B.Z. from Westchester County, New York writes:
Dear Mister Condo,
New York State Condominium act 9B, section 339w reads “the manager or board of managers shall keep accurate records, in chronological order, of receipts and expenditures arising from the operation of the property. Such records and the vouchers authorizing the payments shall be available for examination by the unit owners a t convenient hours of weekdays”. If the Condo Board and the managing company refuses to comply, what is the next that a unit owner can take to convince them to comply?
Mister Condo replies:
B.Z., thank you for your question. Since I am not an attorney, I can offer you no legal advice here. If it were me, I would advise the Board and the Property Manager that they are in violation of the law and that I demand they comply with the law or face the consequences of a lawsuit. If that didn’t work, I would, in fact, speak with an attorney and begin a lawsuit against the association for violating the law. Typically, the threat of a lawsuit will have those named in the suit behaving in a more appropriate manner. However, the law is there to protect unit owners from Boards and Management Companies that would prefer to operate in a vacuum and withhold information from owners. If you can’t get results by asking nicely, the law is there to protect you should you need to take more drastic action. All the best!
This isn’t the first tine I have heard of this going on. Some years ago I was contacted by s board member to look at some contracting work in the complex. To make a long story short she never viewed an invoice from previous vendor nor did she know who it was. I told her she is ion the board and can view this info her reply was they don’t let me see she also stated she had contacted an attorney