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DO YOU REALLY CARE?
By
Jan Bergemann
Published
August 28, 2015
I help – often more
than once a week – owners trying to recall their board members.
A wide majority of these recalls are successful.
I help lots of
owners trying to figure out about the election procedures in
their communities, owners who want to be candidates for the
upcoming election.
All these owners
asking for help have one thing in common: They feel that the
sitting board members don’t do a good job or – even worse – have
their fingers in the cookie-jar.
They mostly have
really good intentions and claim to be willing to steer the ship
(community) in the right direction.
But that’s often
only as long as they are candidates – similar to politicians.
Their attitudes are often changing as soon as they succeeded –
meaning they got elected to the board – or the recall to oust
the sitting board members was certified.
Quite a few of these
folks suddenly change their mind. They are no longer willing to
go after the bad guys, are unwilling to investigate where the
missing money disappeared and keep the service providers in
place – the same service providers they were – during their
candidacy – complaining about like crazy.
Let’s make one thing
very clear: It takes some guts to become a board member trying
to do things right. If you try to win an “Everybody-Likes-Me”
contest you shouldn’t run for the board. There will always be
some owners who will criticize you. You can’t make it right for
everybody.
An association is a
business – and has to be run as such. Everybody who ever ran a
business knows that all smiles and being nice will not do it –
it will kill the business in the end.
So, please only
consider running for the board if you are willing to do serious
business and have the guts to do things that may not be popular
with all your neighbors. Only run for the board if you really
care!
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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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