Majority of Florida condo board quit in 2019 as squabbling residents dragged out plans for repairs

[DallasNE]

34. This Sounds All Too Typical

Here the frustrated Board President blames the owners for sabotaging the work of the Board with last minute objections. That sounds like a transparency issue where the Board provided incomplete data to get preliminary appr oval then hit the owners with a surprise and the owners push back.

They had Property Management function so where did they fit in the picture. What does there Master Deed say regarding who does what? These condo associations are islands in the City Many are not well managed and there is no outside supervision of the work they perform.

Typically with aging structures you will begin to face extensive repairs and typically the Board will not fund reserves and perform scheduled maintenance, instead waiting for things to fail and then deal with the replacement and collateral damage from the failure. Depending on the cost it could mean a special assessment. Many owners don't have the money for the $5,000 special assessment and that only makes the solution more difficult to deal with.

In this case why didn't the Board set up a reserve fund in 2017 when they were confronted with the problem. They hired the engineer to make the assessment and then did nothing. That is not the owners fault. They are not the ones that just kicked the can down the road. The 2018 report quantified how much money was needed to the reserve probably needed a boost at that time. So 5 of the 7 Board members resigned, though 1 came back shortly thereafter. Politics seemed pretty thick here so this was a disaster waiting to happen. And the urgency was apparent. They couldn't pump the water out fast enough to keep up. RED FLAG. Was there something they could have done short term to shore things up while longer range repairs are made. We know what doing nothing resulted in.

Yes, there is plenty of blame to go around. And this is not all that uncommon in Associations. A good investigative reporter should look into older Associations and see how they are faring with the deferred maintenance situation? Especially these 40 year old condos. And especially as it relates to reserve funding specific to deferred maintenance issues. It would probably be pretty alarming.