Condo Meeting

A condominium development is a shared ownership community. Basically, it's a bunch of strangers who live together in a community where everyone must play by the same rules and pay by the same rules and paint their front door all the same color. It's sort of like life in a fish bowl where Big Brother is scrutinizing your every move and the Decor Police are reporting you for having the wrong kind of flowers in your front yard...or for even having flowers at all. Owners belong to a condominium association and pay monthly dues. The dues are intended to cover general costs, insurance, upkeep and maintenance of the complex. The appealing concept of condominium ownership is that it provides a relatively maintenance-free lifestyle for homeowners. Buyers trade the hard work, expenses and dirty yard chores of a single family home for the carefree and liberating bliss of life governed by condo bylaws and association board of directors.

Here is a compilation of mostly real-life discussions and comments from some typical condo association meetings. And I'm not making hardly any of it up. 

Great news, folks! You all gotta start paying for your own garbage collection service. Yah, we know it was originally covered in your monthly fees when you purchased your condo, but guess what...we changed the rules  ---Board of Directors 

Oh, by the way...we don't have any money left in reserves. ---B.O.D. 

I never read what owners email me...I just delete their messages. ---Condo president. 

Did we mention that we haven't been paying the bills?  ---Treasurer

Sorry, we can't afford summer plants for the eight big landscaping beds at the entrances to our complex. So you're all gonna have to chip in cash, buy the flowers, grab a shovel and plant stuff yourselves.  ---B.O.D. 

But I'm 76 years old and I thought I was buying into the easy life here. ---elderly lady shaking her cane

You thought wrong. Start digging, grandmaw.  ----B.O.D. 

Our spies have reported that some of you water your outside plants with the hose. That's a no-no. We don't care if the irrigation system doesn't always work and the grass turns brown or the flowers die. No hose watering...ever!  ---B.O.D. 

The big spray fountain in the pond is chronically broken. We've never been able to have it repaired properly. However, we will continue to sink thousands of dollars of your money in it...year after year after year after year.  ---B.O.D.

What? You thought your monthly fees were supposed to cover maintenance on all exterior parts of the units? The joke's on you, suckah. From now on, owners will have to paint their own front doors and window trim, repair roofs themselves and clean out their own chimneys. Ha, Ha   ---Property Manager 

What will you do about the asphalt on our private road that's all torn up by the snow plows and disintegrating into loose gravel?   ---a concerned owner. 

You gotta broom?  Sweep it up, lady.  ---B.O.D. 

Garbage service is FREE...but containers, trash bags and city tags will run each owner about $150 extra per year or more. But the good thing is...it's FREE!  ---B.O.D.

How do you define "free"?   ---a puzzled owner 

It's like free to me because I spend most of my time in Florida so I don't have to pay for garbage service here.  ---Condo president 

OK, everybody get your waders on. We're gonna go out into the community lake and rake up all the rocks. Sure, it's hard, dirty work and some of you old folks might have a heart attack. We know we're supposed to hire a professional company to do it, but it's more fun if the owners get wet. And while you're at it, clean up all the algae in the lake too.  ---B.O.D. 

Forgot to mention...we're thinking about having each unit owner power wash their own building. No sense paying a company to do it when we got all these old codgers sittin' around here doing nothing. ---B.O.D.  

Surprise! We've decided to have the homeowners perform ALL the maintenance around here. We're turning the condominium complex into a commune. Think of the money we'll save!  ---B.O.D. 

Far out, man! Power to the people. ---several insane homeowners in front row 

I object.   ---yours truly 

Sit down and shut up.   ---somebody in the front row, staring at me. 

But this isn't right. This isn't how a condo is supposed to operate. ---me

Who's that jackass in the back?  ---somebody else, pointing to me! 

Alrightie then. It's settled. We're commune comrades. Tomorrow, we'll be hauling your old, wrinkled butts outside for street paving and scouring out the sewer pipes. With the money we save, we'll buy goats to chew down the grass.  Meeting adjourned.  ---B.O.D.

                                 















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