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I live in a fairly large condo building. Our new board (2010) has opted to take out a loan for maintenance on our building. They plan to pay only the interest on this loan. There is no telling when and if there will be enough funds to pay back the principle. We have several units already in default for well over a year.
There was no vote by the residents as to if the loan was to be taken out (we have a line of credit that I am afraid our board thinks is cash in the bank for their use)...this was a board decision and the residents were informed only by a couple of words at a meeting (where there were few residents in attendance)
What is your opinion as to their loan payment plans - and the method (or lack of) that they made their determinations.
We just had a resident come down with a devastating disease that has quickly required the use of a power wheelchair. We have a low step but no ramp at the entrance. Does anyone know of a source for a temporary ramp that can be used for a power chair? The ones found by our agent are rather flimsy and/or too long. A permanenet ramp seems to be a big deal.
Thank you.
We had a Board Members vote on whether or not to refinance our building early for much more than our current mortgage in order to pay some debts and future improvements.Our current loan is good for another three years.
At the meeting, it was revealed that two of the five members on the Board will be moving within the year. Is it proper for them to be voting on an issue as important as this one, which will increase our debt twofold when they are selling their shares so soon? Is it a conflict of interest? They do not want to discuss it with Shareholders beforehand. The vote was 4 to 1, I abstained as I do not feel we have enough information and, as treasurer, I have questions about the details of the refi they are going to greenlight. What should I do?
A letter just went around the building from the majority board members that we want removed. It states the following: The purpose of this memorandum is to reiterate that the Special Shareholders election ("it was not an election, it was to remove")to vote whether to remove or not remove 4 members of the Board, specially ---,---,---,---,resulted in one member being removed, ----, and the other 3 members remaining on the Board. ("first of all our petition read to remove four members, when they saw they lost in a plurality vote, they applied the cumulative method to remove only one member in which they, the three remaining members voted the same person back on the Board two weeks later".
to continue the letter: Please be assured that the Board of Directors has confirmed via counsel that the cumulative voting method to elect or remove Directors is in fact established via the By-Laws("now they refer to the By-Laws, not the BCL as they did at the meeting"). Issues voted upon at a meeting other then the election or removal of Board members can be elected by means of a plurality.
In fact, counsel advises that based upon the number of shares voting against removal, in relation to the shares present, it appears that the shareholders voting against removal had sufficient votes to keep all 4 Directors, had they elected to do so. ("we collected 54% of shares through proxies including attendance at the meeting, they had only 42%, what are they comparing?").
Therefore, subsequent to the January 28th. meeting, the Board appointed Mr.----- to serve until the next Annual Election pursuant to section 3 of the By-Laws.
Our argument is according to our By-Laws which they only addressed part of the process to remove, they did not address the bottom part of the Statue which contains: That they MAY vote HIS SHARES cumulative for election or removal, ("MAY", is an alternative), "alternative to what, Plurality"?) it is plausible that plurality precedes. All elections shall be determined by a plurality vote and unless other wise specified in these By-Laws or the Certificate of Incorporation the affirmative vote of a majority represented at any meeting of Shareholders shall be necessary for the transaction of any item of business (other than election of Directors) and shall constitute the act of the Shareholders. There shall be NO CUMULATIVE VOTING(pG 232, SEC 5, BY LAWS).
It was not established at the Special Shareholders Meeting or in the proxy how the voting process will be decided. When the opposing attorney for the building saw that the vote was not going their way at the time of the count they changed the rules for their benefit against the will of the majority of the Shareholders that voted. Being that the method of voting was not established on the proxy before hand and based upon the language of the proxy the logical conclusion is that the Shareholders were at no time made aware of the method to be used to calculate their shares voted or allocated, this meeting was to remove all four members and not individually, therefore, it was understood at the signing of the proxy that the method to be used was plurality, to remove all retained.
We recently had a Special Shareholders meeting. We counted the votes and when the attorney for the building, Mr. Karl Bikhman saw that his clients were losing by plaurality, he than stated the BCL and bypassed the By-Laws. The BCL read as he stated that if the election was counted as Culmative than the Special Shareholders Meeting should count that way too. Our By-Laws clearly states that the meeting should be voted as plaurality and that the majority shares is needed to remove the four members as petitioned. Mr. Bikhman only allowed one Board member to be removed and two weeks later replaced him back to the Board because the other three that were left on the Board had a majority on their team. The Board is comprised of 5 vs. 3, they had five in collusion and we had three opposed to the five. We now want to go back to Supreme Court and let the Judge render a decision. The reason we are going back to court is because when we had 30% of Shareholders calling the Special Shareholders meeting the Secretary and the Attorney refused to acknowledge our demand for the meeting and we than had to hire a private attorney Mark Hankin of Hankin and Maisel, in which he allowed Mr. Bikhman to take charge of the decision, without due diligence of our Black Book in which was in his possession since August of 2009. What help of advise can anyone give us, the Board is corrupt,our money is dwindling, decisions are only in favor of those who support them. The list goes on and on, it is almost impossible to live under these fascism dictatorship, we feel as if Resbuton is back as our President, Hitler as the Treasure, Stalin as the Secretary and Machiavelli as the Vice President.
i was a shareholder at the conversion oer 25 years ago. i was a board member during the first 10 years. The board always kept the ratio of shareholder to subtenent/unsold shares at a strict 20% magamum to ensure the financialaqnd skin in the game wellbeing of the co-op.
I have found out that many of the new people that have moved into the buiding are not shareholders. but children,grandchilren of the shareholder. The shareholder never moved in and the board with the approval and support of the manging compsany has promoted this. A couiple of the board mebers, are directly involved. Board members we assumed were shareholders were actually violators of the proprietary lease"par 14". We knew which apartments were unsold shares. Found out from a disgusted board member this previously undisclosed information. Ine of the new Board members bought two apartments, both 1 bedrooms and moved his adult children in.
i Am trying to do a count, but ti know the real owner occupuied apsartmernts are possible lessw than 50%. I couldn'tfigure out why more new owners ( i assumed) were not getting involved in the running of the co-op. There were no owner occupiers.
The presdienr is also violating the proprietary lease par:14, he and his wife no longer live in the building, his son occupies their apartment.
the addresses on the BOD voting profiles for the last 10 years list the coops adrress as their address.
At this years annual meeting i asked for the board members contact information to be posted someplace in the building or in the minutes or in a memo, one board member stated she refused to have her info given out, the rest remained mute, and my request along with other request for transparency were ignored and not in the minutes.
This is only one of a multiple of large problems that i have uncovered since a flag went off when a $27k mathematical error in the 2007 budget caused by a dropped zero was not told to the shareholders until after the 2008 election in which the president was running.
I have questioned the BOD president in the 2009 annual meeting, as to when the budget error was discovered, he refuses to give a answer. The board member i spoke to said he was not informed of the budget error until the week of the annual meeting. the president is super controlling and
doesn't share info with the BOD, yet they do nothing to correct this.
We’ve got a bit of a problem here in the building. Three people (four, if you count one who moved away) have felt threatened by a particular SH.
The incidents occur one-on-one. Full disclosure, I am one of the four people and I did manage to record one of the incidents on my iPhone. I also still have a threatening email from this SH to me.
The only language I can find in the prop lease that would seem to address a problem like this is folded into the section on noise: “No Lessee shall make or permit any disturbing noises in the Building or do or permit anything to be done therein that will interfere with the rights, comfort or convenience of other Lessees.” (Emphasis mine.)
Recently a building resident alerted a board member to a disturbing encounter she had had with this SH. This board member shared the communication with the rest of the board. (I am on the board.) I recommended that the board at least document that it had received this email, or add the email to the record. For this I was vociferously voted down and even accused of having an agenda against the SH in question.
I find it unusual that a number of people in the building have had disturbing one-on-one encounters with this particular SH. I also find it unusual that a number of people in the building refuse to communicate with him verbally (only in writing).
What, if anything, can be done in a situation like this? What recourse do people have? What is the best plan of action, if any? Frankly I find it a bit alarming, but perhaps all buildings have situations like this. Mind you, I haven’t heard of things like this going on in other buildings.
I have ben living in a Coop Sherwood Village b ,this is one of the most incompetent people I have been with in my entire life so far ,they are unable to understand the word progress ,they believe in arnachy and dictating to others which had led to many financials disaster in our coop ,The Coop secretary is too busy making financials decision rather than concentrated on Coop files and making the bylaw is followed to it's principle,nobody is perfect in this world but the stupidity in my coop is beyond the norm of any human being.Our Board President cannot even managed the coop meeting let alone make a decent decison he thinks he own the coop making all decisions unilaterally and we as shareholders have to deal with the consequences,At the present we are trying to get the politicians who care enough to help us find a solution to eradicate the socio path of egotistical maniac ruinning everyone else investment,It does not matter who our managemnt company is anyone come in into our coop realized on the first day that they are dealing with a bunch of morons.So they decided to take full advantage they even made up falsify financials statement,they cannot tell the shareholders what happen with our tax abatement taking over the years but our coop secretary is driving a BMW with our coop money.
I live in a co-op with a no pet policy. However, permission was granted to those who had small dogs before we all became residents of this newly built coop back in 2004. However, lately, I'm seeing more dogs and bigger dogs. How can the policy be enforced? We have fees in place, but sensitive to enforce. And, I can only imagine an even worse scenario, what ever happened to Spot?
What is a good policy for "flip" tax, especially when you want to incoporate grandfathering in a coop? Most owners are original (bldg 2004). We had about 5 sales since.
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Buildings and building repairs/capital improvements all wear out over time. This is the real world basis for the accounting treatment called depreciation.
Take a roof for example, when the roof needs repair again (in the future) how is the condo going to pay for it? Not paying principal on the loan means that the condo could be relying on an increase in property values to increase borrowing power to get yet another loan. As we have seen in the last couple of years, real estate prices do not always go up. So, what will you do if you need to get the new loan the in the down portion of the real estate cycle? In my opinion, I would only rarely get a loan and not pay principal and this is not one of those cases.
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