The general thought is that if these fools had more knowledge or experience in that area, they would know not to jump in and would be wiser to evade the situation entirely. Enter the players…
Prudent is a young professional woman, excited after having purchased her first home, a condo unit in the Treading Water Condominium Association.
Veep is a landlord who owns more than one unit in the Treading Water Condominium Association and has his own agenda for the Association. Strong-willed and stubborn, he is adept at persuading others to see his point of view.
Naïveté is a retired elderly woman who lives in the Treading Water Condominium Association and has been on the board for years. She has an odd and unexplained interest in agreeing with anything Veep says or does because she “doesn’t want to make waves.”
Wearford (“Weary” for short) is the manager at Around- the-Block Management Inc., the professional management company for Treading Water Condominium Association.
THEIR STORY:
A month after purchasing her first home, Prudent wants to do “the neighborly thing” and get to know her fellow condo unit owners. She reads the notice posted about the upcoming board meeting and decides to attend, introducing herself to the dozen or so other members who also attended. At the meeting, she learns that a position on the board has become available due to the previous board member moving out of the association and out of the state. No one else volunteered for the spot, so Prudent decides this may be a good opportunity to learn more about the association of which she has just become a part. She can lend her (somewhat limited) professional experience to the association and this way, she’ll be able to monitor the association’s activities and operations and can be a good sounding board to both her neighbors and the management company. She can make the association even better, she thinks to herself.
A year goes by and Prudent has immersed herself in the association’s day-to-day living, neatening the lobby, picking up random pieces of garbage that appear around the community, making sure common areas are well-lit, salting sidewalks and driveways when needed, and making herself available to any and all owners who have questions, comments or complaints about the association. She attends every board meeting and makes sure she votes on all board motions and business decisions, since that is her duty. She checks in on Naïveté, her neighbor across the hall, who lives alone and sometimes needs a little looking after. Over the year, many things have come up in the association that she has had to spend a lot of time on, including an insurance claim for fire damage, legal issues with delinquent owners, unusually high amounts of snowfall and unexpected repairs that caused the board and management to scramble to manage cash flows while paying those bills and keeping
the association afloat. She sometimes feels like her board member tasks have become a part-time job where she is rewarded not by a paycheck but by complaints and owner demands, both valid and impractical.
The day arrives when Weary (short for Wearford), the Association’s property manager, advises the board that the roof study they just had completed came back with bad news. Though the board and management previously thought they were a few years away from a roof replacement project, the recent heavy storms in the area, combined with old satellite dishes that were improperly attached to the roof, have taken their toll on the roof. More and more roof leaks occurred lately and more and more shingles were found lying in the lawn like wounded soldiers on a battlefield. The association’s roof consultant recommends that the roof be replaced soon, before the winter season takes its toll and causes even more damage.
Weary does his due diligence and invites five roofing companies who are well-known and trusted in the industry (CAI members, all of them) to visit the association and submit their bids to replace the roof. He and his staff review all of the proposals they’ve received, making sure each vendor has the correct and same specs and details of the project. He puts together a detailed matrix showing all vendors, their time frames, warranties, prices, and other data, which he sends to the board in advance of the next meeting.
The meeting day rolls around and unit owners who previously never attended board meetings decide to make an appearance. As it often does, word has got out that the association needs a new roof and assorted details and embellishments regarding price and financing have run rampant through the community. Even Veep, a landlord Prudent has often heard about but never met personally, is in attendance, surrounded by a few unit owners who hang onto his every word and fawn adoringly at him. Prudent is not aware that prior to the meeting, Veep secretly canvassed the association, passing out fliers claiming that the board doesn’t know what they’re doing, that they want to use an expensive roofing contractor because the management and the board will receive kick-backs, and on and on.
Prudent and her fellow board members enter the meeting, oblivious to the clandestine coffee klatches that have occurred over the last two weeks and to the surreptitious allegations against the board and management. As Weary begins his presentation on the roof situation and the board is about to vote on the vendor, Veep stands up and makes a fiery speech accusing the board and management of serving their own interests, of over-spending the association’s money and not addressing the myriad of requests he and his tenants make on a weekly basis. He pulls out a proposal from a roofing contractor he claims he has used in the past… Dee Seedful, an old army buddy of his who owns his own roofing company, Fly-By-Night Roofers. The proposal is sketchy and lacks information on the vendor besides name,
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