Director from GRACE

At the Board of Directors meeting 29 Nov 07, the President announced that GRACE has chosen not to have a representative on our Board of Directors for at least the next several months. If GRACE chooses in the future to appoint a member of our Board of Directors, I strongly urge that GRACE comply with the below-discussed requirement that any GRACE representative appointed to our Board of Directors be concurrently a member of the GRACE Board of Directors.

Section 4 of Article III of our bylaws contains the following sentence: "If the Commercial Unit Owner(s) is not a natural person but is an Entity Owner, then any member of the Board of Directors shall be an authorized representative of such Entity Owner."

(Our bylaws can be viewed by clicking on this link: http://www.marketstreetattowncenter.com/docs/BylawsV4.PDF )

In November 2005, I made a written suggestion--followed by an e-mail to our on-site Property Manager (at that time, Sherrie Cole)--in which I called attention to that sentence, and recommended that the President check with the Association attorney about the issue before a GRACE representative was appointed to our Board of Directors, and requested feedback after the attorney had been consulted. Having never heard anything back about the matter, I asked the Association attorney about the issue myself at the annual meeting in June 2006 (in private, not in the open forum of the meeting).

Before that conversation with the attorney, I had thought the "Board of Directors" referred to in the quoted sentence was our Board of Directors. But the attorney told me that "Board of Directors" in the quoted sentence meant the GRACE Board of Directors. Assuming that GRACE would be nominating/appointing a member of their Board of Directors to be on our Board of Directors, the attorney's answer totally resolved the issue for me, and I told him so.

It later came to my attention that the GRACE member of our Board of Directors was NOT a member of the GRACE Board of Directors, and thus, it would seem, didn’t qualify under our bylaws to be a member of our Board of Directors.

Now that GRACE doesn’t have a representative on our Board of Directors, I believe GRACE has the following three options: (a) Appoint a member of the GRACE Board of Directors to our Board of Directors, or (b) Try to get the quoted provision of our bylaws changed so that the GRACE representative on our Board of Directors isn't required to be a member of the GRACE Board of Directors, or (c) Choose to continue indefinitely to not have a GRACE representative be a member of our Board of Directors. If GRACE chooses option (c), then a non-GRACE unit owner (or other person meeting the qualifications of Section 1 of Article III of our bylaws) would fill that Director position, probably with the result that all five of the members of our Board of Directors would be residential unit owners.

Package Pick-Up Procedure

There is one thing I’ve never understood since implementation of the requirement that packages must be picked up from the concierge within three days of the date on the written notice that is left in or on the mailbox.

How are residents that are out of town on business travel or a vacation expected to know that they have a package that (supposedly) will be sent back to the sender if not picked up within three days? The preprinted notices I have received have stated that there will be no follow-up notices or phone calls. If I am out of town, I am not going to see that notice until I get back home and check my mail, by which time my package may have already been returned to the sender.

If my package gets returned to the sender, that is more trouble for me than if the postal service had simply held the package at their facility until I pick it up. (The postal service may eventually return the package to the sender, but I have more than three days before I must pick it up.)

I believe that at least one phone message should be left for the package addressee at least 24 hours before a package will be returned to the sender. And, shouldn’t there be some provision for a package to be held more than three days if the addressee informs the concierge that she/he will be back from out of town within a few more days?

In case anyone is wondering, I did bring this point up when Jeff Corry (the on-site Property Manager that preceded Sue Carr) discussed this procedure at a Board of Directors meeting approximately two years ago, and he said the concierge would call before a package would be returned to the sender (but that isn’t what the written notice says). Also, I did discuss it with Sue Carr a week or two ago.

Unit Owner Comments at Board Meeting?

Paragraph D of Condominium Act section 55-79.75 requires that Board of Director meetings include a designated period of time for unit owner comments. During a special meeting, such as the one scheduled for 7:30 pm Tuesday evening, the Board may limit comments of unit owners to the topics listed on the meeting agenda (which include the leasing proposal and the draft 2008 budget).

Our Board has customarily used the so-called “Open Forum” at the beginning of the “Regular” Board meetings to allow unit owner comments. However, “Special” meetings of the Board normally haven’t provided an opportunity for unit owner comments. But that doesn’t appear to be in compliance with the above-cited requirement.

I hope the Board of Directors will, in the future, comply fully with the above-cited provision.