Legal Underpinning of Our Association

Our condominium instruments (Declaration, Bylaws, and plats and plans) are subordinate to the legal requirements of the governments of the U. S., Virginia, and Fairfax County. In other words, if there is a conflict between government legal requirements and our condominium instruments, the government legal requirements take precedence over--trump--our condominium instruments.

Of all those government legal requirements, it is the Condominium Act—Chapter 4.2 of Title 55 of the Code of Virginia—that has the most relevance for us as a condominium unit owners association (UOA). The following link displays the table of contents of the Condominium Act, and you can view particular sections of the Condominium Act by clicking on the number of the section that interests you.  (You might find the .75 and .75:1 provisions interesting.)

http://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title55/chapter4.2/

You can see an example of our Bylaws being in conflict with the Condominium Act by clicking on this link:  http://mstc-uoa.blogspot.com/2007/12/filling-director-vacancy.html

Our Declaration and Bylaws sometimes refer us to the Condominium Act for further information. For example, our Bylaws don’t describe the procedure to amend our Bylaws, as is being considered with regard to the leasing Bylaw. Instead, Section 1 of Article XIV of our Bylaws states that our "Bylaws may be modified or amended as provided in Section 55-79.71 of the Condominium Act.”  Also, the last sentence of Section 8 of Article III of our Bylaws states that “All meetings of the Board of Directors shall be held in accordance with Section 55-79.75 of the Virginia Condominium Act.”

If you want to see in context the actual Bylaw sections I cited in the above paragraph, you can do so by clicking on the below link to our Bylaws.  Then go to page 60 of 64, and page 20 of 64, respectively, to see the words I quoted above.
http://www.marketstreetattowncenter.com/docs/BylawsV4.PDF

Allow only Unit Owners to view this blog?

This blog can be viewed by anyone anywhere. In an ideal world--a world in which all our Unit Owners would be willing to register and log in--I would prefer that only Unit Owners of our Market Street at Town Center Condominium could view this blog.

The problem with limiting viewing only to our Unit Owners is that I would lose access to Unit Owners who are unwilling to register and log in, but who will view this blog if they can do so without registering and logging in. I don’t want to lose access to that subset of our Unit Owners, so I am permitting anyone anywhere to view all the posts on this blog.  I make my posts on this blog assuming that people who don't own Units in our Condominium will be among those who view my posts.

Why This Blog?

I am Paul Rasmussen, one of the original 333 residential Unit Owners of the Unit Owners Association of Market Street at Town Center Condominium (the “Unit Owners Association” or "Association" or "UOA"). My wife and I have lived in our unit, #305, since October 2004.

I am starting this personal, unofficial blog to provide myself an easy way to make UOA-related information--as well as my UOA-related opinions--available to the owners of the other 332 residential units and the one commercial unit.

Because there is a separate unofficial blog that addresses the leasing issue, I will use this blog to focus on non-leasing UOA issues. I will continue to post my thoughts on the leasing issue on the leasing blog, http://msa-towncenter.blogspot.com/

If you have comments or questions regarding my posts on either blog, please join my forum at http://mstcuoa.proboards.com and post there.  Or/and email me at rasmussen305@gmail.com.