Collection of Vehicle Information by Management

In posts on this blog in February 2008, I explained why I believe that management of our Association should NOT collect information regarding vehicles unit owners park--or authorize to be parked--in garage parking spaces assigned to a unit they own.

Some proponents of collecting vehicle information suggest that vehicle information would help our Association in a situation where a vehicle in our garage has been involved in an offense, but there is no information regarding in which parking space the vehicle had been parked. With the license number and vehicle description, management could use the vehicle information on file with our Association to identify the unit owner associated with the offending vehicle. My answer to this argument is twofold. First, how often would this situation arise? I am unaware of it happening in the three and a half years I have lived here. Second, with the license number and vehicle description, the police can identify the owner of the vehicle and find out from the owner of the vehicle how it happened that that vehicle was in our garage to be involved in the incident. I don’t see how Association vehicle information would help the investigation process much.

Most unit owner resistance to registering vehicles with management seems to arise from the prospect of having to register vehicles that are parked in our assigned parking space(s) for a short time, such as a loaner car being used while a vehicle is being repaired, or the vehicle of guest here for a few days or a few hours. But I question whether there is adequate justification for management to collect information even for the vehicles that are usually parked in unit owners’ assigned parking spaces.

Beginning in 2006, our management has collected vehicle and other information from roughly three fourths of us unit owners using the “MARKET STREET AT TOWN CENTER CONDOMINIUM OWNER/RESIDENT INFORMATION FORM”. You can see that form by clicking on the following link.

http://www.marketstreetattowncenter.com/docs/OwnerResident_Info.pdf

One could raise various questions regarding that form and its use to collect information from unit owners, but I’ll leave most of those questions to be considered in other posts, perhaps by some of you who are reading this post. I just want to focus briefly on the second(??) section IV--the section captioned “VEHICLE INFORMATION”.

In my view, the Board of Directors should direct that management change the caption of that section to “GARAGE PARKING SPACE AND PASS NUMBERS”. I believe the requested vehicle information--“Make, Model, Year, Color, License Number, State”--should NOT be collected. Again, please see my February 2008 posts on this blog for my reasons why.

Whether you think that vehicle information should or shouldn’t be collected from unit owners by our management, I urge you to email your comment to me at rasmussen305@gmail.com or/and to post your comment on my forum at http://mstcuoa.proboards.com/