Mantri tree meet: Plea to ad hoc committee

I understand Mantri residents association ad hoc committee has on hand more pressing issues; I also understand the committee has lined up a strategy session at 11 a m tomorrow (Sunday) to address the issue of PropCare hike in maintenance charges.
However, the 18-member committee would strengthen residents solidarity, if its members could spare 15 mins. and join us at the memorial meeting at the the location where Mantri's felled three coconut trees the other day. I have no doubt ad hoc committee's presence at the memorial (no speeches) would send its own a message, to whoever calls the shot at Mantri's, that he/she cannot take us residents for granted.
Memorial Service (for dead and the dying trees)
Clubhouse Driveway (behind C Block)
9 a m to 9.15 a m
Sunday, March 25

Coffined in concrete, the trees appear to have been sentenced to death, Anarkali style, by Mantri's project team.
The trees (teak ?) near the car-wash area at Mantri Synergy have been programmed by Mantri's to go the way the coconut trees on grocery store driveway did. By concreting the floor(why, till the very edge?) Mantri project team have ensured that the trees do not have breathing/watering space.
I reckon it is now up to residents to save the trees. Anyone, with pick-axe and shovel? Any volunteer to do shramdan? Would request ad hoc committee to give permission to volunteers to crack open the concrete surface around the trees to give them breathing space.

Note: Residents have now another online forum for discussing issues related to Mantri Synergy - Residents Inc.

Who killed the coconut trees ?

Mantri project team, winding up its work at Mantri Synergy complex (OMR),has in a farewell gesture to residents chopped three coconut trees on the driveway to our clubhouse.A memorial service would be in order.
I wonder if PropCare/project team so much as cared to inform, let alone consult, Mantri residents representatives (ad hoc committee) before the tree slaughter. Unlikely. Because the secretary and vice-president, to whom I gave vent to my frustration this morning, were just as surprised and mad as I was at Mantri's gesture.
It is not just a matter of felling a few trees. It's Mantri's attitude with which I have an issue. Aren't they accountable to residents, who are represented by an ad hoc committee ? At individual level the issue of tree planting/protection has been raised repeatedly in this blog, in a recent e-mail to PropCare, and also with Mantri's landscape architect, Mr Sekar James. And they responded to our plea with supreme indifference.
My inquiry with a friendly security man revealed that the coconut trees on clubhouse driveway were chopped on orders from EB (electricity board). They ruled that the trees had to go, before EB could give power connection to equipment (transformer ?) that has been installed near the gas bank close to our grocery stores. Maybe there is no appeal against EB's ruling on such matters.

If the coconut trees had to go, for whatever reason, I would appeal to Mantri's 'green' sense to arrange for compensatory planting of trees. We could use some mid-day shade along the main driveway. Would suggest a row of neem, so that in a decade from now, Mantri residents can count on a tree-lined driveway.

Mantri's: When does the clock stop ticking ?

My reference is to the maintenance deposit we paid when we took possession of our Mantri apartment. We moved in (D-901) in mid-April; and the possession letter from Mantri's, dated March 30, said the maintenance clock for D Block starts from April 1,2011. Which means our maintenance meter on a deposit of Rs.44,250 (Rs.25 per sq.ft.) would stop ticking on March 31, 2012.
The maintenance clock for other blocks would have started from subsequent months. My question is whether the ticking clock for all 9 blocks would stop at the same time (March 31),before the start of 2012-13 fiscal. In other words, have we all been asked to pay maintenance deposit for a full year from the date of possession, or only for the remaining months, till March 2012 ?
Your response would throw much-needed light on an issue that generated some heat and sound in my informal meeting with some ad hoc committee members last evening. They asked how come,I set the mid-March deadline for registration of our apartment owners association.
My answer: considering that the Mantri project work is targeted for completion by March-end, and that PropCare wants revision of the maintenance charges (raised from the Rs.2 per sq.ft monthly), I would say the apartment owners association should be up and running, latest by mid-March. Frankly, I didn't feel comfortable with the questioning mode adopted by a member of the committee. I wasn't the one who sought this meeting. The idea was to strike a rapport for better appreciation, of the committee's limitations and our expectations from the committee as apartment owners.
I thought the ad hoc committee and I were on the same page in this regard - both wanting Mantri apartment owners association registered at the earliest. And here I was, being questioned, as if it were an inquisition, as to how I had arrived at the mid-March deadline, for the purpose of getting our acts together; and to have a registered association in place, well in time for negotiating terms with PropCare, come April,2012.
This apart, I would like to think last evening's interaction with ad hoc committee was mutually educative. I got a sense of the hassle the core committee faces in dealing with Mantri's local managers. The ad hoc committee, on its part, has agreed to be transparent in keeping association members informed of the proceedings of committee meetings. As for the status of registration process, committee has retained a lawyer, and is getting the documents ready for submission.