Creeping de facto “Rules and Regulations”

[The unapproved Fitness Center sign was removed in mid-July 2009, so I have deleted that example from this post. I am glad to be able to report this progress! Sincerely, Paul Rasmussen, unit 305]

Our Market Street at Town Center Condominium Unit Owners Association Board of Directors (“Board”) should stop management and others from foisting new de facto “Rules and Regulations” (“R&Rs”) upon us, and should eradicate those de facto R&Rs already foisted upon us.

As explained in early posts on this blog, only our Board of Directors--acting in accordance with our condominium instruments--may make and amend R&Rs. Our Bylaws forbid delegation of this power to the Managing Agent. Unfortunately, our Boards--and the foisters of de facto R&Rs--haven’t always complied with these requirements.

An example of de facto R&Rs being foisted upon us is the recent addition of the “Residents’ Handbook” to our Association website. Although that document existed in paper form in earlier versions since October 2004, none of our Boards has ever formally approved the document. While much of the “Residents’ Handbook” is simply information of interest to owners and tenants of units in our Condominium, it also contains material that I believe constitutes de facto R&Rs. In my view, our Association shouldn't post such a document (one that could be construed as containing R&Rs) on the Association website--nor promulgate such a document in any form or manner--without a formal resolution of approval by our Board. With such a resolution of approval, any R&Rs in the document would be real R&Rs instead of de facto R&Rs.

You can view our Bylaws at http://www.marketstreetattowncenter.com/docs/BylawsV4.PDF . On page 18, paragraph (b) of Section 3 of Article III forbids the Board from delegating to the Managing Agent its (the Board’s) power (f), which is to “Make and amend the Rules and Regulations.”

I discussed misinformation in the “Residents’ Handbook” in my post at http://mstc-uoa.blogspot.com/2009/05/misinformation-in-residents-handbook.html