THE VIEW FROM OVER HERE
When we moved to Lake Anne in 2002, the RELAC chilled water air conditioning system was owned by Aqua Virginia, part of a large corporation providing water and waste water disposal services all over the country. RELAC was unlike anything else in their portfolio, and it was an aging nuisance, costly and inefficient. Aqua was so anxious to unload it that it offered to sell it to Reston Association or other homeowners’ groups for the sum of ONE US Dollar!
Not long after that offer, Aqua succeeded in unloading the antiquated, deteriorating system to three area individuals with little experience in the business. The sale document made public had the price blacked out, but it seems likely the amount wasn’t far north of previous one dollar value. That is, the current owners got a monopoly public utility and about 400 indentured households for virtually nothing. And, they seem to have no plans for investment in the 50-year old original equipment and infrastructure. After promising to install cooling towers to supplement cooling when lake levels fall, they now say they won’t.
The rationale for RELAC’s monopoly status enshrined at the beginning in the Reston covenants was based on providing quiet A/C relative to the noisier conventional A/C units of the 1960s (like those serving residents living by other Reston lakes). The service initially cost only $6 to $18 per month, according to a newspaper clipping published recently by the Restonian. For the time, it was competitive. Thus, one might have been able to justify giving RELAC monopoly protection under the covenants, until it had time to prove itself in the marketplace.
No rationale for continued monopoly protection exists today. Modern conventional A/C units are very quiet indeed. Our next door neighbor has a newer conventional unit one can barely hear operating in my yard just twenty feet away. Modern units more effectively cool our townhouses, from the lowest floor to the top floor, unlike RELAC. Furthermore, RELAC is no longer reasonably priced to use and, as a monopoly, has no incentive to operate efficiently. One recent rate increase alone was 55%. RELAC users now pay anywhere from an estimated $1,000 to $2,500 for six months of cooling—and this doesn’t include associated costs of 24-7 operation of fans and dehumidifiers which most RELAC homes require. Electricity consumption make it an environmental nightmare.
Yet, RELAC’s current owners, who have approximately nothing invested in the ancient system are about to be rewarded with an even more absolute monopoly than before, if RA Board leadership gets its way. An RA Board amendment to the covenants done quietly in May, along with a proposal to be voted on in January, are a heavy-handed attempt to eliminate even the longstanding medical exception for residents with valid medical need, supported by doctor certification, for a more reliable, lower humidity source of cooling air.
That is, RA proposes to make medical exceptions nearly impossible to obtain and, if obtained, to require annual renewal with full medical re-certification. Further, they would require that those who go through this process continue to pay for RELAC service no longer used.
Many residents with serious respiratory and other related ailments have exercised the medical exceptions permitted under the covenants and gotten off RELAC, converting to effective, conventional A/C. Now, these people, including widows of husbands, whose failing health justified medical exemptions and have since passed away, will have their exemptions cancelled by RA and be required to remove their affordable, efficient cooling units and pay through the nose to re-install the deteriorated RELAC system, for which the owners paid next to nothing.
RA enforcement of these outrageous changes to long-standing rules will be both challenging and challenged. One has to wonder what is driving this kind of initiative within the Reston Association these days.
