An Opinion By Jan Bergemann 
President, Cyber Citizens For Justice, Inc. 
Published September 28, 2006

Who cares about Florida statutes, governing documents or warning letters from the DBPR? Boards have their own agendas and interpretations of the laws! And if their actions violate the statutes, then we see some board members rather being inclined to try to change the bylaws instead of obeying the rules. 

The best example is the case of The VILLAGE OF KINGS CREEK CONDOMINIUM,  where the board president Astrid Buttari donated $10,000 of the association’s funds to an outside group, dedicated to fight a zoning change. According to the warning letter of the DBPR, this constitutes a clear violation of the Florida Statutes 718.115.

But why should anybody obey the rules if the government agency supposed to regulate condos isn't interested in upholding the laws? The Division accepted the excuse of "donation of $10,000 was approved by vote of board" without even inquiring any further. According to unit owners, the DBPR accepted "the vote of a board meeting" that never took place. But who cares in the Division as long as another investigation can be closed with another formal "warning letter" -- a warning letter nobody takes seriously anyway!

But the “warning letter” from DBPR caused the president of the association to act, just not the way most reasonable people would expect! Instead of "Sorry -- my mistake" unit owners received a letter from the president Astrid Buttari, trying to explain her spending of $10,000 of association dues, but making sure that everybody understood that the violation wasn't really serious, because the DBPR didn’t even fine the association!

She wants to have full authority to spend up to $ 10,000.00 for the "purpose of protecting health, safety and property values or issues that may impact the quality of life of the association such as development and/or zoning issues." 

Buttari is pushing for an Amendment of the Bylaws, claiming that would allow her in the future to that large sum of money without any further approval, as long as she feels like it! And the wording of these amended bylaws is about as vague as the rest of the regulations!

These shenanigans can only occur because Florida’s regulating agency fails to do its job, when it lets these kinds of board members do whatever they want -- ignoring rules and statutes, or changing them at their whim!

Anybody ever come up with the "outrageous" idea to let unit owners, whose money is being spent, have a say in this? Most likely we would see a lot fewer financial abuses!

Owners shouldn’t be forced to tolerate this kind of financial abuse from board members!  Most of all, association funds should never be a cash cow for board members and service providers.