The shop

What happened?

At candidates night, we were told that Greenbrook had discontinued renting garage space to store and repair all kinds of equipment that the maintenance crew uses to keep up our property. This includes snow removal equipment.

In the aftermath of this decision the maintenance team has nowhere to store equipment other than shipping containers scattered throughout the property and a single, one car garage that they outgrew 20 years ago.

You might ask why we made such a draconian decision with winter coming. Here are some answers.

Mike Dermajian, who had been reviewing contracts said that we didn’t have a current contract with the owner of the garage and that our financial services firm, insisted we needed one in order to pay the rent.

I spoke to Ed O’Hearn, the owner of the garage and he told me this: Greenbrook had initially executed a rental agreement but that it had expired years ago and that Greenbrook, like all tenants at his facility, was a tenant at will, able to leave at any time. Tenants at will are also subject to rent increases at any time since there is no contract between the parties.

O’Hearn is a good businessman and was happy to continue the at will relationship indefinitely. But also, O’Hearn was happy to enter into a rental agreement, and he proposed a three-year term at a rate that had not been increased in over ten years. The rent would go from $1800 per month to $2500, within our ability to pay. Greenbrook countered asking for a ten-year lease but O’Hearn rejected a long-term agreement.

Greenbrook didn’t try to negotiate further and despite winter coming on, decided to vacate the property.

Now, was this a good business decision?

Our choice was an agreement shorter than what we wanted but it gave us the ability to provide a contract to Dartmouth Group, to keep the shop open, and it afforded us sufficient time to look around for garage space.

I am not persuaded that we couldn’t pay the rent through Dartmouth Group as tenants at will. Other accounting firms have done this for us. At this point it is worth noting for all present and future board members, that vendors work for us and it is their duty to help figure out situations like this. We should not be running errands for Dartmouth Group.

So instead of making the best of a situation we saw as not ideal, the board decided to blow up everything and potentially degrade maintenance services generally and snow removal in particular.

So, the question that we need to ask in an election season is: Is this good management? Is this the kind of decision making we want long term for our home?

I know my answer and I hope you will provide your answer at the upcoming election.

Thanks!

If you’d like to reach me: Denis@BeagleResearch.com or denis@greenbrookperspectives.com

Phone: (617) 901-2072 or (617) 302-6332

email: info@greenbrookperspectives.com

Can be reached at info@greenbrookperespectives.com

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Bye for now.