After AMG

Last Wednesday, the International Village Board of Directors voted to terminate AMG's property management contract with the association, providing 60 days' notice of dismissal as stipulated in the contract. (See 4/16/14 video HERE.) The reasons for the dismissal were thoroughly explained in my last blog post. 

Tonight (Tuesday, April 22 at 7 p.m. in the clubhouse), the Board is scheduled to discuss property management at International Village after AMG. I encourage all unit owners to attend. 

Breach of trust

Two years ago, International Village hired American Management Group (AMG) to perform property management services in this community. AMG promised competence and professionalism and a commitment to serving the best interests of unit owners, in exchange for generous salaries for its top staff. Like many owners, I was willing to trust in the company’s integrity and commitment to quality, as well as its ability to remain above the political fray and work with any Board of Directors the owners chose to elect. So it is with great sadness that I must report our property manager’s role in precipitating a recent visit by a City of Lauderhill building official that will result in fines for illegal balcony work. His actions also appear to have led to an accelerated 40-year re-certification process that could cost the association more than $1 million in repairs under a County law requiring extensive upgrades when a property reaches the four-decade mark. 

At the Board’s March 25 meeting, our Board President Marcio Jaspan, a licensed engineer, pointed out that a number of balconies that are due for repairs could be handled by our in-house maintenance staff at a significant savings to the association. At no point did he say that all the balconies could be done without the use of a contractor. In fact, he stated the opposite, and he specifically asked for only one balcony to be repaired as a pilot project. He also stated that the city’s permission should be obtained before starting any work. (See the video HERE.) 

Instead, work was performed on three balconies that were apparently in a considerable state of disrepair without consulting the city. When I spoke to our Property Manager Jason Levy on Friday, he told me that management was “shocked” one day to discover our maintenance personnel working on the balconies, claiming the work had been done behind management’s back. This is patently false. In a March 27 email to the President, our assistant manager requested (in fact, his words were “we need”) approval for various materials purchases including several bags of concrete “to do a test balcony.” Management also specifically ordered our maintenance personnel to take before and after pictures of the work (which had never been done before, suggesting a setup). The before picture was taken and the camera returned to the office THE DAY BEFORE any work had been done. The following day, our assistant manager performed a site inspection of the balcony work and did not order the work to be stopped. It was only the next day that our maintenance crew was told not to proceed with the work.  

We pay our manager a lot of money to supervise any work being done in the community and to ensure that it is done legally, as provided in AMG’s contract with the association. While the President can give direction, our maintenance personnel answer directly to the manager as per AMG’s contract. Our President was not on the property and was not involved in the selection of the balconies that were worked on. 

Soon after the work was done, Geoffrey Edwards, a cabana unit owner affiliated with former Board members Marvin Tow and Sandra Best and their supporters, requested and obtained from the office the before and after pictures of the balcony work from the manager, along with numerous photos documenting required repairs throughout the property that were included in the association’s 2012 Engineering Report, which was prematurely commissioned at a cost of $22,000 at the manager's specific recommendation. Mr. Edwards took those pictures to City of Lauderhill building official Randy Youse and invited him to International Village. When the official came on April 9, he ordered the association to hire a contractor to undo the work that had been performed and complete it to code specifications. Mr. Youse also put the association on notice to expect to receive its 40-year re-certification letter within the next week, which could force International Village to perform more than $1 million worth of repairs throughout the property and jeopardize the extension of our $2 million Hurricane Wilma loan. 

I asked Mr. Levy on Friday, April 11 how Mr. Youse got the information regarding the age of our buildings, since the Broward County Property Appraiser’s website had been identifying International Village’s construction date as 1979. He told me that Mr. Youse came “armed with information” about the actual build date. I was able to contact Mr. Youse the next day and found out that he had no such information other than Mr. Edwards’ prior verbal assurance that the buildings were over 40 years old. In fact, it was Mr. Levy who volunteered to Mr. Youse during his April 9 visit that the buildings were built in “1971, 2 and 3.” You can hear it for yourself HERE since the meeting was recorded, and it's obvious from the conversation that Mr. Youse did not know the age of the buildings. We also now know that Mr. Edwards had been pushing both the city and the Broward Board of Rules and Appeals (which is responsible for compiling the annual list of properties due for the 40-year certification based on county property records) to add International Village to the list. In an email Mr. Edwards sent to Board of Rules and Appeals official Jim DiPietro just hours before Mr. Youse’s visit, he provided very specific information about each building’s folio number and virtually begged Mr. DiPietro to add International Village to the 40-year certification list. Where did Mr. Edwards get his information? Did management provide it? In any event, thanks to Mr. Edwards’ actions, the Property Appraiser’s Office on Tuesday, April 14 apparently managed to locate the “correct” construction dates for the condominium, and the city may soon force us to begin the process of upgrading the entire property.

Based on this disturbing series of events, I can only conclude that there was deliberate collusion between Mr. Edwards and our property manager to engineer a crisis that would result in embarrassing our new Board President by unfairly blaming him for the illegal balcony work and deceptively linking that incident to the accelerated 40-year certification process – when in fact the two issues were unrelated and were both instigated by his opponents, who clearly appear to include our property manager.

What could our property manager’s motivation have been for such a deliberate act of sabotage that may end up costing owners a lot of money and even force some into foreclosure? It may help to know that when AMG recently announced its plans to promote Mr. Levy to the position of Vice President of Operations of the company, Mr. Jaspan rejected AMG’s proposal to keep Mr. Levy on International Village property indefinitely while letting him draw half his VP salary from our association’s budget. Mr. Levy's anger about the decision, which in his mind amounted to a 30 days’ notice of dismissal, was hardly a secret. Engineering a crisis designed to pressure Mr. Jaspan and another recently smeared Board member to resign, if successfully carried out, would have given his three allies on the Board (Frances Mesirow, Marc Richman and Collette Goslin) the opportunity to reverse Mr. Jaspan’s decision, keep Mr. Levy on the property for several more months as VP of AMG, and allow AMG to lead International Village through its 40-year re-certification – which would amount to a huge financial bonanza for the company.

But instead of admitting wrongdoing and apologizing for his actions, our property manager's first reaction was to place all the blame for this crisis on our Board President in a sneering and misleading email sent to the Board on April 9 that reeks of twisted delight at our misfortune. I invite you to read it for yourself HERE. 

This is unacceptable, and it’s an insult to those of us serving on the Board as volunteers. Unlike Mr. Levy, we don’t get paid close to $100,000 a year for what we do for International Village. We have ideas and we make recommendations and rely on our manager to carry them out properly. But when our highly paid professional managers purposely and gleefully fail us, and then blame our Board President for their own failure, there must be consequences. Although AMG's CEO Jonathan Louis, in an email yesterday (April 15) to the entire Board, agreed to remove Mr. Levy as International Village's manager effective today (April 16), this is not enough. The Board of Directors will hold a special meeting tonight, April 16, at 8 p.m. in the clubhouse to revisit AMG’s management contract and take the appropriate actions. I invite all unit owners to attend.

Sore losers and liars

Some of you may have heard that there will be a special Board of Directors meeting this coming week. Three Board members – Frances Mesirow, Collette Goslin and Marc Richman – have invoked a little known provision in our condo bylaws that allows a minority of the Board to call a meeting without the President’s consent. They scheduled it for a date and time when they knew that the President and at least one other Board member would not be available. 

What could be the purpose of such a sneaky, underhanded move? The answer lies in the agenda they came up with: It includes several projects from the proposed $1.4 million special assessment package they tried to pass last year before owners rose up in protest. They know the rest of the Board strongly opposes such a special assessment and will not vote for it. However, if just one of the remaining Board members shows up at the meeting, they will have a quorum (sufficient number) to conduct business and can pass the special assessment on a 3-1 vote! I have also been told that the three minority Board members – cheered on by the losers of the recent Board election – plan to vote to “reorganize” the Board by appointing themselves as the new officers (including President and Treasurer) so they can take over International Village and return to the era of reckless runaway spending, big maintenance fee increases and huge special assessments. 

This is the most brazen attempted coup d’etat in the history of International Village. The sore losers of the last election think they can overturn the voters’ clear verdict and go back to the policies you overwhelmingly rejected. But we can keep that from happening if the rest of the Board – the majority who represent you – doesn't show up. Without a quorum, the angry, bitter minority won’t be able to have a meeting – and we don’t plan to let them have one. So don’t bother showing up, because I won’t be.