The meeting on the 26th was held at the usual location, in the open area of the public library as it was once before, which, as you will see, will lead into an embarassment for the Board, as I'll show shortly.
As the meeting began, the Board's servant introduced someone she claimed was their lawyer.
Though his general description matched the listing on the firm's site, his demeanour and attire didn't quite sync in my mind with a high-powered attorney.
He was then fed a series of prepared questions, most of which he answered correctly, though with a heavy emphasis on levying fines ranging in the thousands of dollars, instead of points of law.
(Though he did mention if the person they fined took the Board to court over the fines, unless they could prove reasonableness [an unlikely event when dealing with this group], they would lose.)
He also claimed that no one but unit owners could attend Board meetings, despite the fact that the Property Manager had actually provided a form letter to M allowing other representatives (such as myself) to attend, meaning either the Property Manager mis-read the law (which would not be a surprise) or the presumed "lawyer" was wrong.
After this 15-minute bit of theatre (which he mentioned was free of charge as a "meet-and-greet", though little meeting or greeting occured), he beat a hasty retreat instead of sitting in on the rest of the meeting, which any intelligent lawyer would've done, in order to see if what his clients claimed was true.
Once the "lawyer" departed, yours truly was ordered out of the meeting.
The problem was that the meeting was in an open part of a public library, which they had no authority to command me to leave.
After some of the usual blustering, the Board sent one of their members to see if the room they normally-used had finally become available.
It wasn't, so they were forced to continue the meeting with me well within earshot...which is not what they wanted.
They discussed a number of mundane matters, and at the end of the short attempt at face-saving, invited questions from attending unit owners.
There was only one (as usual), M, she asked about the fact that no Board meeting minutes had been distributed since last July!
The Board members and their servant all started talking at once about unrelated matters, never explaining why they had failed in their duties and responsibilities.
There's much more, including a point-by-point analysis of the quiz session (and why the heavy emphasis on expensive fines) and the acrimonious aftermath of the meeting at our subscription-only website.
You can join the Claremont unit owners who are already members by e-mailing a request to claremontwhistleblower"at"gpantsmail.com.
Substitute @ for "at" and take off pants.
We do this to avoid spammers and EDiots.
