DON’T YOU WANT TO KNOW WHERE YOUR MONEY GOES?

By Jan Bergemann

Published February 21, 2014

    

Most of you are paying the monthly maintenance fees (dues) in a timely manner. If not, you are quickly receiving some nasty letters. Most boards and CAMs are fast when it comes to telling you that you are late with a payment.

  

But on the other hand many boards and CAMS are unwilling to follow the Florida statutes when it comes to telling you what “happened” with your money.

 

The Florida community association statutes are telling you in detail the obligations of the board to keep you informed about the financials of your association. In the statutes it’s called FINANCIAL REPORTING. The wording in the statutes [See FS 718.111(13); FS 719.104(4); FS 720.303(7)] may differ a little in these statutes, the main requirement is the same: Financial Reports have to be available to the association members within a certain time span after the financial year ends.

  

While the Division of Florida Condominiums, Timeshares, and Mobile Homes strictly enforces these requirements to supply financial reports to the association members, owners in HOAs are not so lucky. Since there is no regulatory agency for members they often face board members and/or CAMs who are unwilling to follow the laws and tell people who demand these financial records: “What do you want to do if we don’t give you the financial records? Sue us?”

 

My verdict, when it comes to board members and/or CAMs unwilling to follow the law, is simple: “They have something to hide!”

  

Make sure that the folks in charge of your community association follow the laws and show you where exactly they are spending (or wasting) your money!


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Jan Bergemann 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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