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In our 48 co-op unit in Queens, our manager is sigining the checks for the building without showing the checks to the treasurer. I thought that only board members could sign the checks. Please, I need answers right away because I heard that the manager and the sponsor want to remove me from the Board. Thank you.
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As a board treasure, I agree with what Mark described. I want to add that as a minimum you should be receiving a monthly report from your managing agent showing all account (operating, capital reserve, sinking funds, etc) monthly opening and closing balances, a breakdown by budget category and item of income and expenses, a reconciliation of your operating checking account, shareholder maintenance payment, and shareholder arrears broken down by who is delinquent and how many months they are late. In addition, you should receive copies (either from your managing agent or directly from the financial institutions) of *every* account owned by the Co-op, especially the ones I listed above. Something else which is very helpful is a photocopy of every invoice received and paid by your managing agent along with a copy of the check voucher used to pay the invoice.
Now for the fun part. Read each of these documents *carefully*, month after month. Your treasurer should be doing this. If he isn't, get a new treasurer. The only way to prevent fraud and embezzlement and other nasty surprises is to review the paper trail. If you (or your treasurer) is *not* getting all of this paperwork on a monthly basis, raise the red flags. Either get documents (as far back as possible) or get a new managing agent.
An example: Our former super had his parking paid for by the Co-op because he used his vehicle for Co-op business. When he retired, the automatic monthly payments were supposed to end because the new super did not own a car. It was only by reviewing the monthly report line by line that I was able to determine that the payments continued for four months after retirement (in spite of my notifying the managing agent all four months that the payments needed to end) because no-one told the managing agent's accounts payable department not to honor the invoices they were receiving. It took a face-to-face with the managing agent's CFO to get this accomplished, but it saved us $1500. I believe it was an honest mistake because they had personnel changeover during this period, but it is still shareholder money saved.
I know this is a bit old,but whatever method they state is the procedure, I would ask for the written documentation of the procedure and also how this procedure was implemented . I have a managing agent and BOD prez that everything that comes out of their mouth is a falsehood. Since the board never performs due diligence and actually reads the proprietary lease paragraph in question , the problems just continue to grow.
Unfortunately, this is a common problem. The coop that I live in has the same issues of dishonesty among some of the BOD's and the Managing Agent.
Can anyone recommend a good Managing Agent?
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This is really a board to board decision. Some Boards require that two signatures from the Board be present on the invoices and then the checks after approval, some boards give the manager the latitude to approve and sign for checks. Sometimes this can be for monthly fixed expenses (mortgage, utilities, management fee, etc.) or it can be anything under $1,000 (for example).
If the rest of the Board doesn't agree with you, I think that you should be requesting an up to date monthly copy of the paid bills on an ongoing monthly basis. If they don't allow you, as a Board member, to view the paid bills and expenses, then I think that you have a problem.
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