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Article Courtesy of The Palm
Beach Post
By Meghan Meyer
Published September 20, 2007
In the midst of one of the worst droughts in South
Florida history, the grass at the Kings Point retirement community west of
Delray Beach turned brown.
It had less to do with the weather than with the
locks on the irrigation pumps, 13 condominium associations alleged in a
lawsuit filed Tuesday afternoon in Palm Beach County Circuit Court.
Already fed up with increasing fees, the
associations, which represent individual buildings, balked at paying bills
of nearly $4,500 each from a management company that many of them had
dropped years ago.
Prime Management in turn shut off irrigation and put
locks on the pumps, the suit alleged.
"We're going through hell over here," said
Marty Katz, president of the Normandy Condominium.
"It's a police state. It's like a concentration
camp."
Strong words coming from a community that includes
many Holocaust survivors.
The suit went further, calling Prime's tactics
"Gestapo-like."
"We do have people here with numbers on their
arms," Katz said.
Prime Management officials referred calls to
attorney Peter Sachs. He had not seen the lawsuit, but was familiar with
the gist of it.
"What we have here," he said, quoting the
movie Cool Hand Luke, "is a failure to communicate."
In the past, the irrigation system was owned by all
of the buildings east of Jog Road, which contributed equal amounts to
maintain it, he said.
Then several buildings dropped Prime Management and
hired other property management companies. Prime Management continued to
maintain the system.
Now everyone must resolve how to pay for it.
"I don't know who's at fault," Sachs said.
"The crux here is the contribution to maintain that system."
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