You may be gone, but I can still see your face and hear your laughter – Unknown.
In the middle of the night Lynda woke me up and said she couldn’t sleep. I said what bothers you. She said I feel as if I rushed you to buy a condominium property without knowing anything about how condominium property operates. I said, maybe we did rush to purchase the property without looking into the condominium aspects of the property, but it doesn’t mean that we cannot solve the problem.
Lynda said, “What do you mean?” I remember saying to her that maybe you should consider becoming a member of the committee initially to learn how bad it is then you should instigate to get rid of Joy and become the president. Once you become the president, you can fire the consultant. Lynda said it’s a tall order, isn’t it? I said it is doable.
She said, why don’t you consider getting directly involved and getting things sorted out. You went through all your careers in multimillion-dollar organizations, and you have a wonderful track record. I said, you’re right. I know exactly how to get it sorted out, but the difference between a multimillion-dollar organization and a Condominium Committee is that they may not understand or appreciate my approach or my talents. You need to understand that all those organizations I worked for paid me a big buck which also gave them a reason to listen to me. These people on the Committee needed somebody like you with a soft approach, but I will work with you in the background. Lynda said I am not too sure if I am the right person for the job.
I said, if you don’t do it, there is nobody else among the owners who come forward and offer his or her services to bailout. It’s a mess. She said that we should think about that very carefully before we jump into it, my love. I said, I agree with you wholeheartedly. I said, can I go back to sleep? She said okay.
The next day when I went to pick up the FS from the consultant, I asked him if he would have a couple of minutes to review the FS with me and he said that wouldn’t be a problem for him. Consequently, I asked him some basic questions about each significant item listed in the statement and gave him the impression that I don’t necessarily know what I was talking about. He was correcting me when I asked some questions. In any case, he asked me what I did for a living and I said as little as possible. He laughed.
When I came home, I calculated the percentage for each listed item on the statement to exhibit the magnitude of the expenditure. Then I decided to review the financial statement with Lynda, step by step, which made it easier for Lynda to appreciate and understand how and where money was spent. I pointed out several things which gave us an idea why they had to increase monthly condominium fees almost every year.
Lynda also pointed out that the consulting fee was also significant, but she understood why they needed a consultant.
It didn’t take too long for us to find out that Carol had convinced the committee to award a cleaning contract to her granddaughter, which was supported by the consultant. We had four floors in the building, a laundry room, mail room, lobby, and the elevator to clean every week. Somebody mentioned to us in the elevator that the girl had no previous experience whereas the cleaner who worked there before was a better and experienced cleaner. However, the owners in the building were hesitant to complain about the cleaning simply because she was related to Carol, the accountant.
We also found out that the person who looked after the backyard and garden was Carol’s son-in-law. He was also the handy man to fix things in the building.
I told Lynda that the folks serving on the committee don’t appear to have any business background to understand the overall process or the impact of the way things were being handled by the current committee. Hence, they have no choice but to go along with anything the consultant says. Moreover, we were told that having a consultant onboard was a common practice in Sidney because those buildings were occupied by seniors and having seniors participating on the committees was nothing but smoke and mirrors.
We appreciated the fact that most of the seniors living in those buildings in Sidney came from different places where they had successful business careers, and it didn’t bother them how much the maintenance of those buildings was costing them. Sidney was relatively a small town with only around 10 thousand total population but equipped with all the things they needed in their lives. Perhaps being close to the ocean was their dream and they were living by the dream. Whereas I was only 61 and Lynda was 59 years old. We didn’t even have our old age pensions yet.
It appeared to us that everybody living in our building was much older than us and relatively well-off. To us it wasn’t the amount of money that we were paying; it was the way the building was being managed.
Lynda, once again, asked me if we rushed to buy our condo in this building simply because she liked the building? My answer was – I don’t think so. I really believed that most of the buildings where seniors were living must suffer from the same symptoms, and the fact of the matter was that probably 90 percent of the people living in Sidney were seniors.
Lynda asked me – Where can we go from here? I said there are only two ways:
- Forget about everything and go with the flow as we can afford to continue to pay whatever the committee determines; or
- We get involved and try to get everything sorted out, not necessarily only for us, but also for the rest of the owners who either don’t have any energy or don’t know how to handle the situation.
I continued – But before we do anything, we need to understand what the overall impact of our involvement in the committee on our lives would be. Lynda said, “What do you mean?” I said what I meant that:
- We might upset people in the building who have no clue about we are acting in their best interest and some of them may resist our involvement; and
- Perhaps more importantly, while it is nice to live in Sidney, we thought we would like to spend our winters in Vegas, which will be a huge sacrifice on our part as far as I am concerned.
Lynda said as far as your first point is concerned, we are not in the popularity contest here, and we shouldn’t care whether or not they like or appreciate what we were attempting to do. About your second point, Lynda continued by saying that now that we are already into November, and we had decided this year not to go to Vegas partly because winter in Sidney is quite different from Ottawa and partly, we thought it was necessary for us to focus on the things needed to be done here in Sidney, which is our permanent residence, not Vegas.
I said I agree with you. The fact is that our house in Vegas was just sold, and we were thinking of staying with Libby if we decided to go to Vegas the next winter, otherwise she would be very upset with us. Lynda said it would be a big decision for us to think about buying a property in Vegas just to spend our winters there. I said, I agree with you, again. Currently, we should think about going to Vegas only for a limited period of time each year and should consider either staying with our friends or renting a place.
Lynda said coming back to what we were discussing about getting involved or not with the “Politics” of the day to get things sorted out with the committee. I said, why don’t we go out to our favorite restaurant for lunch and continue our discussion there. Lynda agreed with me.
We walked to our favourite restaurant which wasn’t too far away. As soon as we entered the restaurant, somebody from a table in the back shouted, Mir, here. I looked up a couple sitting at the table in the back were from our building and they were there when we went to attend the Committee meeting. I looked at Lynda to see if she would have any problem sitting with them, but she didn’t give me any indication. We proceeded to the table at the back. The man got up and pulled a chair next to him and offered to Lynda and then I took the other chair and decided to sit next to his wife. He said I am David and here’s my wife, Ruth. Lynda said we are pleased to meet you both. David continued – you guys put up quite a show the other day. Being new in the building, I was asking some basic questions to understand what was going on. Ruth said we were very impressed with the way you addressed those questions. It definitely demonstrated to us that you both knew what you were talking about.
Our favorite waitress showed up. I asked David and Ruth if they had eaten, and they said they also arrived there just a couple of minutes prior to us. We all ordered our lunch and as soon as the waitress disappeared, David asked me if I got the FS from that twit. If you meant the consultant who appeared to oversee the committee, yes, I got the FS. David said did you find anything object-able. I said, no. We just wanted to have an idea where the money went. I got to admit this was our initial review, but we were not trying to find something incriminating. I don’t know how Lynda feels, but I personally feel that they are not abusing the funds. It’s just that they don’t appear to know how to run a committee with the focus of looking after owners’ money. Lynda said while I agree with you, Mir, I also feel that intentionally or not they are not acting in the best interest of the owners. I said I am not disputing about that point. What all I am saying is that there is no indication of they are manipulating the figures.
The waitress served our lunch and we started eating.
David said what really bothers him was the consultant’s attitude. He doesn’t hesitate to tell us that he is giving business to his friends, and they appear to be as incompetent as he is. David continued, If you asked me, probably, he gets a piece of the action for granting business to them. I said there is always a possibility and it’s not uncommon in small places like this, but the question is do we have any choice. David said that’s indeed a question. He continued – Ruth and I come from a place outside of Regina in Saskatchewan called Sherwood McCarthy. I worked for a real estate developer for 27 years and Ruth was a receptionist in a doctor’s office. We knew somebody who always talked about getting retired in Sidney by the Sea and almost three years back, we came here and fell in love with the place and the rest is history.
Ruth said we don’t attend meetings regularly either. We socialize with a couple of couples on our floor, and we are relatively happy with our lives in Sidney. It doesn’t mean that we are not bothered by the attitude of the consultant.
Lynda said we are concerned, too, not necessarily for ourselves but for the other folks who may have limited income and the increase in the monthly maintenance cost could very well be bothersome for them.
As soon as Lynda finished her sentence, the waitress presented us with our bills, and I paid it and said to David and Ruth that it was nice chatting with you two. Ruth said that Mir, are you going to get involved with the committee? I said the possibilities are that Lynda may decide to get involved, but I will make sure that I am there to help her.
David said that would be very nice because almost everybody in the room liked the way you put the twit on the spot.
We thanked them and left the restaurant.
