With so many condominium communities in South Florida facing financial difficulties, some associations and their boards of directors may want to develop new sources of revenue to help alleviate owners’ monthly dues or implement special assessments.
However, as the recent lawsuit against the Buckley Towers Condominium shows, inventing a questionable new parking payment system and putting it into use by towing many owners’ vehicles overnight is extremely unlikely to be a recipe for success.
For the northeast Miami-Dade condominium community, these tactics landed its former directors in court and in the crosshairs of state regulators, and also caught the attention of NBC6 News (www.NBCMiami.com).
According to allegations made by Francis Trullenque and several co-owners of units, some members of the Buckley Towers board of directors abused their positions to financially benefit the community.
Their lawsuit alleges that the association’s board of directors seized the owners’ assigned parking spaces and began charging a premium for the most suitable parking spaces. The complaint alleges that the association “devised a scheme to sell or lease spaces. . . [o]offering spaces at a premium price based on location and renting out spaces close to entrances or exits to the highest bidder.”
To implement the new policy, Trullenque and some of his co-owners claim the association had many vehicles towed overnight.
“One night at three in the morning I came home and there were maybe nine or ten tow trucks,” he told the station. “I call it the tow truck massacre.”
Flyers hung around the property promoting payment options for residents to bid on parking spaces or pay a specific monthly rate for a space close to the building entrance. Records show several residents paid hundreds of dollars to the association to secure a parking spot, and some owners pointed out numbers on parking bumpers that had been painted over when the association took away all former parking assignments.
The owners claim the entire plan violates the community’s governing documents. In addition to their lawsuit, they have also filed several complaints with Florida’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation, the state agency that oversees community associations.
When the channel visited the building in April, board secretary Janvier Villars defended the association’s actions.
“The allocated space does not belong to them,” he said. “That means that if the association needs more money, the association has the right to collect.”
He tells the reporter that the association has received about $28,000 in 11 days from the new parking revenue, and that the owners themselves voted in favor of the change. In court filings, he filed forms titled “A New Path,” which he says were signed by the owners in support of the parking change to avoid a special assessment being done.
The form contains a QR code that links to a website for a for-profit entity called POWER, founded by Villars. During the lawsuit, some owners claimed that Villars created POWER, which stands for “Property Owners Wanting Equal Rights,” to divert money from parking payments to himself, but he tells the reporter that the profits from it go to administrative and legal costs to fight corruption to combat.
In recent developments, the owners obtained a court injunction to compel the association to return the parking lot to its original condition and allocate spaces, and to ban the further towing of vehicles.
Villars and some of his other fellow board members were voted out in late April by the community’s owners, who elected Trullenque as the new president.
In reality, the unrest caused by this community’s new parking policy isn’t very surprising. Regardless of whether the changes are allowed by the community’s governing documents, taking away owners’ allotted spaces to charge a premium for the best spaces will predictably be met with a lot of disagreement, especially if it is implemented with a “bloodbath with tow trucks”. in the middle of the night.
Associations and their boards of directors must proceed with great caution, foresight and community input when considering major changes of any kind. The financial stresses that many condominiums are experiencing may prompt some directors to explore all possible options to help minimize special assessments and increases in owners’ monthly dues, but extreme and overzealous policy changes are likely to do more harm than good, and they are the best. left avoided.
Shari Wald Garrett is a shareholder at the South Florida law firm Siegfried Rivera, which focuses on community association law. She is a regular contributor to the company’s Newsroom blog www.SiegfriedRivera.com/blog, and she is based in the Coral Gables office. The firm also has offices in Broward and Palm Beach counties, and its attorneys focus on community association, real estate, construction and insurance law. www.SiegfriedRivera.com, SGarrett@SiegfriedRivera.com305-442-3334.
