F.M. from outside of Connecticut writes:
Dear Mister Condo,
I joined the board a year ago. The other board members are there for decades, not by vote but because we never reached the minimum quorum to carry out an election. After investigation, I found several flubs in the past decisions that led us to severe loss to our condominium. One of them, amounts to almost $300,000 in losses with the cost of irrigation water. The association has been paying the local utility company by the highest water rate when it should be 70% lower if they had applied with the utility company for a lower rate based on the size of our property. The lower rate was available since 2008 and it was very easy to learn about. Another issue is the roofs of our buildings. The wooden shakes were replaced in 2004 after damages caused by a hurricane. However, as I learned, the wooden shakes replacement was not done by Standard Building Code. The association did not hire an architect or engineer to guide them in the reconstruction process. As a consequence, the roofs were replaced by local contractors and are now in very bad shape, will not last much longer and the overall aspect is detrimental to our property values. Another issue is the most recent, and involves the resurfacing of our tennis court that had been in bad shape and useless for years. The association knew that the ground soil was sinking and that the soil needed to be addressed beforehand. Instead, they approved a cheap painting for $7,000. The tennis court is visibly off level. Considering the way decisions are made by the board, I am afraid that our condominium will suffer further downgrades if action is not taken to remove and replace the board members. Because of the last recession, more than 50% of our units are now rental units. It will not be an easy task to obtain signatures of 75% of all property owners to remove the board members. My question is whether a legal action to compel them to leave is a valid option.
Mister Condo replies:
F.M., I am sorry for the situation you find yourself in. I am not an attorney so I cannot offer you legal advice as to whether a legal action to compel the Board to vacate their office is a valid option. However, I will tell you that, in my opinion, it is not a valid option for the following reasons. Your association is a privately held, not for profit, corporation. The corporation was founded to govern the association and unless you can cite an explicitly illegal activity, the Board has done nothing legally incorrect. In fact, for decades, the unit owners of your association have returned them to office at Annual Meetings, where democratic elections have been held. Lack of quorum only shows that unit owners didn’t care enough to participate in the governance of their association. Shame on them for doing so as all unit owners have paid the price over and over again for their lack of attendance. If it were me, I would sell my unit and get out before any further financial damage occurred. That is an option available to you. If you wish to remain and try to effect change, you will need to seek other like-minded unit owners to run for election to the Board and get enough votes to win. If you think you have the votes/signatures to force a recall election prior to the Annual Meeting, you can certainly follow the steps on your governing documents to do so. However, with so many absentee owners, I agree with you that would be unlikely. Annual Meetings are typically your best bet for a changing of the guard. You will need to campaign for new Board Members and be sure they are ready to serve. You should reach out to resident unit owners ahead of time and write to absentee unit owners to encourage them to support these new candidates with a proxy vote. Change to association governance comes from within the association. Simply doing an inadequate job of managing the association resources isn’t enough to have Board members removed. It takes a fresh batch of candidates to unseat incumbent Board Members. And guess what? If your fellow unit owners don’t support that change, it isn’t going to happen. Good Luck!