It's hard to not get angry at board members for doing landscape conversion because it doesn't make any sense. Landscapers make out like a bandit and the community is left holding the bag. I know, I've been told by landscape companies that we should convert some of the common area to desert landscape. The never tell you why it should be done.
When your community is under contract and the landscapers have made this suggestion think twice. Here's why. For example in our community the size of the areas being converted are so small a lawn mower can only make 1 to 1.5 passes the length of a driveway. The larger areas are only the length of two driveways and the mower can only make 2 full passes. When you consider that only about 4 of the larger areas and maybe 10 or so of the small ones the amount of area being converted is small.
Since your under contract it saves nothing on the mowing and edging now and will only save a few bucks under a new contract. Lets say it save $10.00 a month or $120.00 per year on the mowing. Now lets say it saves $60.00 a year in water to total $180.00 a year and the conversion costs $3,000.00. It will take 16 years and 6 months before the amount saved covers the cost of the conversion and the community benefits from doing it. I don't see any community keeping the landscape company for 16 years. Not very realistic unless the community owns the landscape company.
This kind of a project is not in the best interest of the community. Yet it happens all the time and it is just wasting money.
Now if your landscape company agrees to reduce your contract costs by lets say $150.00 a month or $1,800.00 a year then it's worth it. The time to recoup is less than 2 years making it a viable option. However, you better love the job the landscapers are doing because if you get rid of them before the two years are up the community just got screwed. Because there will never be any savings realized or any recouping of the costs.
This is just one tactic the landscape company will use to create job security. Once the project is completed the contract work will no longer be the quality as it once was. If the community cancels the contract the landscapers don't care cuz they still made money. It's only the community whose losses money and the board members who look bad. Please be careful what advice you take from vendors, in these times things are done for job security (or at least that is what they are hoping for) and not out of necessity.
Times are tough and are expected to get tougher bringing out all the fly by night vendors and inferior products. Don't just use vendors from your management company use vendors who are certified by the industries experts. Get every bit or mileage out of your dollar. Know that the companies will be around in 5 or 10 years so warranties will be honored and that the product will last longer than expected. Otherwise, you can bet the items used will be from China and we all know items from China fail shortly (months) after the warranty expires. I cannot count the number of times it has happened with both small and large household items.
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