You can legally tape record a meeting, not sure about videotape, but check into it, that would good.

i went with videotape and record. They saw it , They said it was illegal. i said they are on my property in my common area. i am a owner and i live here. quite a few of them did not, and are not shareholders.
Plus there a video camera right above out head and 2 more within 15 feet for security. i had asked about if they had picked up any of the meeting where the pres went extremely hostile and seemed like he was ready ti jump over the table and attack me for asking financial questions/.
the super said the cameras didnt pick up any of that,but i think otherwise, since they were pointed at the table, or maybe the MA told him to turn them off for the meeting? i should have checked into that. camera insures my safety and if i attacked, the video would helps a lot in court. MY MA refuses to record the meetings so that they can lie to the shareholders all night. the rest of the board, in the last 3 years has not said anything when i was asking these questions. They don't know that this bozo does not have any extra power besides conducting the meeting. Which he again did not follow the by-laws, which i brought out and read the areas where they skipped. He has done this for over 3 or 4 years, i always bring it up. This year i have to remember to get the letter out for the rebuttal on the minutes, you only have 90 days from receipt to file any problems with the meeting AFAIK. If you feel or know the voting was done in violation of the by-laws, get it faxed over in 90 days.
i use faxes , and sometimes certified if really necessary.
email is something i would not trust for this kind of stuff, unless a lawyer that deals with this ,told me it was ok.
they could easily put your email addy in the junk /spam or delete on receipt list.
lawyers have told me to fax, better than phone calls and letters unless certified, considering it takes 6 months for a improperly addressed letter to get a return to sender. With a fax receipt you can print out what wa faxed and the receipt, which tells you the phone number and pages and successful transmission or unsuccessful xmit/ Plus you can double check the phone number. i personally have a hard time seeing those digits n doing it manually

i should have done that the last 4 years, and required them to provide evidence of the true minutes. on canoe club meetings we were recording the minutes of the meeting 20 years ago, it my fall under no due diligence for the board, especially since every year i question the validity and point out the errors of the prev years minutes. And i usually have to point out the not following of the bylaws for the minutes, which the MA said is just a guide that they don't have to follow. I call it the by-laws that specifically describe how the meeting is to be conducted.
i scanned and OCR all the pertinent parts of the bylaws, therfor i can easily make a copyy , have it in dropbox/goggledocs and have it in pdf and open office text. .odt. mo propritary software anymore for me.

i explained to one of the new board members, do not let this guy drag you down and cost you money, board members are NOT indemnified for failure to stop self dealing, self-dealing, failure to perform their due diligence, violating fiduciary responsibility.
They did not know that, i am sure the MA and pres led to them about that too, making them think they are covered bu a free legal defense when they fail to due their duties and oblations,

Just a quick question: If this president is so tyrannical, how does he keep getting reelected? And if he owns 80-90 percent of the storage area, can't he be taken to court under the Business Judgment Rule exemption that prohibits using his corporate position for self-dealing?

the president with the total support and back up of lies by the managing company, whose owner and the co-op president, negotiated the bldg mortgage loan where the owner is on the bank board, and the co-op pres is an investor in that bank. The co-op president was ready to jump over the table when i questioned him on that. The minutes for that june meeting were still not received by october. i called twice and faxed, inquiring about where's the minutes? The management company spun in it to say it was 100% fine. I asked the same question at the cooperater , it was posted, and they said not good. the pres and managing company has turned a building that at acceptance of conversion plan in 1983 was 80% owner occupied.Now he has it down to around 50%, the par 14 in prop lease AND is being ignored even though i gave him copy of the NY law journal case law, that some one here graciously sent . Thankyou mr anonymous, it means a lot! at the same time the MA said that our proprietary lease said or and i said no, i have read it to many times. he convinced the board that it said OR. When the buyers of the apartments went to the interview and said that they were moving in, down sizing, etc. The only person that moves in is the adult son or daughter, between 20 and 30 years of age. The true shareholder never moved in. I didn't realize that until i battled for the shareholder list . and then i was able to check things out. That is why they don't want transparency, and it gets worse. i was injured at work 10 years ago, and became disabled . I had medical stuff i was dealing with, i assumed the new shareholders who paid a lot more were watching things. I am realizing now that they all moved , rather then fight this BS,they moved. Al we have left is shareholders that never come to the meetings,the ones that live here ,but complain about everything, but never have come to a meeting. And the absentee shareholders who are not paying sublease fee's at least not to the co-op.
i wonder what the banks require for owner occupancy for shareholder mortgage? May be fraudulent papers being filled out. I had a talk with the newest board meber, 2 nights ago, knocked on his door, and he is ok, they have been bullshiiting him. I left a copy of the prop lease par 14, with AND highlighted above the mailboxes the next day ,since i was late for the train. The MA told him it said OR, every question i have asked , he has provoded fallse info, that is why he and the pres want no tapes. i habe the meetimng in a half hour, time to get my cameras rigged.

If the Property Management company manages buildings for more than one landlord, the principal must be a licensed real estate broker. Anyone working for the property manager who negoiates leases and/or collects rents/mainenance, must also be licensed.

You need to bring up at the annual that someone else needs to be the election official. Having family members is a conflict of interest. I think it would be good if you volunteered.

They also should not be allowed to change the voting to differ from the by-laws. In our community we need 67% vote of the community to change by-laws. I would check your by-laws. You may also want to have a candid conversation with your property manager about this.

my property manager says he refuses to speak to me or accept faxes from me, and he sent me a certified letter stating i should not contact him anymore,even via fax, AG time. plus he refused again to provide the shareholders and BOD contact info. 2 years ago concerning a number of self dealings by the BOD pres and vice presd\son in law and mother in law/
plus homophobic hate speech the the vice president used when talking about the recently resigned long term treasurer. he resigned because dealing with these people was impossible, now i know why the second crop of people that moved into the building left, They were most likely abused by these people with the managing company backing them our b y -laws are like yours,. over 3/4 plus an separate notice had to be enclosed in the envelope if during the annual meeting.
i asked those questions last night, the e president said he has no idea what i am talking about, doesn't care about the propriety lease , stated he refused to provide the BOD contact info,since they don’t want it out, most likely he doesn't want it out. he wants to see everything first and think about how he can spin it.
he said he will only list their names and apt #. One person never moved in, his son moved in, the father never lived or moved in here. I believe in exchange for buying 2 apartments at once,at opposite ends of building, he improperly was given a spot on the board, that may have been held for a convenient resignation, so they could put him in as payback for investing ,which is not allowed. I also want to check on who the real estate agent was for all these non owner occupied sales, where the person at the interview said they were moving in, only them., the president hasn't lived here in over 5 year, and i brought up that him and his wide, who both no longer live here have 80to 90% of the storage room filled with their stuff , yet the wife has a house or condo if Florida and pres a house in long island. a 10 year shareholder asked 3 years back to make room for other people he was rebuffed by the pres, i brought this up and told him he is self dealing, and get his stuff out. i wasn't playing anymore, he said he had no idea what self dealing was and didn't care, The managing agent lies and provides fraudulent info on all questions, i asked last year. i asked about the audit report stating that monies sometimes reached over the FDIC limit. i asked about that , they said no it didn't pres and MA, i called the auditor and he confirmed that on some occasion the monies does go over the 250,000k. 310 one day, 290k and so on, but when i asked last year nothing but lies. i also personally brought up the par 14 of prop lease and gave a copy of the case law from the NY law journal concerning the "and" or"or" clause/wording . the MA said our prop lease said OR, i said no our states AND, the president said he didn't care, he was ridiculing me for asking the questions, i pointed out that was the same technique Bernie Madoff used, and it wont 't work on me.
he ridiculed me saying that the rest if the meeting no one knew what i was talking about, and i said i don't care and if they don't know about proprietary lease and by-laws since being here10 - 20 years, they are the ones that don't have a clue. and they will be victims. Our by laws which i had and the proprietary lease. the by-laws don't go into voting a lot but it is very simple every shareholder will have one vote per share. For the first 10 to15 years we were told we could combine them , break them up, vote them all for one person, split it evenly as long as the total came out to the number of shares that we had.

Now they have written on the ballot that we cannot combine them , that we had to vote. lets say i have 300shares, and 2 people are running, i have to vote 300 shares for each person. which is not one vote per share. Plus the original voting was wonderful when he got his players in, and as soon as he noticed a unrest ,came up with all kinds of manipulations of the voting process. Last night his son was over by the ballot table and seemed to be holding a lot of proxy’s . His son is not a shareholder. someone questioned what he was doing and he said he had a proxy for a neighbor, legally he can do that, submit the proxy. bit he cannot speak at the meeting nor count votes, and i think he may have attended the whole meeting, he was behind me, but i am not sure if he is even allowed in until the proxy are collected.

Hi Escapefromyonkers,

Your place does sound like it has its fair share of problems. I had some trouble following what all the issues are, but I will try my best.

Regarding the shareholders and BOD contact info, what is your intent to have this information? What kind of contact information are you looking for? Other than names and unit #’s I don’t think anything else would be appropriate to give out. We don’t give out the phone numbers, e-mails addresses etc. of BOD members. That just asks for trouble. The BOD members volunteer their time. Any issues need to be sent to the management company who the co-op pays to solve issues for the co-op. Any issues that require BOD attention are brought up at the monthly board meetings. However, as Board President, I do give out my e-mail address to everyone so they can ask me questions, but I do that as a courtesy.

I think you need to run for the board. You can need to be friendly with everyone. Don’t disparage anyone on the board, even if they deserve it and you are 100% correct. It will just make you look crazy. You want to look cool and collect and just run on the fact you have some ideas and skills that would compliment the existing board of directors.

Once you are, you can clean house. You need to communicate all the rules and expectations in quarterly Newsletters. This will keep the community informed on what is going on. We just digitized our Proprietary Lease and House Rules, so folks can keep copies on their computer for easy reference.

Stay strong and calm and run for the Board. That is the only way to change things. Our community had a lot of corruption from our previous president. He would collect proxies to ensure we stayed in power. He used is position to manipulate our previous Superintendent into making him into his personal worker for a contact company. We had 11 days straight where the Super did nothing on the property while we paid him and then we found out he was doing side work with the president off the property. Once I got on, I started releasing Newsletters and documenting everything. That was the only way to solve this issue. With a better informed community, we had a landslide election the next year where the community voted off all the corrupt board members. Since then, our long time residents say we now have the best board ever. Delayed projects are starting to move forward and we release quarterly Newsletter and have quarterly open shareholder meetings to ensure everyone is informed.

Don’t give up. It took over a year for me to get things changed here. You need to be persistent and you will prevail.

FW Board: If the president is rigging the ballots, then the (rather rambling) person reporting all these improprieties stands no chance of being elected to the board, so that's probably not an option.

Other than moving out, he might want to contact other aggrieved individuals, chip in together for an attorney, and as a group send documented instances of self-dealing to the AG.

If I were he, I might also think about publicizing this evidently corrupt board president. NY1, the Daily News and the New York Post, for instance, often cover co-op/condo corruption.

Our former president was collecting proxies to rig the election. Once we educated enough people on what was going on, we were able to have them personally hand in the proxies so the candidates they truly wanted to vote for could elected.

If his president can't be beat, then I agree that getting an attorney with the help of the AG and NY1, the Daily News and the New York Post may be his best bet. I hope the person living there is able to make the best decision on what to do. Knowing what we used to go through at our place I truly feel for this individual.

While much good advice has been posted on this thread, I wince every time someone says "call the AG."

I'd never discourage anyone from trying this route, but would give long odds that it won't happen. As of today, it's just not something they do.

That's why owners with such concerns should: a) join ACCO; b) ask their state senator & assemblymember to vote for the Ombudsman Bill, which can be found here:

http://condocoopowners.org/ombudsman-bill-s-395/

The Ombudsman Office will be dedicated to PRACTICAL ENFORCEMENT, & to giving authoritative answers & advice to owners & board members alike.

Your community is the perfect example of why we need an ombudsman bill S00395. We need a government agency that we will be able to turn to when all else fails, as it has for you and your neighbors. You must contact your elected officials, meet with them and explain why they need to vote for this bill. Also, start a grassroots effort of neighbors and owners in other communities with similar problems. We need this legislation. If we just complain, we will get nowhere. If we band together and demand political action, perhaps we can get our message out to those who can help us. This board is an important forum, let us use it to get some bills passed that will help all of us. Another is city council intro 188 having to do with transparency in co op screening. do a google search of both these bills and get started working to get them passed.
Dianne Stromfeld, director,
Alliance of Coop and Condo Owners
( ACCO)

Thanks Dianne
is this bill on NY state senator level or how far has it gone and who should be contacted. Where would a copy of the Bill be located on the net

go to NYS.gov and search under Senator Liz Krueger. You will need to contact your local state senator. Start a grassroots effort of letter writing to push our elected officials to take a long hard look at the need for this bill.
Good luck

Every Shareholder is LEGALLY entitled to know who is listed as owners on the Shares.
Besides hiring a lawyer -- we won back control of our building by starting, and keeping up an Email Trail. Every week send a request to the Board, MangAgent and other Shareholders requesting the list. Also, stating (in a business like way) any of the ByLaws which are being abused. Send the same email every week.

Once they see the Email Trail being compiled -- they tend to become nervous. In a court, the Email (paper trail) trail holds great importance.

Get an Gmail.com account -- all the Emails are automatically stored, so you will have a record.
Good luck VP

We did an addendum last year. After taking a shareholder vote, the corp attorney wrote up the addendum and mailed it to all shareholders. No special form, just a legal letter. Yours would be put next to the original page for subletting.
Make sure the shareholders vote on your revision!

Just a thought...are you revising the entire policy or just adding a fee, length of lease, residency prior to leasing or anything like that. If this is the case, then you just have to adjust the house rules not the PL.

The sublet policy is part of the House Rules and may be modified by the board at any time. I would strongly suggest to have these reviewed by the legal counsel before distribution. The Proprietary Lease only contains wording to the effect that subletting of units may be permitted or not permitted and may mention recovery of reasonable fees if no sublet fee is specified as part of the PL.

If you wish to incorporate sublet fee into the PL, which is the way to go, you need to amend the PL. Your counsel will help redact the most comprehensive wording, but you need to submit the amendment to vote by the shareholders (majority or supermajority)according to your Bylaws and PL.

AdC

Any incentives for building that have more than 75 Units?

Have your super stop the work and let them know if they do not follow the renovation policy, you will call the buildng dept.

Have your counsel contact the sponsor ASAP to demand compliance with the Rules and Code.

Sponsors have no immunity regarding following renovation rules and building codes; they only have the ability to renovate or combined units without your formal approval.

AdC

Hi jbm,

First: try just assessing the full amount. This may intice the sponsor to sell to raise cash if they don't already have it.

Second: try NCB.

Good luck!

Depends on your by-laws, but at most co-ops and at ours, you would need a quorum to change anything. What are they being asked to vote on? Unless you are changing by-laws or making an addition to the property, you shouldn't need the regular shareholders. They elect the board of directors to make all the big decisions.