Thank you for saving our employees!

Kudos to all the unit owners who came to the defense of our hard-working employees yesterday by emailing your thoughts to the Board of Directors in response to my email (SEE BELOW). You prevented a grave injustice from taking place. Three of the four Board members who seemed ready to fire at least some of our employees appear to have had a change of heart in the face of your overwhelming outpouring of indignation. Only one Board member, Wendy Hernandez, continued directing her wrath at our loyal staff, but in the end, she was outnumbered and not a single employee was fired. That’s nothing short of a miracle considering that just last week Miss Hernandez was heard bragging that our entire security staff was about to get the boot. What turned things around? Your emails! (See a small sampling HERE.) I thank you, and our employees thank you.

On the other hand, despite the mounting pressure for her to resign from the Board, Miss Hernandez chose not to step down last night. But she must now face the fact that she can’t get her way through intimidation and double-dealing. Nobody likes a bully.

Speaking of bullying, I chose not to discuss the incident that took place in the clubhouse gym over the weekend in my email to owners yesterday, but since many of you have already heard about it and have been asking questions, I feel I have no choice now but to address it.

I walked into the clubhouse gym a little before 5:30 p.m. on Saturday to find Miss Hernandez waiting by the entrance with her arms crossed. She had apparently been eavesdropping on a conversation I was having with a neighbor in the hallway just before walking in. The conversation happened to be about Miss Hernandez’s unethical conduct. After greeting her, I asked her about the behavior and she became incensed and physically assaulted me. The attack, which was recorded by the gym’s security camera, takes place about two minutes into THIS VIDEO.

I called the police and I plan to press charges because this kind of behavior on the part of a unit owner (not to mention a Board member) should not be tolerated. I have discussed the incident with an attorney and have been told the chances of obtaining a felony conviction on Miss Hernandez are very good, especially since the incident was captured on video.

Save our International Village employees

From:	John Labriola <jflabriola@gmail.com>
Sent:	Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 8:25 AM
To:	John Labriola <jflabriola@gmail.com>
Cc:	Marcio Jaspan <marciojaspan@hotmail.com>, Duv Wolff <guitarharm@aol.com>, Wendy Hernandez <wendy_hernandez@ymail.com>, Frances Mesirow <fmkmbm@gmail.com>, Marc Richman <mwr2020ou@gmail.com>, Collette Goslin <colletteg@comcast.net>, MANAGER INTERNATIONAL VILLAGE <manager@intlvillage.com>, Assistant Manager International Village <assistant@intlvillage.com>

Some of you may be wondering why a closed Board meeting is posted for tonight. Unfortunately, although I serve as the Association’s Treasurer, all I can tell you about the meeting is what I've managed to gather from second-hand sources. That’s because the Board members who decided to organize it haven’t bothered telling their fellow Directors exactly what the purpose is. All we have received is an agenda with a few vaguely worded items and no explanation.

The meeting, which will be conducted behind closed doors with no unit owners permitted to attend, was apparently the idea of Board Secretary Wendy Hernandez, who prepared the agenda with the help of Board members Frances Mesirow, Collette Goslin, and Marc Richman without consulting her fellow officers President Marcio Jaspan, Vice President Duv Wolff and myself. This may come as a surprise to the 200-plus voters who thought they were voting for change when they filled out their ballots for Wendy Hernandez in February. Why, you might be asking, is she now working with the team that she ran against, the team she blasted in her candidate bio for their “constant maintenance fee increases and special assessments”? 

The answer is because over the last few months Miss Hernandez has made a number of unethical, immoral and sometimes illegal demands of her fellow officers that Mr. Jaspan, Mr. Wolff and I have refused to go along with. In retaliation, she has apparently sold herself to the other side to see what she can get from them in exchange for promises of putting them back in power – and they have welcomed her with open arms.

Here’s a partial list of Miss Hernandez’s outrageous demands which the Board President, Vice President and I refused to give in to:

• Fire the Association’s maintenance chief, security manager, entire security staff and others for no apparent reason other than personal animosity and envy. 
• Put her on the Association’s payroll as office manager while allowing her to remain on the Board (in violation of Florida law) despite her obvious lack of qualifications.
• Provide her with keys to the association’s office so she can come and go and snoop around the office as she pleases after hours. 
• Grant her unfettered access to unit owner accounts and files, including highly sensitive personal information. (See HACKING VIDEO.)
• Allow her, in her position as Sales & Lease Committee Chairwoman, to bully staff into letting her deny leases to qualified tenants who happen to rent from owners against whom she holds a personal grudge, thereby exposing the Association to costly litigation.

Miss Hernandez has abused her power and created a hostile work environment for our employees by treating them with open contempt and disrespect while threatening to fire them if they fail to carry out her unethical demands. Mr. Jaspan, Mr. Wolff and I have given our full support to our hard-working staff. But unfortunately, Board members Frances Mesirow, Collette Goslin and Marc Richman have decided to act as Miss Hernandez’s enablers, and they appear ready to throw our dedicated employees under the bus in order to bribe Miss Hernandez over to their side so they can seize back control of the Association.

So tonight’s agenda includes the item “Personnel Matters,” which understandably has employees terrified of losing their jobs in light of Miss Hernandez’s stated desire to fire nearly everyone. 

Some unit owners have warned me not to expose Miss Hernandez’s treacherous and unethical behavior, saying it might provoke her to join forces with her “new friends” on the Board to remove me from the position of treasurer. I guess they don’t realize this title involves no salary, benefits or perks and very little real authority, and losing it would be a very small price to pay for telling the truth. But I will not stand quietly by in the face of injustice while a shameless, unscrupulous group of Board members sacrifice our loyal staff on the altar of power. Our employees deserve better.

Finally, I want to apologize to all the unit owners for recommending that you vote for Miss Hernandez this past February. Now that I am fully aware of her lack of integrity, principle and honesty, I regret ever giving her my support. Miss Hernandez has proven herself untrustworthy, unqualified and temperamentally unfit to serve in any position of authority, and we as an Association deserve better. I encourage you to call her at 954-612-6018 to urge her to resign. You may also contact her and the rest of the Board by email to let us know how you feel by simply “Replying All” to this email. 

John Labriola
International Village Treasurer

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. 

Important decision

The International Village Board of Directors will meet on Tuesday, May 27 at 7 p.m. to hire a new property management company. 

The search committee made up of Board officers has spent the last several weeks reaching out to a number of management firms to meet with them and vet their qualifications. Representatives from the top three companies have been invited to the Board meeting to present their bids and answer questions.

The selection of a management company is a very important decision for the community. I encourage all unit owners to attend the meeting and welcome the new management team – whoever it may be – as we work together in a renewed spirit of cooperation to move International Village forward.

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.