was highly interactive with very interesting question and answers keeping it lively throughout the 4 hours. A question from a participant asking if any builder has ever returned the corpus fund back to the owners association along with interest received a resounding Yes from two MC members – one from a Brigade property and one from a Sobha property.

Related presentations:

Apartment Adda presentation
http://www.slideshare.net/apartmentadda/guide-for-treasurers

Arathi Manay presentation
 
Brigade Metropolis presentaiton

Related Articles

Citizen Matters’ guide to apartment management tools
Price the water in your apartment right
Apartment management: How to avoid problems post handover

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Similar Story

City Buzz: Mumbai’s mobility masterplan | 5G covers 97% of cities… and more

Other news: 5,687 traffic violations hourly in B'luru | Massive expansion likely in mall space | Indian companies lead in emissions control.

Mumbai masterplan for roads Mumbai’s development authority has drafted a Rs 58,000 masterplan to build a network of ring roads that are supposed to connect all corners of the city by 2029, cutting travel time significantly.  Mumbai’s Ring Road masterplan prepared by Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) outlines mega road connectivity across the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) — from Vadodara, Gujarat border in the north to Alibaug in the Konkan belt of Maharashtra down South, and towards Navi Mumbai/Thane. It will set up a complex network of roads, flyovers, reclaimed coastal roads, bridges and underwater tunnels, planning to declutter and…

Similar Story

Pammal: A restored landfill in Chennai reverts to being a trash mountain

Residents living near Chennai's Pammal dump yard have been complaining of health problems with the garbage mountain polluting air and water.

A dump yard in Pammal, which was restored through bio-mining in 2020, has once again become a towering trash mountain. The real twist is that the Tambaram Corporation — the line agency tasked with managing waste — is responsible. When Pammal was a municipality, the dump yard was scientifically restored by treating the old waste and removing undigested organic matter, in a process called bio-mining. Once the locality was merged with Tambaram Corporation, the civic body started dumping about 150 tonnes of waste every day in Pammal’s Mahalakshmi Nagar (adjoining survey number where bio-mining was done) and the nearby Adyar…