<\/p>\n
Last January, our condo association suddenly raised everyone’s monthly fees by 40%<\/strong>.<\/p>\n There was no meeting.<\/p>\n No vote.<\/p>\n No real explanation.<\/p>\n Just a letter telling us that starting the following month, every homeowner needed to pay significantly more.<\/p>\n At the bottom was the board president’s signature.<\/p>\n His name was Richard.<\/p>\n I had lived in the building for eleven years, and I’d seen plenty of ordinary increases over the years.<\/p>\n But this didn’t feel ordinary.<\/p>\n So I asked Richard for the association’s financial statements.<\/p>\n He smiled.<\/p>\n \u201cHomeowners don’t need that level of detail.\u201d<\/p>\n That sentence bothered me more than the fee increase.<\/p>\n Because I knew numbers.<\/p>\n For thirty years, I had worked as a forensic accountant for the IRS.<\/p>\n My job had taught me one simple lesson:<\/p>\n When someone doesn’t want you to see the numbers, there’s usually a reason.<\/strong><\/p>\n I filed a formal records request.<\/p>\n The board delayed.<\/p>\n I submitted another.<\/p>\n They claimed they needed more time.<\/p>\n Then they said some documents were \u201cconfidential.\u201d<\/p>\n I hired an independent auditor I had worked with for years.<\/p>\n Eleven weeks later, the report arrived.<\/p>\n Forty pages.<\/p>\n I sat at my kitchen table and read every page.<\/p>\n The first finding made my stomach tighten.<\/p>\n Then the second.<\/p>\n Then the third.<\/p>\n For six consecutive years, nearly every major maintenance contract had been awarded to the same company.<\/p>\n A company owned by Richard’s brother-in-law.<\/p>\n That alone was concerning.<\/p>\n But the numbers were worse.<\/p>\n The association had been paying almost twice the normal market rate<\/strong> for much of the work.<\/p>\n Roof repairs.<\/p>\n Landscaping.<\/p>\n Elevator maintenance.<\/p>\n Plumbing.<\/p>\n Painting.<\/p>\n Even emergency call-outs.<\/p>\n The auditor found invoices that didn’t match the work performed.<\/p>\n There were repeated charges for services that appeared to have been billed multiple times.<\/p>\n And the biggest problem?<\/p>\n The board had never properly disclosed the conflict of interest to homeowners.<\/p>\n I called an emergency meeting with the auditor and my attorney.<\/p>\n We reviewed everything.<\/p>\n The evidence was clear enough that I didn’t need to make accusations.<\/p>\n The documents spoke for themselves.<\/p>\n At Thursday night’s annual meeting, nearly every seat was filled.<\/p>\n Richard stood at the front.<\/p>\n He gave his usual presentation.<\/p>\n \u201cWe’ve faced rising costs,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThat is why the increase was necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n Then he asked everyone to vote on another fee adjustment.<\/p>\n I raised my hand.<\/p>\n He recognized me reluctantly.<\/p>\n I walked to the front of the room carrying the forty-page report.<\/p>\n I placed it on the podium.<\/p>\n Then I looked at every homeowner.<\/p>\n \u201cBefore anyone votes on another fee increase,\u201d I said, \u201cthere’s something you all deserve to see.\u201d<\/p>\n The room became silent.<\/p>\n I held up the report.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is an independent audit of our association’s finances.\u201d<\/p>\n Richard’s expression changed.<\/p>\n I continued.<\/p>\n \u201cFor six years, our board repeatedly awarded maintenance contracts to one company.\u201d<\/p>\n Someone in the back asked, \u201cWhose company?\u201d<\/p>\n I looked at Richard.<\/p>\n \u201cHis brother-in-law’s.\u201d<\/p>\n The room erupted.<\/p>\n Richard immediately stood.<\/p>\n \u201cThat is completely misleading.\u201d<\/p>\n I opened the report.<\/p>\n \u201cThe audit found that several contracts were priced substantially above comparable market rates.\u201d<\/p>\n A homeowner shouted, \u201cHow much?\u201d<\/p>\n I turned to the relevant page.<\/p>\n \u201cEnough that the association may have overpaid by hundreds of thousands of dollars over six years.\u201d<\/p>\n The room went completely quiet again.<\/p>\n Richard tried to interrupt.<\/p>\n \u201cThese are just accounting interpretations.\u201d<\/p>\n The auditor stood beside me.<\/p>\n \u201cNo. These are documented transactions.\u201d<\/p>\n That ended the argument.<\/p>\n Then another homeowner stood.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy didn’t we know about this?\u201d<\/p>\n Nobody answered.<\/p>\n The board called for a recess.<\/p>\n But the homeowners refused.<\/p>\n They wanted answers.<\/p>\n By the end of the night, the vote on the fee increase had been postponed.<\/p>\n More importantly, homeowners voted to commission a formal legal review of the contracts and board conduct.<\/p>\n Within weeks, Richard resigned.<\/p>\n The maintenance company was suspended from new contracts pending review.<\/p>\n The association brought in a temporary management firm.<\/p>\n Several contracts were renegotiated.<\/p>\n And the monthly fee increase that had started everything was rolled back while the finances were rebuilt.<\/p>\n The investigation eventually determined that the association had indeed paid substantially above market rates on numerous contracts.<\/p>\n The money wasn’t magically recovered overnight.<\/p>\n But legal action was pursued, and the association began recovering funds where it could.<\/p>\n Months later, we held another meeting.<\/p>\n This time, every financial statement was available to homeowners before the meeting.<\/p>\n Every major contract required disclosure of potential conflicts.<\/p>\n And every homeowner could review the association’s spending.<\/p>\n Someone asked me why I had gone through all that trouble.<\/p>\n I smiled.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause this isn’t just about money.\u201d<\/p>\n I looked around the room.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s about trust.\u201d<\/p>\n Then I added:<\/p>\n \u201cWhen people are asked to pay more, they deserve to know where their money is going.\u201d<\/p>\n That night, we didn’t just save money.<\/p>\n We changed how the entire association operated.<\/p>\n And I learned something I’d known for thirty years but had never seen so clearly:<\/p>\n Numbers don’t have to shout to expose the truth.<\/strong><\/p>\n Sometimes, you just have to give people the chance to see them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Before Anyone Votes on Another Fee Increase\u2026 Last January, our condo association suddenly raised everyone’s monthly fees by 40%. There was no meeting. No vote. No real explanation. Just … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22755"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22756,"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22755\/revisions\/22756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/senglee168.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}