OUSTING AN ENTRENCHED BOARD, P.2

Finally bowing to the pressure, the board called a meeting for December 6, 2006. Attendance was high; tempers were higher. It was a bruising, four-hour slugfest. When the smoke cleared and the written ballots were tallied the next day, four of the seven opposition candidates – a majority of the seven-member board – had been elected. Gill was not among them, but she didn't care. Her side had won the war.

The new majority promptly elected one of their own, Howie Friedman, as president and demoted Wagner, who had been re-elected, to treasurer. Then they got busy assessing needs and establishing priorities. It quickly became apparent that the building had deteriorated to the point that half-way measures would be inadequate. That meant the co-op needed to raise money. There was a $20 assessment per share – though no maintenance increase so far – and long-overdue work was finally begun.

"We were fortunate in that we didn't need any financial outlays to fight this battle," says Gill. "We had some pro-bono advice from [Racht] and then used the Internet to research, research and research what we needed to do. It also probably didn't hurt that so many people were personally upset with our old board that it wasn't hard to convince people that a change was needed."

What Part of "Maintenance" Don't You Understand?

Which is not to say that the co-op's finances were in good shape when the entrenched board was finally ousted. "It turns out repairs were just put off altogether or the reserve fund was dipped into to avoid having to do a maintenance increase," Gill marvels.

Wagner, 35, a self-employed public relations consultant who served on the board for six years, three as president, resigned from it last year. "I left because I had done what I set out to do," she says. "I just decided they had a different agenda. And I was exhausted, really."

Gill was elected to the board at its second annual meeting, in December 2007. Looking back, she's glad she went to war. "It was an emotional roller-coaster. I've never been attacked so personally in my life. ... But now I feel it was a good thing that I endured the name-calling and nastiness. The most important thing I discovered is that if you want your home to be better, you've got to get off your butt and do it yourself. When it becomes clear that something's wrong, you have to be willing to do some of the dirty work to fix it."

Adapted from Habitat March 2008. For the complete article and more, join our Archive >>