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FINALLY: MANDATORY EDUCATION FOR BOARD MEMBERS
By
Jan Bergemann
Published April 19, 2024
This year the Florida
Legislature finally got the message: It is absolutely
irresponsible to allow people run a community association who
don’t even have the basic knowledge of statutes and rules.
Mandatory seminars are required, with the Division of
Condominiums, Timeshares and Mobile Homes tasked with
supervising the that all board members follow the laws. The new
bills no longer allow board members to just sign the stupid “I
know it all form”.
But will the Division be
prepared to make sure to take care of all the new laws?
Don’t forget: It all
hinges on the rule-making of the Division. As long as the
Division allows seminars by ZOOM or YouTube, the whole effort of
the Legislature to create mandatory education for board members
plainly fails. We al know how ZOOM and YouTube work: You sign
in, leave it running on your computer and get a certificate --
for not listening to one word that is being said. Nobody can
control if the board member is really listening.
Remember: There is no
Condo Ombudsman since Spencer Hennings resigned last year. The
Director listed on the website -- Chevonne Christian – is gone.
And they send folks to town hall meetings who don’t even know
the difference between enacting laws by the Legislature and Rule
Making by the Division.
Yes, the legislature is
giving the Division an extra $7.1 million to hire 68 new
employees, but who will properly train them?
What I have seen so far,
most of the employees working for the Division really need to
get lots of education. What good does it do if the investigators
supposed to deal with the complaints of condo owners don’t
actually know the laws and rules governing Florida’s condominium
associations?
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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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