|
PICK
A LANGUAGE….ANY LANGUAGE
By
Eric Glazer, Esq.
Published
March 24, 2014
Believe
it or not……I received more than one e-mail this year from
people complaining that their annual meetings are being
conducted in a language other than English and some people are
fighting mad about it. I’ll
risk being politically incorrect and say that I think it’s
absurd that that a unit owner can attend the association’s
annual meeting and find out when they get there that the meeting
will not be conducted in English and instead will be conducted
in a language that they completely don’t understand.
It is wrong and should be illegal, but it isn’t.
While
there is no “official language” for our country, in 1988 the
voters of this state passed a Constitutional amendment that
makes English the official language of the State of
Florida
. And, the Florida
Constitution says the legislature has the power to enforce that
section by appropriate legislation.
So The Florida Legislature would be allowed to pass
legislation requiring the meetings to take place in English.
Several years ago, I was at a meeting in
Sunny
Isles
Beach
that was conducted entirely in French.
This really upset many English speaking people who had no
right under the statute to do anything about it.
I felt like I was in Bizzaro World, not knowing what
anyone was talking about.
I
understand that many of our communities, especially in
South Florida
, are comprised of occupants whose first language may not be
English. I also
understand that as a result of the composition of that
community, it would be easier to conduct the meeting in a
language other than English, and that the majority of those in
attendance would gain a better understanding of the meeting if
it were conducted in their native tongue.
However, even if only one English speaking person shows
up to that meeting, shouldn’t he or she have the right to know
what is going on? They
are property owners for heaven’s sake.
The governing documents are printed in English, the
statutes are printed in English.
Is there no right available to that owner to have the
important meetings in the community conducted in English?
Should the English speaking owner be forced to hire an
interpreter at their own expense?
I don’t think so.
How about some simple legislation that says the following:
All
meetings of the Board of Directors, any committee, or the
membership , including the annual meeting and the budget
meeting, may be conducted in a language other than English.
If however, at or prior to the meeting, any Board member,
committee member or other member of the association requests
that the meeting be conducted in English, the meeting must also
be conducted in English.
Anybody
else want to risk being politically incorrect?
Let’s hear what you think.
|
|
About
HOA & Condo Blog
 |
Eric Glazer graduated from the University of
Miami School of Law in 1992 after receiving a B.A. from
NYU. He is currently entering his 20th year as a
Florida
lawyer practicing |
community association law and is the owner of
Glazer and Associates, P.A. an eight attorney law firm in
Orlando
and Hollywood. For the past two years Eric has been the host of Condo Craze and
HOAs, a weekly one hour radio show on 850 WFTL. See: www.condocrazeandhoas.com.
He is the first attorney in the State of Florida
that designed a course that certifies condominium residents as
eligible to serve on a condominium Board of Directors and has
now certified more than 7,000 Floridians. He is certified as a
Circuit Court Mediator by The Florida Supreme Court and has
mediated dozens of disputes between associations and unit
owners. Finally, he recently argued the Cohn v. Grand
Condominium case before The Florida Supreme Court, which is
perhaps the single most important association law case decided
by the court in a decade.
|
