Good riddance to AMG

A hated symbol of tyranny in International Village came down this Monday afternoon. ENJOY THE VIDEO as the AMG plaque is removed from above the association's office door after two years of runaway spending, huge special assessments and massive maintenance fee increases under AMG's mis-management. Good riddance. We won't miss the fleecing.

Welcome International Village's new management company

As of mid-June, International Village will have a new property management company. The Board of Directors, at last week's Board meeting, voted to hire Campbell Property Management after listening to presentations by representatives of the top three candidate firms. (See 5/27/14 video HERE.)

With over 60 years in business and more than 250 properties under its management – including several in Inverrary – Campbell impressed the majority of Directors as being ready on day one to help us right our ship and work with the Board to save money by operating more efficiently. Campbell will be sending letters to all unit owners soon with more information about the company and the transition.

I’m pleased to inform owners that the switch to Campbell is going to save the association tens of thousands of dollars on an annual basis right off the bat compared to AMG’s contract, partly because of the AMG manager’s bloated salary, which at $90,000 – plus $22,500 in “payroll burden” – is dramatically higher than that of any of the management companies we contacted. While the numbers speak for themselves, the far greater cost savings will come from having an honest and competent management company that shares the Board majority’s commitment to fiscal responsibility, as opposed to one that has presided over a deteriorating financial situation while pushing for the kind of runaway spending, massive special assessments and huge maintenance increases that we suffered under AMG’s two-year tenure.

In other good news, the association last week signed an additional 90-day extension of our Wilma loan with Wells Fargo. This will give us time to clean up our finances, especially in the area of collections from units that have stopped paying, which has been a growing problem under AMG. Once we address this challenge, working with our new manager, we will be in a stronger position to negotiate for a longer-term extension at a good interest rate. 

On a somewhat sour note, AMG has notified the Board of Directors that it has filed a “defamation” lawsuit against me based on the reasons I gave for the company's firing in my April 16 blog post, which I invite owners to read again. While naming me as defendant, the lawsuit is clearly aimed at the association as a whole, since I was acting in my role as a Director to inform owners of AMG’s wrongdoings prior to our vote to terminate its contract. It’s sad that after its two years of mismanaging our affairs, AMG is incapable of stepping down with any semblance of dignity. But our association attorney (of the Kubicki Draper firm, which the Board hired on April 22 as the association's general counsel to replace Eisinger Brown) has advised us that truth is the ultimate defense to a defamation claim, and we’re confident that the association will prevail based on the ample documentation we have of AMG's misconduct, whose full extent we will reveal to owners at the appropriate point in the litigation process. The upside of the lawsuit is that it will give us the opportunity to dig even deeper – as part of the discovery process – into AMG’s actions, which we are hopeful will lead to a substantial judgment for damages in the association's favor.

Finally, a number of you have informed me that you have been receiving blast emails from a “committee” that calls itself “CIVOCC.” The main objective of this small, bitter group of owners (which is made up of the losers of the recent Board election and their die-hard supporters) is to reverse the results of the election and rehire AMG so International Village can return to the days of reckless spending and assessments. In pursuit of that goal, their favorite tactic is the baldfaced lie, including their preposterous claim that AMG's contract was somehow saving us money, when in fact AMG's pricing is by far the highest of any of the property management companies we investigated. But CIVOCC’s deviousness should come as no surprise considering that one of its leading members is the same owner who went out of his way – with the help of our former property manager – to notify municipal authorities that their records regarding International Village’s construction date were inaccurate, a malicious act of sabotage that has accelerated our 40-year inspection by five years (pending a response from the city inspector to our recent request for a time extension). So my advice to owners is to take this so-called committee’s feigned concerns about the welfare of International Village with a very large grain of salt. For my part, knowing their twisted agenda, I take their nasty and dishonest personal attacks as a badge of honor.