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ELECTIONS? LET’S GO!
By
Jan Bergemann
Published August 28, 2020
Once a year it’s time for your association to hold the annual
meeting with elections – date set by your bylaws.
There is absolutely no reason to cancel the election or postpone
it indefinitely. I already heard from some owners that their
boards are planning on cancelling elections and let the board
members serve another year.
No matter what, Pandemic or not, this would be a clear violation
of the Florida statutes. Take the necessary precautions, require
face masks and social distancing, but the meeting with elections
has to take place at the required time.
Boards can make the necessary regulations in order to make the
meeting as safe as possible, but this is a meeting that can’t be
done just by using ZOOM.
Eric made the right suggestion: HOAs should amend their bylaws
and use the election provisions from the CONDO ACT [
FS 718.112(2)(d) ]. Not only is it a lot more
fool-proof avoiding cheating, it allows voting by mail and by
written ballots, only requiring very few people to conduct the
meeting – and vote count – in person.
STAY SAFE – BUT HOLD THE ANNUAL MEETING WITH ELECTION AS
REQUIRED BY STATUTES AND YOUR BYLAWS.
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Jan Bergemann is president of Cyber Citizens For Justice,
Florida
's largest state-wide property owners' advocacy group.
CCFJ works on legislation to help owners living in
community
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associations. He moved to
Florida
in 1995 - hoping to retire. He moved into a HOA, where the
developer cheated the homeowners and used the association dues
for his own purposes. End of retirement!
CCFJ was born in the year 2000, when some owners met in
Tallahassee
- finding out that power is only in numbers. Bergemann was a
member of Governor Jeb Bush's HOA Task force in 2003/2004.
The organization has two websites to inform interested
Florida
homeowners and condo owners:
News Website: http://www.ccfj.net/.
Educational Website: http://www.ccfjfoundation.net/.
We think that only owners can really represent owners, since all
service providers surely have a different interest! We are
trying to create owner-friendly laws, but the best laws are
useless without enforcement. And enforcement is totally lacking
in
Florida
!
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