Floor Renovation Debate: Options, Costs, and Health Concerns

- Continue (indistinct)

- You need to entertain in motion

and approve the minutes that were sent.

- Yeah, just as a continuation of the email that I sent

that for some reason, the group's not getting,

some are getting, some are not.

I don't know why, it doesn't matter.

But Enrique and I met with his flooring guy

about a month ago after our last meeting.

And it was determined that,

well, there's a couple of approaches.

We think the easiest and cheapest approach is to,

if we were to hire this guy, him and his team,

for roughly somewhere between 3,500 and $4,000,

which is the amount that we have for our improvements.

We completely remove everything

which involves removing the carpet,

the tile that's under it and scraping the floor

and putting in a commercial grade carpet

that is a really good carpet,

including a little vinyl flooring in the bathrooms

and new floorboard moldings, okay?

So that's what that looked like.

There was some discussion afterwards about us coming in

and us taking our manpower and renovating it ourselves.

Pull out the carpet, scrape the floor.

It is a massive job.

And candidly, I don't know if we're gonna have enough people

that can do it with everyone's busy schedule.

And really, to Elizabeth's point,

I don't know if you copied everyone on your email or not,

but there's always surprises

when you do these types of things.

Enrique's person seemed to think

that for the 35 or 4,000, whatever it is,

somewhere in that ballpark,

that there would be no surprises.

We would get what we've asked for.

We don't know what's under the carpet, okay?

That includes taking out this section in the middle,

this room dividing track, okay?

So that's it.

We really have, I think, three options.

A, we agree to spend our money doing this.

B, we decide we're not gonna spend the money

and that we should do it ourselves, okay?

In which case, we'll have to assemble

a bunch of guys together to try and figure this out.

And I don't know what that cost ends up looking like.

I mean, what if it's $3,000?

You know, is it worth us doing to save $1,000?

You know, and three, we do nothing, okay?

In which case, why are we holding on to the money?

That was the discussion we had years ago,

which divided the group.

You know, I mean, the majority of us felt

that we weren't going to be moving anywhere.

Why are we holding on to the money?

And AA needs the money,

and so the majority voted to do that.

If we do nothing, we can also still hold on to the $40,000.

I don't know what we're holding on to, okay?

But that's really where we're at.

You know, emotionally,

I mean, I would love to see us have a nice clean floor.

Personally, I don't wanna spend my days in here

scraping cancer-causing chemicals into my lungs,

'cause that's what's under it.

That tile is asbestos, okay?

So I won't be participating in that.

That's for damn sure.

So that's the start.

You know, it's open for discussion.

- How about this?

- Well, the reason we're even re-approached this is

I sent an email to the owner saying

that people are tripping over the carpet, okay?

I mean, it's buckle, it's disgusting.

And I asked for permission to replace the floor.

That was it, that was a short email.

I didn't wanna go any further,

because the last time we asked to do the improvements,

they wanted to be involved with us and do cost-sharing.

But in exchange for that, they would erase our rent,

and we didn't wanna do that,

because the other meetings would not be willing

to up their rent, okay?

So there was enough time under our belt

where I just sent that arbitrary email to them saying,

hey, we'd like to replace the floor.

Can we do that?

So in terms of, yeah.

We're gonna just, we're gonna replace the floor.

- Just the floor.

- Well, the asbestos is the tile,

because there's this carpeting, then there's glue,

and it's glued to what was an existing linoleum tile.

That stuff is what's got the chemicals in it.

And under that is more glue attached to the concrete.

I think, and I would trust Bennett's thoughts here,

'cause he's got some experience with this,

that it's probably not as bad as we think it is.

I think that removing the carpet,

scraping the linoleum out,

and removing as much of the black glue

that's under the linoleum is all we need.

I think that goes relatively smoothly, okay?

And then what we do is we just glue down new carpet.

And that's equal to this.

It's just the time, but it's not being disturbed.

So it's really, it's no risk to mis-healthilize.

The point you bring on the track is an interesting one.

I would probably suggest that if we decide

to do it with me, the track,

because all we've said we're gonna do is to fill it.

And if that's all we do, then we don't worry about the track

unless we figure out some work around from the track,

maybe some type of a top molding.

So we're not digging it out of the concrete.

We're not authorized to do that.

So especially with carpeting, I mean,

you might feel a slight little, you know,

might feel something there, but pretty insignificant.

Or candidly, we just do nothing.

- Yeah, he felt that the, no, he didn't call it linoleum,

but this was a relatively durable commercial grade.

And like I said, it can also get scuffed up.

Then you're talking about having people

hook them up to floor here too.

I think that the linoleum is gonna be,

it's gonna scuff up and ding up.

The other option is to put down some kind of a laminate,

but that's gonna be more expensive.

What we did in the old meeting hall was a laminate,

but it was a terrible laminate.

And it scuffed up and it raised up also.

Carpet is the cleanest way to go because you know what?

You tack it down, you glue it down, boom, you're done.

You don't have to worry about scuffing.

- That's gonna get dirty too.

- Well, yeah, we'll have to clean it once in a while.

Sure, you know.

And we're the only group that vacuums in here anyway,

every Wednesday, right?

Anyway, that's the story.

We don't really even have the entire group here.

It's unfortunate, I mean, we could take a vote

or we could postpone it another month,

but I don't know what we're postponing.

It's either a good idea or it's not a good idea.

And the other thing you brought up, Elizabeth,

is let's say we spend the 4,000 and two months from now,

the guy says I'm still in the building, right?

We have no return on our investment.

There's no surety that once we've spent the money

that we're gonna be here for any particular length of time.

Do I think it's gonna happen?

No way.

Commercial real estate is in the toilet in a lot of ways,

especially this type of property.

No one's banging his door down

to pay more money for this kind of building, right?

Plus he bought this building as an investment.

He's just sitting on the real estate

and he's all over the place.

So anyway, I made it to doing that homework.

That's the homework that was done.

We can make a motion to move forward with it

or we can say we wanna think about it more.

If I was to make a guess,

I'd say we're gonna save some money, okay?

Is that, is it that we wanna save a few hundred dollars

by putting in a linoleum that won't wear as well as carpet?

I think that's what happened.

I mean, I'm just, I'm thinking through the draw.

Also, we put in linoleum, we saved a few hundred bucks

and all of a sudden these chairs and tables

are gonna start putting dings in the linoleum

because linoleum in a kitchen or the kitchen table,

you're not moving it that much, okay?

It'd have to be a pretty good quality linoleum, right?

Not to have dings.

I don't, personally, I think the linoleum idea is,

it's just not great.

I think carpet is gonna be our best bet.

It's gonna be cleaner.

I don't know.

People don't respond to emails

so we can do one of two things.

We can wait till next month

when perhaps more of the group is here

to have a much broader vote

or we as the people that are in this meeting,

we are a quorum, I can assure you that.

We could vote right now to do it.

People aren't getting my, I'd have to text everybody.

I have a sneaky feeling that if we decided,

I mean, if we unanimously decided,

that's a pretty strong message.

If there's any dissension among us,

then we might want to table it

till more of us are here in a minute.

All right, so I'm gonna go ahead and make a motion

that we spend up to our $4,000 in reserves

for improvements to replace the floor.

- Any way to circle back? - Yeah, second, first,

and then you'd have to finish.

No, in fact, I asked Victor

if they had any money left over

from the money they collected.

He said that they've had a variety of different,

unexpected, made mistakes happen,

like plumbing issues that they've used that money for,

but that he'd be willing to ask the groups for a donation.

Now, we've also not ever been assessed

for any of those other damages.

Just, you know, our point of view

is that we pay whatever that small amount is

for our meeting rent, and Victor collects the money

for the cable and for the electric, and they do all that,

and the other groups make monetary contributions

to pay those bills.

We don't pay those bills.

So is that a way for us to kind of give back?

Yeah.

Secondly, would we expect to get,

I wouldn't expect anything,

but knowing the groups that are here,

there are a number of them.

Even if they donated a few hundred dollars,

we could then take that money

and dedicate that to alcoholics and drugs.

I'll tell you why I don't think it's a good idea.

I was shocked that they said,

"Go ahead and change the floor,"

because a year ago,

they were trying to raise their rent on us,

and I think what happened was they saw risk.

If someone trips on the floor

from a liability perspective, they have risk,

and it's not going to cost them anything,

so they just said, "Go ahead and do it."

That's kind of an interesting blessing,

but you can raise your rent anyway.

That would mean that his daughter would say,

"Hey, these guys asked for permission.

Why don't we do an inspection a month from now

and see if they did it?"

And they then say, "Oh, well,

there's an improvements to the hall,

and now we're going to raise your rent."

Could that happen?

Sure.

That could happen now anyway.

You know, it's an interesting point,

'cause if these other groups go away,

then we're in a dilemma with Victor.

Victor might say, "Hey, my group is disbanding.

They're going off at the lease, okay?"

And all of a sudden, now we're not making the rent.

That's a risk we have anyway,

and I think for as long as God wants us

to have this nice arrangement,

albeit with this crappy floor,

it wouldn't work for them in the end.

'Cause the question is, do we want to spend it up,

or do we just want to wait a little bit?

I mean, we can wait until maybe the end of the year

or revisit it around the first part of the year.

Let's see what happens over the next few months.

Let's see what happens with the other groups.

Let's see what happens with our group,

with people that are disappearing.

We'll take it from there.

Might I just table it to the first of the year?

Yeah.

All right, well, I'm just going to withdraw my motion.

(laughing)

Good discussion.

All right, then listen.

You know, we needed to understand it, didn't we?

Yeah.

Right.

Okay.

Now it's time to go online.

Do you hate rats?

I found the best traps on the planet.

'Cause I had some in my garage and I couldn't find them.

And I got like three of them.

That's no good.

They're the ones that you come back,

you put peanut butter in here in the middle,

and they hit the drink.

And three of those little farts.

Three of them, no one will help you with that.

So, we can patch them all up.

I think it's just some things that I'm adding in the class.

Yeah.

How are you going to do it, are you going to do it all night?

Let's try those traps.

Send me out.

You have some?

They are useless.

They're all sash and they'll be great for parties.

Okay.

You can email me the commitment list, I didn't get it.

Oh, maybe it went to us.

It went to you.

So good.

All right, I can just grab right traps.

That's part of the advice.

Okay.

Real quick, Walter.

You don't need to know.

We're just going to do it.

Right.

Ben just did the treasure, right?

Yes.

Which is great.

No, thank you.

I'd be here, they could do that, but I'm not.

Adam, are you interested in being the minutes maker?

Absolutely.

(laughing)

I'm not as good as you.

No, it's not even here, so I don't know where he is.

I've already done it.

Who hasn't done it?

Who hasn't done it?

Kevin, I was...

Was there some stuff to plug in where we need it?

Okay.

Are you going to continue with Intergroup now?

What's that?

Are you going to continue with Intergroup

or is it you're done?

Oh, that's what it is.

So if he wants to do a phone list,

Adam's going to do, I mean, you can do it.

I mean, I was going to kind of just allow myself

to take what was needed.

Oh, where are you thinking?

Me, the next is the only thing needed.

I was the facilitator, I think, in year, maybe year two.

Maybe a year.

(laughing)

I think that is true.

I've done it in four hours.

I mean, with quality of life, it started.

Yeah.

(indistinct)

All right, so I'll do maintenance.

Yeah.

All right.

Cool, so it's...

I'm a fucking businessman.

You run there pretty late.

(laughing)

(indistinct)

You want to just keep my house shut

because I don't want to be back.

So we're all set?

We're all set.

(indistinct)