The message was compelling and a breath of fresh air. 

For an A\C to work a house must be able to breathe. 

As for me i lived and breathed the podcasts until i listened to every single one.

New is about 16 inches long and we slap in on the butt to start breathing...

Going to guess it's a pretty short contract, which as you've discovered the hard way, let's them do whatever they want:(You should also go through EVERY maintenance charge to see if it was warranted or not.Try to push back on this company, but don't hold your breath they will do anything of significance.Once you've audited everything, you'll probably want to fire them and transfer to a better PMC.

It might take two/three/four years to just convince them to give you the breathing room so you can accomplish the turn-around.  

I'm not holding my breath!  

There is also stable old small city towns like Collinsville, Bethalto, and Troy; both has decent schooling, with larger yards room to breath for families.

Get with those who live, eat, breath tax code and legal requirements and can guide you in the right direction. 

Frankly it's a breath of fresh air to get blunt, honest opinions from seasoned vets rather than all that sugar coated crap from so called gurus.I guess I had hoped that a short term play and SF instead of MF would need less than 50% operationg costs, but hope doesn't pay the bills.