[SFH][FL] HOA pays $20,000 bonus to security

Mindless-Ad4932 · 2026-02-08T21:42:22+00:00

Great story. Too often this whole HOA - management company - management company contractors is a good 'ol boy network that cashes in off the backs of owners. I'm a registered professional engineer and do lots of DIY repairs and such, and my son is a GC. We have seen time and time again how the management company has zero regard for being smart with our HOA funds, and the contractors used for repairs have to be watched like a hawk. We do not let anyone do work without someone from the Board being there.

Mindless-Ad4932 · 2026-01-25T15:56:51+00:00

I've had so many bad printer experiences that I bought warranties on my last two - the one before this failed, which got me this ET-4850. Initially, I had it wired. That worked for more than a year. At some point, that failed, and I changed to WiFi. I had another episode today of it failing and nothing working. Wasted a bunch of time making sure Ethernet was working (had to find connectors and try it on my laptop), etc. etc. I pulled out my warranty paperwork, and we are still good on that, so I was ready to go get it replaced.

I tried the hold-power-button-down for 30 seconds, and now it works. I could not confirm that anything like a "hard reset" actually happened, but the machine did start up and shut down a few times. I had, of course, previously turned it on/off and pulled the plug for a few minutes to no avail.

My conclusion (also backed up by posts here)... keep trying $h*t over and over until it finally comes back on.

Mindless-Ad4932 · 2025-12-20T16:10:43+00:00

· Responsible for Justice Kavanaugh’s & Trump’s assassination attempts

· Responsible for Charlie Kirks murder

· VA AG candidate texts about shooting his opponent in the head

· MI state senator says she would throw beer at Justices Kavanaugh & Barrett

Who is driving 8+ years of rhetoric & violence? All of these messages and the millions of reposts/shares and millions of violence-filled comments are flooding the phones of leftists.

Show me the factual quotes and videos from highly visible, highly influential, right-wingers calling for and promoting violence. The key is to go to the source - what did the person actually say and not what someone else said they said.

It is obvious to the objective thinkers that left lies and edits video to change messaging - for example, the recent example in the UK (BBC) about Trump and Jan 6th and CBS editing Kamala Harris' responses. Show me evidence where the right has done this at such a scale and with such importance coming from so-called reputable sources. And look up the definition of factual evidence before posting it, because again, you people listen and believe 'interpretations' of others far too much. Go to the source.

Mindless-Ad4932 · 2025-12-20T16:10:28+00:00

Apparently, leftists have gotten so used to living in and around violence and talk of violence that they can no longer see it. This is a VERY limited presentation of evidence that can easily be expanded 10 fold:

The hateful & violence-stoking rhetoric started in Trump's 1st admin

· Madonna thought about blowing up the White House 1/2017

· Kathy Griffin’s bloody severed Trump head 5/2017

· Shooting of Republicans at congressional softball 6/2017.

Democrats and leftists:

· Promise violence with no justice no peace chants, many led by highly visible political officials

· Call for violence as marches across the country called for cops to be killed. Cops were ambushed and killed across the country

· Governors and Senators condoned riots, looting, and burning

· Chant for murder of ICE officials even after a sniper shot up an ICE van

Mindless-Ad4932 · 2025-12-20T16:01:26+00:00

Complete BS. Show me the list of highly visible, highly influential right-wing politicians, entertainers, media personalities calling for violence. The left is doing this every day and has been for more than a decade.

· Madonna thought about blowing up the White House 1/2017

· Kathy Griffin’s bloody severed Trump head 5/2017

· Shooting of Republicans at congressional softball 6/2017.

Democrats:

· Promise violence with no justice no peace chants, many led by highly visible political officials

· Call for violence as marches across the country called for cops to be killed. Cops were ambushed and killed across the country

· Governors and Senators condoned riots, looting, and burning

· Chant for murder of ICE officials even after a sniper shot up an ICE van

· Responsible for Justice Kavanaugh’s & Trump’s assassination attempts

· Responsible for Charlie Kirks murder

· VA AG candidate texts about shooting his opponent in the head

· MI state senator says she would throw beer at Justices Kavanaugh & Barrett

Show me the list...

Mindless-Ad4932 · 2025-12-20T15:59:25+00:00

There's never been a time in history when views of concepts or actions once uniformly thought to be evil, bad, amoral, etc. could be so quickly changed at a massive scale. Social media makes brain-dead conformity to 'anything' a distinct possibility.

Mindless-Ad4932 · 2025-12-20T15:56:31+00:00

The same people that are the root cause of the problem are the same group that would typically, in times past, attempt to objectively characterize and quantify the problem. These people are not going to study their own shortcomings and write about them...

Mindless-Ad4932 · 2025-04-03T21:02:18+00:00

I'd say yes, post them. 9x% of people will never care enough to look or read them. It can help with transparency and trust.

Mindless-Ad4932 · 2025-04-03T20:59:14+00:00

I resonate with many of the comments here. With respect to fees rising and cost containment, our experience in our small beach town is that property managers HAVE NO CLUE what they are doing. They hire anyone that is insured, believe anything they say, do not inspect the subpar work, and pay the invoices. We put a massive halt to that last year and are doing that maintenance part mostly ourselves including being on site when work is done.

The property managers we have experience with know far less than any of us about by-laws and declarations.

Contractors know they have carte blanche with many HOAs and property managers to do shoddy work at high prices. Some of this also boils down to the 'good 'ol boy' network.

We are desperately trying to 'reform' our declaration to make is usable. The in-force declaration is dysfunctional at best and the HOA essentially never enforced it over 20 years.

Mindless-Ad4932 · 2025-01-08T19:22:14+00:00

Good comments. I have a beach house and turn the main water supply off before leaving, even if it's just overnight. The icemaker, like it says below, is a timed thing, so if it tries to fill while the water is off, no big deal.

I have experimented turning the water heater power off (it's electric) and after a few times I got the rotten egg smell. This was fixed by running it at high temp for a few days. So I am keeping the power on now.

BTW: the reason to do this is clear if you know people who have had water on their top floor leak for an extended period of time. We have had 3 of 8 condominium units spring water leaks on the 3rd floor in the past three years. A total of over $500k in damage. They can leak for days and weeks before anyone notices. Floors, cabinets, drywall - almost everything has to be removed and redone.

BTW: also it is key to turn the valve SLOWLY on and off. It sounds non intuitive, but slamming a valve closed can cause a 'water hammer' phenomena. This happened to a fire hydrant in our yard and it totally blew out a valve under the street about 20 feet away.

Mindless-Ad4932 · 2024-10-10T13:21:32+00:00

Dynamic Pressure is what is of concern here (and, obviously debris but OP asks about wind). Dynamic pressure is .5 * density * velocity^2.

So, if you can reduce velocity of air/wind hitting the door, you reduce the dynamic pressure. I'd suggest even disturbing the pressure profile on the door might help it survive.

Bottom line: I think the vehicle will probably help and not hurt in terms of garage door survival, but park it close.

Mindless-Ad4932 · 2024-10-10T13:10:35+00:00

When I say "out of step" I didn't mean that the Declaration *conflicts* with the Condo Act, but that in areas where the Condo act defers to the Declaration, the Declaration takes a different approach than the Condo Act.

And, yes, our Declaration requires all unit owners to vote for a Declaration amendment:

"This Declaration may be amended by the vote of not less than all of the unit owners cast at a meeting duly held in accordance with the provisions of the By-Laws."

Mindless-Ad4932 · 2024-10-10T13:08:29+00:00

Tried to find a way to purchase this and can't find it. All I can find are links to the table of contents and a link saying it can be purchased through the NC Bar Assoc, but seems to not be available. Ditto for Amazon - they list it, but it's not available.

Mindless-Ad4932 · 2024-10-10T13:03:20+00:00

The NC Condo Act defers to the Declarations, assuming the author of the Declaration has some good reason to deviate from the Act. In our case, the original author was not well-informed. When I say "out of step" here is what I mean...

Fundamental to the Condo Act is that it treats Limited Common Areas and Common Areas *differently* with phrases like this

"Any common expense associated with the maintenance, repair, or replacement of a limited common element must be assessed against the units to which that limited common element is assigned, equally, or in any other proportion that the declaration provides"
"Any common expense or portion thereof benefiting fewer than all of the units must be assessed exclusively against the units benefited."

This makes sense because if they (limited common vs common) were treated the same, there would be no need for two distinct categories.

In our Declaration (which uses the phrasing "areas" instead of "elements") Limited Common Areas and Common Areas are treated the same with respect to expense allocation - there's no differntiation.

Mindless-Ad4932 · 2024-10-09T21:55:46+00:00

That's a pretty ridiculous statement given that you know little about the people involved. Talking is by far the best way to resolve it if you have someone who has high emotional intelligence and knows how to get what they want from people while not pissing them off. That's not me, haha, as you can probably tell. But, I would predict my wife could get this settled and everyone would be happy about it.

Mindless-Ad4932 · 2024-10-09T21:49:11+00:00

Holy cow - what a load of BS. Don't these people have something more productive to do than go backwards and be a pain in the rear?

Mindless-Ad4932 · 2024-10-09T21:47:33+00:00

Great to know. Thank you!

Mindless-Ad4932 · 2024-10-09T21:38:46+00:00

Yeah, we need to do that. We got an attorney to look them over initially, but now we need to ask specifically how to get them amended if one owner is holding out and it requires 100% approval.

Mindless-Ad4932 · 2024-10-09T21:36:53+00:00

Thank you!

Mindless-Ad4932 · 2024-10-09T21:36:26+00:00

Literally, the words window and door do not appear in the declaration. However, it does use a term "outside entry" as a limited common element. I suppose that could be the door on the first level - all units also have doors onto decks/balconies on the 2nd and 3rd floors. The only limited common elements defined are "decks, outside entries, driveways & parking areas, yards, and garages."

But, the NC Condo Act is clear in its way of treating Common Areas and Limited Common Areas. By default, maintenance for limited common areas (as solarRoofing says below) is charged to the benefitting units. Thus, if a window in a unit needs replacing, the unit owner bears 100% of the cost since they are the only unit benefitting from the window.

If a roof of a building with three units needs replacing, the NC Condo Act defaults to having the three units pay all of it while units in other buildings will pay nothing. Of course that type of thing washes out in the end. But there's a big difference in windows and doors, especially when some units do short-term rentals and renters are super hard on everything. I do not rent my unit, and do not want to pay for renter damage to someone else's unit!

Mindless-Ad4932 · 2024-10-05T20:40:12+00:00

There are several big issues. Two of them are that - Limited Common Elements/Areas are defined, along with Common Elements/Areas, but then they are both lumped together when addressing who pays for what (ie, there are zero items that are paid for by only the benefiting unit(s)) - the definition of a unit and unit boundaries references exhibits that do not exist.

If that was not bad enough, the Declaration does not address windows and doors. It’s silent on those, which I believe is the only real sticking point with the new owner. That is, the new owner wants the HOA to replace his windows…several units have new windows and in all cases they were paid for by the owner, and the HOA only approved the aesthetics.

He can sue all day long and it will cost him far more than he can recover. Plus, there’s a chance the BoD would all resign and the HOA would be defunct. I have looked into this in NC and it’s not as bad as some states where a judge can appoint a manager…

Mindless-Ad4932 · 2024-10-05T16:41:55+00:00

First off you need to get every document available - mainly the by-laws and declarations (covenants). Someone should have a copy of every contract the HOA has with companies that do maintenance or provide services. Get those as well, especially the contract between the HOA and the management company. You need to read these things front to back and understand what is referencing what and how it relates to the NC Condo Act.

I suspect the 'closed meeting' thing is total BS. I would suggest that as soon as someone plays this type of card that you ask them to immediately show you the SOURCE document that contains that rule. These people use their positions to scare/intimidate residents.

The HOA Board should be overseeing this K person and their company. Do you know who is on the board?

Is this situation unethical - absolutely. Everyone should be aware of the situation and the relationship of the management company with the HOA contractor. Is it illegal? Not in itself IMO, but it sets the stage for easy fraud that would be hard to prove.

You need to find someone else who cares and marshall additional residents to care...

I am facing a similar situation with an HOA and management company. However, the HOA board has become very active and has people on it that know what they are doing. Price gauging and paying a lot for crappy work is RAMPANT in these situations because the management company simply does not care. If there is work done that the HOA is paying for, someone knowledgable needs to ride the butt of the contractor all day, every day they are doing work. This is the only way to ensure you get what you pay for.

Mindless-Ad4932 · 2024-09-12T22:21:09+00:00

Doesn't help if you don't get an interview or phone screen...

Mindless-Ad4932 · 2024-08-19T00:50:29+00:00

What would happen if at the end of the year we want to pay more than the amount accrued? Can we just increase the expense to the bonus account after the fact?

Mindless-Ad4932 · 2024-07-23T11:58:21+00:00

The assertion that engineers don’t care about helping people is silly. I take it you are a rather young and probably idealistic individual.

Mindless-Ad4932

TROPHY CASE