President's Blog
State of the Union 2025
Hamzeh Roumani, Board of Directors President
April 21, 2025
  1. Governance Overview
  2. Money Matters and USS
  3. The Year in Review
  4. The Garage Project

Governance Overview

The Northtown I Community at Doris and Church consists of three entities, a townhouse complex and two towers. It is identified as Northtown I to distinguish it from Northtown II, a community north of us at Doris and Byng. Each of the three entities is registered as a separate condominium corporation with a separate Board. Ours is registered as MTCC1113 and contains about 200 units. The two towers are registered as MTCC1132 (at 88 Grandview Way)and TSCS1446 (at 880 Grandview Way), and they contain about 150 units each.

Governance in each of the three corporations has the following hierarchical structure:
  1. The Ontario condominium act which stipulates how the corporation is defined and regulated.
  2. Declarations, Bylaws, and Rules.
  3. The Board of Directors, elected by the owners.
  4. The Property Manager and the Management Staff.
  5. Superintendents.

And in order to govern elements that are co-owned by all three corporations, a Shared Facilities Committee (SFC) made up of representatives from each Board is in place.

There are four distinct elements described as follows
  • Private elements. These are owned by you (such as your condo contents).
  • Common elements. These are owned by MTCC1113 (such as the block corridors).
  • Shared elements. These are owned by the three corporations (such as the parking garage).
  • Exclusive use elements. These can be either common or shared, but in either case, only you can use them (such as your balcony or front patio, and your parking space).

Your own insurance should cover your private elements plus the deductible of the corporation’s insurance in case you caused loss or damage to common or shared elements.



Money Matters and USS

USS (Utilities, Sitework, Savings) is my way of looking at the financial health of our condo. It works as follows:

  1. Look at All Expenses, both ours and our share of the Shared
  2. Group them by U, S, S (Utilities, Sitework, Savings)
  3. Detect their Trends, by tracking their changes over the years
Applying this for 2025, we find:
  • Our total expenses are about $2M.
  • Utilities are about 300K, so it constitutes 15% of the expense total.
  • Sitework is about 800K, so it constitutes 40% of the expense total.
  • Savings are about 900K, so it constitutes 45% of the expense total.

In terms of trends, comparing this year’s expenses with those of the past 10 years, we find that Utilities have been fluctuating with an average of 4%; Sitework has been rising slowly at about 6% per year; and saving has been steadily rising (not surprising given the building age) at about 10%.

Based on the above, we can forecast the trend in the condo fees as follows:

15*4% + 40*6% + 45*10% = 7.5%

So, if past values and trends are indicative, it looks like our condo fees in the coming years will rising steadily at an average of between 7 and 8 percent per year.



The Year in Review
  • Goodbye to Amy
    Ms. Amy Choi has been on the Board for about 25 years, and she was the Board's representative on the Shared Facilities Committee. Her background and extensive, 20+ years in the financial industry, made her invaluable for reviewing, analyzing, and detecting discrepancies in financial statements. And her enthusiasm and passion for Northtown I made her the pulse of the community through meticulously observing behaviors and trends and writing notices to keep all residents informed. She will be greatly missed.
  • Welcome, Eric
    Mr Eric Leung is our new Property Manager. He brings 22 years of experience in managing residential and commercial properties, whether high-rise or townhouse condos, or freeholds.
  • 1113
    Kitchen Stacks, Bell Fibre, Elevators, Smoke/CO Detectors, Recycling, the Stairs.
  • SHARED
    Security Audit, the Garage Project


The Garage Project

An engineering study conducted in January of this year indicated that we should replace the expansion joints of our roof and suspended decks (see my State of the Union Blog of 2024 for background on this project). Doing so will enable us to delay replacing the waterproofing membrane, which is currently scheduled for 2030, by ~5 years. Unlike membrane replacement, expansion joint work will be localized to three locations: The northern side of Grandview Way (along the 700/800 blocks), its western side (between 88 and 880 Grandview Way), and a few isolated spots elsewhere.

The engineering firm has prepared a tender package and 6 bids have been received. The winning bid was from SMID Construction Ltd. The overall cost is about $1.5M (reserve-funded ... no effect on condo fees) and the work duration is about 9 months.

Work is expected to start in the second half of this July. A detailed notice will be sent (or a town hall meeting will be held) to explain the phases, timing, unit access, affected parking stalls and their relocations, etc.

We should all be aware that this project will be quite intrusive in terms of noise and dust, and quite disruptive in terms of unit access and parked cars. We will endeavour to minimize the disruption.



Blog Archive (SoU = State of the Union)
 
Our Condo Fees (2013) Our A/C Unit (2014) SoU (2015)
New PM Company (2015) Thanksgiving (2015) SoU (2018)
SoU (2021) SoU (2022) SoU (2023)
Elevator Project (2023) SoU (2024)SoU (2025)

Views expressed in this blog do not necessarily reflect the official position of MTCC 1113. They were written by Hamzeh Roumani, the President of the Board, and reflect his personal take on things.