Christine Daly - Reducing Residents' Costs and Saving the Environment

Christine Daly is Village Manager at The Lakes in Victoria and a force to be reckoned with when it comes to saving costs. She is also passionate about the environment.

Working with her Residents' Committee, in just four years, they have achieved the seemingly impossible - the reduction of residents' council rates - plus they have halved each residents' water flow, dramatically cut lighting costs, installed solar heating and slashed the maintenance budget by $100,000 in one move.

The Lakes is a big village, with 285 residents and 130 ILUs, 17 condominiums and 27 serviced apartments, as well as a satellite estate of 29 units known as The Lakes at Delbridge. The village is just eight years old, built by Australian Retirement Communities (ARC) in 2000 and now owned by Stockland. It is located 25 kilometres west of Melbourne's CBD at Taylors Lakes.

Christine spoke on keeping levies down at this year's RVA Victorian Conference. We caught up with her there.

Christine: "All the jobs I had after school were in accounts and administration, including 14 years at Village Roadshow in various roles, including assisting the financial director."

"I retired in 1998, but that didn't last long; I came to The Lakes in mid 2002 - just assisting the manager a few days a week. In 2004, the manager resigned to travel overseas and I was encouraged to apply for the position."

"The Residents' Committee were tremendous; they supported my education, attending management and payroll courses, plus the most fulfilling for me, the Diploma in Business for Village Management run by the Australian Institute of Management and the RVA; my group was the first in Australia to complete the course."

"From the start, I have endeavoured - alongside our Residents' Committee - to cut whatever costs possible and also make The Lakes ‘green.' We installed solar heating which is used in conjunction with our gas hot water service, for instance - this has helped us save on gas and help the environment."

"I heard that City West Water was promoting water savings; their first initiative was the shower-head exchange. I arranged for residents to return their shower-heads and they were replaced with new ‘green' ones.

Since then, we have worked with City West to install other water-saving devices and reduction light globes. They installed filters on taps and water-saving devices in toilets, and mended any leaking taps. This service was provided free; the cost of $50 is put onto your water bill, but a credit is put back into your account. The water flow from our taps has now been reduced from 20 to 9 litres a minute. City West no longer provides this service, but envirosaver now install free replacement of light globes and shower heads at no cost.

You can contact them to come to your village or home at www.envirosaver.com.au."

"One area where we have really saved our residents money is on council rates. Four years ago, a resident's daughter drew our attention to the fact that she paid less rates than the residents in the village, despite living on quite a large lot in the local area. This prompted our Residents' Committee to put in a submission to Brimbank Council. Our argument was that since the village provides and maintains its own roads, paths and street lighting, the Council did not have to contribute to these expenses and should take this into account when determining rates. To their credit, Brimbank Council introduced a special rate for all retirement villages in the Council jurisdiction. This delivered a huge saving to residents."

Cost Cutting at the Lakes
1. Installation of solar heating
2. Lobbying Council to reduce rates
3. Install LED over fluoro lights
4. Think outside the square with contractors
5. Converting lawn areas to mulch

"We have also now installed LED lights in our community centre, saving us over $5,000 a year. They are designed in Australia and comply with Australian Standards but are manufactured in China. They have a white light and just use 38 watts (approximately) and cost approximately $35 before installation. The globe hour life is 50,000 compared with 5,000 for fluoro and low volt globes. The cost to run the lighting in our community centre based on the lights we have at the moment is around $5400. With the LED lights, the cost will be $276 - a $5124 approx saving per year."

"Another way we have cut costs is with our maintenance. We had the interior of our community centre painted by a professional painter; we then obtained a quote for the painting of the exteriors of our villas, all the units and the community centre. The quote was $170,000. Instead, our contractor Fab came up with the idea of employing an assistant for 12 months to complete the painting for $47,000 plus the paint and equipment hire. This saved the residents over $100,000 from their long-term maintenance fund, or $500 for every unit. And not only did Fab and his assistant Nic finish painting our units and community centre within the year, they also put in a walking track around the village, laid 270 cubic metres of soil and installed seating areas at the front of our condos and serviced apartments."

"Finally, we have also recently converted large areas of lawn into mulch garden beds with drought tolerant Australian natives. This not only looks attractive, but has reduced the amount of water used and requires a lot less maintenance. All of our garden beds have been fitted with weeper hoses instead of sprinklers."

"We are also taking a huge step with Stockland's support to change our current 24 / 7 nursing system. We are trialing the system of providing a nurse at our clinic from 9am - 5pm and having INS monitor the emergency calls. This would save our residents $70,000 per year and remove our OHOH&S concerns regarding night calls-outs. An evaluation team is monitoring the trial, and at the end of the trial period it will be voted on by all the residents - either to return to the 24 / 7 nursing or retain the clinic and INS monitoring. Lots of research went into this decision and a huge change for all our residents who have once again supported our Committee approving the trialing."

"I am very fortunate to have a wonderful Committee who is devoted to our residents in trying to keep the levies to a minimum for the many pensioners who live at our Estate. All of our ideas are discussed and approved at monthly Committee Meetings - I am usually charged with the research of the projects. We have never put a figure on the combined savings we have achieved, some of the projects pay for themselves sooner than others. And how can you put a price on saving the environment"

Other stories in this section:

• Stuart Nicholson, the CEO of Becton's Retirement Business
• Dr June Heinrich, the CEO of Baptist Community Services
• The SCV Group Australia's Toughest Village Job
• John Martin, Managing Director, Babcock & Brown Communities
• Ken Barber and ARV - The Business of Providing Better Care

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