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HARD-WORKING BOARD MEMBERS DESERVE A BIG THANK-YOU!
By
Jan Bergemann
Published
September 9, 2016
Last Monday was Labor Day – and we shouldn’t forget to thank all
the hard-working Board members trying to do their best to keep
the communities in great shape – and protect our property
values by doing an excellent job.
We always hear – and talk about – about all the dictatorial
board members with private agendas who squander our money. The
media is full of reports about all the problems these kind of
board members are causing in communities all over the nation.
Reading all these ugly headlines day for day we often forget the
many volunteers who give many hours of their free time to make
sure that all goes well in our associations.
In a society where lying, cheating, scams and kickbacks seem to
be considered part of daily life – and seems to be totally
acceptable by many members of Florida’s law enforcement
community, it’s actually not easy to be a “good” board member.
Temptations to become a bad board member are huge; bribes and
kickbacks are only all too common. From expensive cruises to
free lawn care – we have seen it all. People from up North, at
first disgusted by these methods of doing business here in
Florida , seem to get accustomed to these Southern “habits”
after a while – “it’s just the way they are doing
business down here!”
It is not – and it shouldn’t be! It just shows that we should
thank the “honest” volunteers even more. It’s pretty difficult
to do things right in our community associations, considering
the vague statutes and the many rules supposed to regulate our
community associations. Don’t forget, there is no course named
“101 Community Association Management” in schools and/or
colleges. Good interpretations of existing rules and laws are
hard to come by, because the interpretations of the rules by the
so-called professionals vary widely – it often depends on who
you are asking.
No matter what, some of these volunteers should be sentenced to
HARD LABOR, while the majority of our community
association board members should be praised and thanked -- for
all the hard labor they are investing on a daily basis in our
communities!
Thank you!
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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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