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SAFETY FIRST?
By
Jan Bergemann
Published January 17, 2025
When I see each year the bills for condominiums (FS 718), it
seems to me like SAFETY is not a real priority for many condo
owners and the community association industry. Year for year
these folks are lobbying against bills dealing with the safety
of the people living in these buildings.
Year for year we are seeing safety provisions in bills being
kicked down the road.
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For more than ten years we have seen FIRESAFETY
provisions for hi-rise buildings in bills with deadlines being
postponed – over and over again.
But as fate has it, the deadline for the FIRE PREVENTION CODE
now fell together with the deadlines for the safety provisions
contained in the CONDO SAFETY BILL (HB
1021). And from what I hear, many associations
postponed the installation for a fire sprinkler system or an
engineered life safety system until the last minute. That means
that the cost for the Fire Safety provisions has to be paid at
the same time as the cost for the safety provisions required by
the Condo Safety Bill.
Recent inspections of especially older buildings have shown that
quite a few associations have failed to properly maintain the
building and have kept the monthly maintenance fees artificially
low by voting down fully funded reserves year for year. Now
there is no money to pay for the structural repairs required by
recent inspections, creating a financial fiasco in many of these
associations.
Governor Ron DeSantis has called a special session starting
January 27, 2025, to deal with, among other issues, the
condo problems. Nothing wrong with creating better definitions
for some of the words used in the initial Condo Safety Bill, but
I just hope that legislators will not give in to the demand of
many owners and kick the SAFETY can further down the road.
We sure don’t need another disaster like the collapse of the
Champlain Towers South in Surfside that cost the lives of 98
people!
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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 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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