This is a case of harassment.
You should contact your board a report this.

Thanks VP, but he is on the board as am I!

So it should be easier for you to communicate with him.

I agree that it's an invasion of privacy. Even though you're both drectors, I'd report it in writing to the Board to have it formally a protest that this person is harassing you and your guests. Unfortunately, some people think everything is their business when it isn't, or just get some kind of perverse pleasure out of fluffing up their own feathers and putting others on the defensive. Stick to your rights, and I suggest you tell your guests not to answer this person. Good luck with this!

Thanks, VP. This director also told my guests that I was doing something "illegal" by them staying with me. Do you think I should have my personal atty send a letter to the board or to this person personally? He also was abusive to my delivery service a couple of weeks prior, telling them to "get out of my way" and demanded to know what was in the box when they were delivering a piece of furniture to me in accordance to house rules.

All must realize, we are all responsible for our guests, as long as the Shareholder is living on the Premises. Please be aware there are guests that do cause problems or might not be of a particular eliment. Who then is responsible? The Shareholder? Just because you have guests they too should be on their best behavior and of course the Shareholder will stick up for them, what does one do then? They should not impose on legal Residents. Living in a co-op is co-operative living which affects all of us and we all want to protect ourselves. Some might call it harassment and some might call it looking out for their interest. Who's right and who's right and who's wrong? Not all guests are perfect and if the Shareholder doesn't control issues that could and might occur. So all of these opinions, which is what they are, do not take into account guests that become problems. What would any of you do in that case?

I understand your point but there is a line one crosses when overstepping one's bounds and asking personal questions, defaming shareholders to their guests, and the same to the shareholders about their guests, without any misbehavior on guest or shareholder's parts. We have had everything here: shareholders who are bad, bad roommates, an occasional bad guest whose worst sin might be slamming a door. This person is acting without any provocation, while he himself has a stream of dog sitters living in his apartment while he is absent, and other shareholders not only bring in dog sitters, but allow these sitter/friends to bring other dogs into the building. I know they are not supposed to, but they are considerate and well-mannered visitors and make no problems. I am not concerned with that so much as the issue of this newbie, who knows nothing about roommate law, harassment laws, and discrimination that the Board and co-op could be opening themselves up to by one uninformed person targeting me and my guests, some of whom are African-American. No one can predict what can happen or all contingencies; I am asking opinions on how to address this particular situation. Thanks all!

To "My 2 Cents" - you're straying from the topic - the shareholder should deal with only the shareholder, not the guests. The same harassing shareholder goes as far as questioning packages being delivered. S/he's out of line. I stand by my first response, to write a letter to the Board & Management to have a paper trail, and let the Board discuss it and hopefully resolve it.

Thanks North Riverdale - good point and thank you for getting us back on track. I agree with your points and will take that suggested course of action asap. Have a good holiday!

To North Riverdale

You misunderstood, the Shareholder must deal with their guests actions, if not, who should? No one person should question the doorman about packages left, but when it comes to unruly guests and nothing is being done and disturbances are caused what then? What if you have a board and MA that does nothing? What if they are friendly with certain people, how do you go about that? Paper trails are good, if they are not disposed of.

Plain and simple you are being harrassed. It does not make any difference if it is a board member or the old lady in unit 9J, harrassment is harrassment. I would keep/document all correspondance (you mentioned this person e-mailed you). Be firm, copy all board members and managing agent if necessary. Once your guests are conforming to the house rules you have nothing to fear. If it were me I would have told this so called board president? to go mind is business a long time ago.

MRM

I'm not sure, from My Two Cents rambling, disjointed syntax and sentence structure, exactly what he or she is saying.

But as another commenter noted, My Two Cents is straying from the topic. We're not talking about unruly guests.

We're talking about an abusive neighbor who is approaching a fellow neighbor's guests and behaving in a completely inappropriate way that appears to constitute harassment.

Complain to the board and to the managing agent in writing. If that doesn't work, get your attorney involved. Quash this petty dictator's harassment immediately; the more that bullies get away with their behavior, the more it escalates.

Thank you, JB. As I said, my guests are not unruly, they are perfectly lovely, abide by house rules and have been totally upset by this bully interrogating them, as have I. Will let you know how this unfolds.

Emails, sent from Gmail or stored in a file, are are treated the same as a Paper trail....

Once you start sending businesslike Emails, without accusation or emotion ---documenting the problem, the BofD and MangCo will become concerned -- and start to pay attention.

We made major changes in our building, with this method of documentation......

I refered to Gmail because they dont erase your emails... we use it because it keeps the record and emails are easy to locate -- otherwise you need to store your communication in another program... Bottom line is that if you send enough emails (again businesslike) asking questions such as "is this legal and according to the bylaws or prep lease" they will start to pay attention... and want to stop the Email trail...VP

What is the owner specifically accusing your guests of doing? (I.e. is he/she accusing them of violating some house rules?) You need to know what their specific allegations are against your guests.

Also, has this person complained to management or the board about your guests or have they simply annointed themselves the 'co-op' police of the building?

As a Board President, there is very little the Board can do unless the other shareholder is formally complaining that you and your guests are violating house/rules and/or the Proprietary Lease. The Board will also probably be reluctant to get involved if it turns out it is just a dispute between shareholders where one is bothered by the fact that you have a lot of company. This is because anything that the board dicusses is typically recorded in your minutes and in this market you don't want a prospective buyer reading that the neighbors can't get along and as a result choose to buy elsewhere.

I would confront the shareholder directly and find out exactly what about your company is bothering them and ask them to refrain from harassing your company and if there is a problem to address it directly with you or you will be forced to file an aggravated harassment complaint against them with your local precinct.

Your board can only attempt to pass the amendment by way of an extraordinary or special meeting and by sending to all shareholders the proxy and the amendment they wish to enact in order to submit their vote and make the amendment legal if the majority or supermajority (accordidng to your By-laws) becomes the winning faction. There is no way the prior vote + new proxies provided to the Board can be acceptable.

AdC

Under certain circumstances, meetings may be "held open" rather than adjourned, & a typical reason is to allow further solicitation of votes on an important issue, instead of starting the voting process anew. Procedures would have to be carefully followed--& it sounds from Escape's description that at least some aspects of the election were quite sloppy--but it can be done. We don't have enough info to conclude this action is improper.

well we will see how this pans out since it will all be kept secret , if i am not there i cannot challenge the proxy, and i know i know more about this than anyone on the board or managing agent. The board refuses to do their due diligence and listens the falsehoods/lies/ sprouted by the managing agent. BOD refuse to read the proprietary lease even when i disagree and can name the page and paragraph of the proprietary lease. The president likes to play the "your the only one with an issue" And i say yeah, there was only the one guy in boston had an issue with bernie madhoff. I am sure they passed it. What can i do the wholw board doesn't have a clue on what their job is , and they just act like pupetts. Hopefully the AG will act on my letter, next it is media.

A LOT depends on whether the natural gas 'boom' is real or not. According to an article in the NYT, might be NOT.

Very true....yet if Con Ed. or NGrid will provide the infrastructure at little or no cost to building it seems wise to at least always have the option for gas or oil. Most boilers are equipped with duel fuel burning capacity thus the cost is minimal. At current prices a gas conversion project pays for itself very quickly...well before the natural gas "boom" goes bust. I am simply recommending that management companies/ownership group and commercial/industrial organizations take a look at this as an investment option.

Thanks, Eric - will pass this along.

To the best of my recollection, NYC occupancy laws were 2 per bedroom for a room over 80sq. ft. I am not sure if this is the criteria today. Check with the building dept. or your local community board. Or, call 311 and they will direct you. Good luck

I believe NYC defines occupancy requirements as minimum 80 sq feet per person. Our coop bylaws further restricts it to one married couple per apartment.

To restrict occupancy to a "married couple" violates fair housing laws. It can be restricted to 2 people, but not on the basis pf their marital status or age. So a parent and one child would be allowed as would two unmarried adults. I would suggest you bring this to the attention of your board before you have a major problem.
Good Luck

Great By-Laws. In our building "anything goes", there's no control.

WHile our Co-op only requires 10%, I believe the new mortgage rules are closer to 20%

I need to restate my last post. Our co-op has recently seen some 10% down mortgages with PMI. The problem with raising the bar to 20% is that you decrease the pool of buyers. Remember, if the buyer goes under, the co-op still has primary lien and can recoup the missing maintenance and legal fees. Assuming the co-op has a policy of sending late payers into the legal process fairly soon after the late event occurs (60-90 days, for example), your considerations should only be timing of when the maintenance is received and not whether the maintenance is received. Your reserves should cover the timing too.

we changed from 10 to 15% a couple years ago, maybe 8 years or more.
It was abot 6 months before the housing mess started coming out. They wanted to go to 20% we went to 15%, however i beleibe tey became more stringent on buyers money in the bank and their finances in reserve if they lost their job, ie 1 year of maintenance in reserve.
i didn't realize how messed up the mortgages were, when i got my mortgage in 1983, it was pretty strict as far as income and amount borrowed . with the way they were throwing mortgages around i could have bought a i million dollar property for the same money. it was insane.
i see the other post below states PMI, i thought PMI was necessary if you put down under 20%, it was when i bought. i could not believe that it wasn't required anymore under 20%. idiots

I push for a 20% rule in my buildings because if (God forbid) we were to have a stronger housing slump, and property values drop by 10 and 15%, the coop would have no leverage against someone who is financed at 90% and possibly now upside down on thier loan... they may even walk away from the liability if they get in trouble.

~AR

We have used outside operators for years with minimal problems. There tends to be greater turnover in garage staff than in building service workers. Also a large operator can provide incentives for monthly parkers to park outside of the garage at their other facilities elsewhere in the city, such as in the theatre district, etc.. Also, they can attract daily parkers through their marketing which can increase the payments to your building if you have a shareing arrangement in your lease.

I would call the police and tell them you are smelling it and don't know where it's coming from and don't want to be accused of violating the Propreitary Lease by having one of your neighbors think YOU are the culprit and let them discover the offender. It also establishes a record beyond management that this is taking place on the premises and they in turn would notify management about it.

If you don't want them coming to your apartment you can call 911 anonomously and give them the information of the offending apartment and tell them that you wish to remain anonymous.

Yes, but sometimes it's a judgment call to know which unit in a building has the pot smoker. How can you tell?

IF this is a problem for you, then: Start a paper trail: to the Board, to the Police, to your neighbors; keep a log of complaints, involve your neighbors, keep a log of his transactions, keep a log of any awareness of his Mother's about the transactions and activities, notify the Management Company in writing of the problem, involve your neighbors as the steady flow of traffic represents a security and safety risk to them by allowing trafficking in the building, move for a recusal of the Board President for aiding and abetting/harboring a criminal activity, etc. how far do you want to go with this? Take photographs of his visitors, be obvious, scare away his trade. There are a number of things you can do, how far do you want to go out on a limb to shut it down? What is your personal risk quotient? Ultimately you are dealing with forcing the son out of the building because he will never stop in the near term, the mother off the Board permanently as she is totally in breach of her duties as Board President, and the interpersonal issues that accompany that. You will need friends and support in the building in order to clean it up. Personally I don't think pot smoking is an issue, really in these times, a towel under the door would suffice; I think trafficking is, as it is a breach of your reasonable right to a sense of security that any strangers in the building are visitors and guests of neighbors not customers of a drug dealer. It doesn't matter that it is pot, vs. meth or coke, it matters that it is a steady stream of strangers due to trafficking and not social visits that puts the whole building at risk. Notify the building attorney of the problem and the intent to deal with it. But understand you are going to make the mom and the son very angry at your 'interfering' with his activities, are you up to dealing with this? you need allies that will stand by you thru the whole process to the end. We've been thru this, it won't be easy, and it can be scary depending on the personalities involved. Go to the Community Affairs Officer at your local Precinct for a chat first. Find out what level of support you local Precinct will provide, and what they advise. If they are unwilling then go to the local Board as they can apply pressure on the Precinct. Go to your local City Council Rep. They can also provide pressure. Does the son own his apartment or rent? IF he rents try and get a notice to cure issued against the owner, if he is the owner then do the same as a breach of the bylaws. IF the Mom owns the apt then file against her for breach. You can also go after them on the second hand smoke laws and precedents currently being established in the NYC courts, without getting into the pot issue. The bottom line is that you will need balls the size of coconuts to see it thru, so take a measure and decide what you are willing to, and can muster in terms of willpower and support before you embark on this endeavor. Don't give up, but you need to assess yourself, and your neighbors, before you go out on a limb alone. If your neighbors are afraid, then that is a very telling response in itself. At the very least, anyone trying to sell in the building with the smell of pot present is a kiss of death to prospective purchasers. Someone lost a sale in our building that way at one time. we got it corrected, fast. Unity helps. you need to figure out how to accomplish this and keep yourself safe in the process, a complex analysis of the undertaking is in order.

your best bet is to ask nicely if they can put a well towel dowm and use an exhaust fan. I have more of an odor problem from cigarettess by neighbors in my hallway. another neighbor and i plug in glade fresheners into the hallway receptacles. It is possible that your name will be given out , since it falls under a nuisance call ,not a drug dealing call, home use is legal.
i posted higher up, but still see these ridiculous post about reefer smell and <span class="hiddenSpellError" pre="amd "></span> paper trails, get over it is is not illegal. kids have friends , and they are allowed to visit, and if over the age, smoke reefer too. You may end up giving them proof that you are harassing them . If you smoke nicotine , you have no right to complain

Penal Law Section 221.05 - see web page

http://www.queensdefense.com/marijuana.htm

the write up from a criminal defense attorney. mj is no longer classified as a controlled substance in NYS.

EscapeFromYonkers, I don't know what you've been smoking, but marijuana in any quantity whatsoever is still illegal in New York. True, it's not a "controlled substance" with heavy penalties like cocaine, but that's doesn't mean it's legal. To quote from the very website you're referencing:

"Marijuana related offenses, in New York, have their own special laws with their own offense levels. This does not necessarily mean that New York doesn't care about marijuana or that it isn't serious to be charged with a marijuana related offense."

The penalty for possession of a small quantity of marijuana (under 25g) is fairly small -- a $100 fine, according to http://law.findlaw.com/state-laws/marijuana/new-york -- but possession is most definitely illegal. I don't for a minute think that's a good idea -- the whole War on Drugs is criminally insane, in my book -- but that's the way it is, at least for the moment.

This is not illegal and nothing can or should be done. Get some Febreeze and spray it around if the odor is annoying.

Of course drugs (Pot) is illegal, how can one say it is NOT! Call the police. If you speak with these neighbors, ring their bell and explain the smell is coming through. If management does nothing they are encouraging drug use on the premises.

Not illegal. You're saying pot is not illegal. Are you high?

Have they legalized Pot in NY? I'm unaware of that, since when did it become legal? Please advise.

reefer is not illegal in ny state when the quantity is around 23 grams or less and your not selling, your not smoking in public, like on the street, street corner, subway platform, probably all parks too.
it is a violation, the same as riding your bicycle on the sidewalk,or having a open alcohol container on public property.
Youget a ticket, and can mail in a fine. Unless your black or brown, in that case the police will say that they you had it in plain sight., or as they detain and frisk you for weapons, they will lie to you and say if you give any drugs your holding to me i will go easier on you for cooperating, but if you make me go into your socks and feel around your junk i am going to be pissed and come down harder. If the "suspect" follows and falls for the lies, known as the police instructions and pulls a joint out of his pocket or shoe, a place and size that they know can't be a place for a weapon . They will then charge the individual with possession in public view , which is a crime, a misdemeanor, and ruin the kids life. They have also simply found it in a stop and frisk weapons search and said it was in plain view and charged the misdemeanor offense, when they shouldn't be searching in small places for guns.s stop and frisk. Glocks dont fit inside a sock or in the bottom 1/3 of a pocket. Plus if it isnt hard and small , it is not a gun.
The ny times had a big write up about this procedure over a year ago. Since then much worse conduct of planting cocaine on innocent people, purely a way to get overtime, have been recently exposed.
But in the privacy of ones home, smoking is not a crime.
i have thr same problem with cigarette smokers as neighbors, it comes through the wall, the hallway is horrible. Myself and another neighbor take turns putting in one of those plug in glade things, and i added one on the wall the smoke is coming through. It works well,but your smell may be stronger,but i doubt they smoke as much. The flame-less things that you heat scented soy cubes works well too, gives a nice smell ,but uses too much electric for my taste, i need to find a way to get it down to 3 watts, now it is a 25 watt lightbulb.

http://www.queensdefense.com/marijuana.htm
for the write up from a criminal defense attorney. It actually has stuff in there i didnt know that makes conviction of the violation even harder if not impossible. MJ is no longer classified as a controlled substance in NYS.

funny that i just saw this post because the other night i had my terrace door open and was inundated by the odor of pot. by any chance is your coop downtown manhattan near the brooklyn bridge?

The President of our Board has a son whom lives directly across from my apartment. He smokes pot day and night, the smell comes into my apartment and permeates throughout the hallway. He not only smokes but, he sells it as well. He has been arrested three times for pot possession and weapon possession. The President knows all this and she allows it to continue. She has been present when his customes visited him, I have a peep hole that looks right at his door so I see what transpires. His customers ring my bell in error throughout the night and the traffic goes on from early am to late pm. This is what we have to live with.

Continue to call the Police and continue to have him arrested. Also state that you are in fear of your life due to the weapon possession. Explain to the Police that this selling and buying of drugs is impacting on your life since they are coming to your door. After 3 arrests for this behavior I don't understand why the police, since there is a record, do not do something more drastic. Is he on probation? At this point, this should be a legal issue. Possibly his mother doesn't seem to be able to control him and looks away. Keep hounding the law.

...telling other board members, the managing agent, and most important, the board attorney -- who as an officer of the court has a duty to bring illegalities to the law's attention? How about the Bureau of Tobacco, Alcohol & Firearms (I believe it's called) if there have been arrests on illegal weapons.

Wait -- if there have been arrests for illegal weapons, then how is it here's still there? Is he on bail? Were the weapons confiscated?