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How to address too much HOA spending?


Question:

I'm the treasurer and the secretary of our five unit condo association, we have five board members and six UoA members. To date we are $5,000 over budget this is in part due to rising expenses of maintenance e.g. the water bill and a rat problem that had to be taken care of. However, two of the board members because unsatisfied with the pruning our landscaping service was doing to they reduced them to mowing and asked a very expensive tree trimming company to come out and do an estimate. The e-mail they sent out stated that after reviewing the landscaping needs that they recommend we pay $940 to trim the dead branches caused by the ice storm off the giant rhodie and the magnolias in front of our house. First I'm the one who knows the most about tress and landscaping and there are no dead branches and when I called the company they confirmed that, when I saw the estimate it was to lift the Rhodie out of driveway (it doesn't need to be my car which is the tallest passes under it) and to trim the mags. Neither of these are urgent or emergency expenses, I have asked twice where the money is coming from. In a conversation with the President he said we'll just spend and if we go over take the money from the reserves or do an assessment at the end of the year. First he most likely has never read the bylaws (the reason he is the president is because he can't do excel and was a terrible treasurer, looking back on it that's probably a good thing), money borrowed from the reserves has to be repaid. Second if we are over budget now shouldn't the expense be assessed? I have now told them twice that they have no money and asked how they are going to pay for it, what are my options? To not pay the bill until I know where the money is coming from. I love my condo, but am surrounded by incompetents. I'm already the secretary (no one else seems to be able to take notes) the treasurer and now after pointing out that we have no money for the expenses, the upstairs ninny who used to be the management company liaison until we got rid of them and then somehow appointed herself building maintenance person resigned over by objection to spending money we don't have. She was offended that I didn't rubber stamp the pruning. I'm at my wits end with these people and they are all older than me so the most I can hope for is I outlive them. But in the meantime I how do I deal with their laissez-faire attitude about the budget and overspending?


Answers (4)

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