In the last year, I’ve had the opportunity to meet many of my fellow owners and residents, and I must say they are a very nice group of people. The common thread of many of the conversations I’ve had with them revolves around people being unaware of how many of the rules, policies, improvements and equipment came about. Well, until I was elected to the board I had never even attended a meeting where rules, policies, improvements and equipment were discussed and voted on by the Board of Directors, so I was curious too. Certainly, someone must know when and how these things came about, shouldn’t they?
So I turned first to the bylaws to see what I could find. To my delight, I realized that Article XIII, Section 5 was titled “Inspection of Books”, which stated that records shall be available for examination by the unit owners. Just out of curiosity, I checked the Maryland Condominium Act. There it was in Article 11.116 and everywhere else I looked, it was clear that an owner has the right to see how these things came about.
Every owner has a right to view documents and books, so I sent a letter to management, who is the keeper of our records, and they asked me to fill out a small form. I requested minutes and resolutions from January, 2013 to present. I had to pay a reasonable copying fee of around $30 and within 21 days my copies were ready for me to pick up. Wow – quite an eye opener and I definitely found a lot of the information I was looking for and more!
So if you really want to know where security fobs, cameras, rules or anything else came from you should request copies too. The documents hold all kinds of interesting facts about what the board has done with your money, your rules and your property. These laws are created to protect you, it’s your right as an owner. You should certainly feel free to exercise your right to request minutes, resolutions and/or books and other financial information.
Pines Blog 
I’m glad you were able to receive records going back to January 2013, however, I’m curious as to why you only went back that far. At that time we had “The Pines Newsletter”, which was hand delivered to residents every month by the board members. It included financial records and kept the residents up to date on many topics. This blog seems to be implying that the board members were doing something wrong, when in fact, they were trying to protect the safety of the residents.
If residents didn’t bother to read the newsletter, or the “Leisure World News”, for that matter, it wasn’t the boards fault if they didn’t know what was going on. Agenda meetings were held in our lobby Pines until we were informed that fire code did not allow a crowd of people to be seated in the lobby blocking the entrance for emergency personnel. As to the board meetings, you can see from the records, a very low percentage of owners attended the meetings.
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I felt that 2013 to present was a reasonable amount of time to go back to answer the questions I had. As you may be aware, my mother lived at The Pines for many years and I actually have a copy of most of the newsletters, I believe they were called the “Pine Log”. It would be nice to have that again and I have volunteered to help with it, maybe someday it will return.
I’m not sure why you feel that this blog implies wrongdoings by the board, I made no such implication. I am sorry that you interpreted it that way. I do recommend that every condominium owner take advantage of obtaining information if they desire, because they have that right. Certainly, as you mentioned, you are a former board member and you know many of the matters that I have learned from reviewing the records I requested. For example, you know the cost of the surveillance cameras, but if another owner would like that information I believe they would have to request the records because I do not believe it was disclosed at a meeting or in the Pine Log.
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