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WHAT WEBSITES?
By
Jan Bergemann
Published April 28, 2023
I guess the Florida Legislature thought they did a great job to
assure transparency in condominiums when they enacted bills in
2017 and 2018 [FS
718.111(12)(g)],
that required condominium associations with more than 150 units
to operate a website featuring all so-called “public
documents”.
They would have done a great job -- the bills were actually well
intended – if there would be as well some sort of enforcement.
In the real world we are seeing lots of totally incomplete
websites, only showing what board members and CAMs want the
owners to see – and otherwise it’s business as usual.
The fights over record requests are keeping arbitrators and
courts busy – and the attorneys are still smiling at their bank
account statements.
If the legislators thought that they finally found a solution to
end litigation about association records they were dead wrong.
Everybody knows that laws without enforcement are pretty useless
and all these laws created each year are only laws for the rich,
meaning the folks who have enough money to hire attorneys and
fight for their rights, given to them by these kinds of laws, in
district and appeals courts.
Wouldn’t that mean that all these laws, created year for year
adding to the community association statutes, are only
LAWS FOR THE RICH?
Every other owner who might dare to mention at a board meeting
that the board is violating statutes can still be told by the
association attorney: “Sit
down and shut up. You don’t have the money to sue the
association!”
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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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