MichaelL17 (Pennsylvania)
Posts: 2
Posts: 2
Posted:
I am a member of a condo association in Pennsylvania. A group of homeowner and I have been concerned with actions of the long-time members of the board's ability to control elections to maintain their positions, change by-laws without HOA consent and manipulate monies to relatives, hide charges in financial statements and give themselves un-authorized health benefits and bogus salaries These proven issues spurred serious concern of all their activities. Why would anyone go through so much trouble to maintain their supposed non-paying positions on the council? We were informed that they made a change to our by-laws so they would only need 15% of the HOA votes to approve and change the condo by-laws and code of regulations. These members have taken the condo association out of the “right of first refusal" to purchase any condo coming up for sale. Three of the members have purchased several units and used the HOA monies to repair the units for their own sales. What makes matters worse is that the superintendent is one of the long-term members of the board and therefore approves his own actions and salary. Needless to say, his salary has changed dramatically over the past few years.
After repeated inquiries to obtain financial information, the superintendent's job description and the responsibility of the member of the board, our group got together to pursue this in numbers. Through continuous action, we were able to put one of our group members on the board. We thought we had two positions from our election but we found out afterwards, a member who was part of our group was discovered to be a close friend of one the longest held long term council members.
The position our colleague was approved for was the Treasurer position. He's been on the board for several months trying diligently to take over his responsibilities as treasurer to no avail; the other members would not relinquish the books. We are now documenting all activities and requesting all information in writing of which he has yet to obtain. The other board members have threatened to have him removed from his position if he pursues this useless issue.
Through aggressive interrogations and some forensic work we have uncovered unscrupulous check writing and lies to reason for the unapproved spending on personal accounts to the tune of over $40,000.00. We feel very confident if we could get the information we need, we will uncover much more.
Their muscle and their ability to refuse the information has made it quite difficult to uncover more dirt.
Obviously there is much more that I could elaborate on but I'm sure you understand my concerns.
Do you know how would be the best way to proceed to remove them immediately and then to bring their actions to justice?
Can you give me some direction?
After repeated inquiries to obtain financial information, the superintendent's job description and the responsibility of the member of the board, our group got together to pursue this in numbers. Through continuous action, we were able to put one of our group members on the board. We thought we had two positions from our election but we found out afterwards, a member who was part of our group was discovered to be a close friend of one the longest held long term council members.
The position our colleague was approved for was the Treasurer position. He's been on the board for several months trying diligently to take over his responsibilities as treasurer to no avail; the other members would not relinquish the books. We are now documenting all activities and requesting all information in writing of which he has yet to obtain. The other board members have threatened to have him removed from his position if he pursues this useless issue.
Through aggressive interrogations and some forensic work we have uncovered unscrupulous check writing and lies to reason for the unapproved spending on personal accounts to the tune of over $40,000.00. We feel very confident if we could get the information we need, we will uncover much more.
Their muscle and their ability to refuse the information has made it quite difficult to uncover more dirt.
Obviously there is much more that I could elaborate on but I'm sure you understand my concerns.
Do you know how would be the best way to proceed to remove them immediately and then to bring their actions to justice?
Can you give me some direction?