c9 | Condo Corporation Meetings are for people with too much time on their hands.

And since Condo Corporation Meetings are for people with too much time on their hands, I was of course there. I give you this report.

Condo owners all get together and vote on shit twice a year, so as to make sure the building is cared for in the manner they wish. There's a published agenda, and if anybody cares enough they can show up, or vote ahead of time by proxy. We have 68 units, and 29 owners showed up, and 10 sent proxy ballots.

Events:
- desserts by the metric ton
- motion to accept last meeting's minutes
- introductions, welcomes, etc.
- auditor tells everybody that finances are fine.
- financial report shows a $10k loss (on $300k), old people in room start a low level panic since that used to be enough to buy entire houses
- property manager reports that the building's doing fine, and the fixed some pipes. Other stuff too.
- during all these, a man (soon to be known as Angry Man) is interjecting with comments, loaded questions, and other things. Board and Property Manager are not really explaining things very well. Tizzy ensues.
- Our street is going to be torn all to hell by city in a year or two
- Air conditioning on roof still uses freon, will be replaced in a few years
- Elevators still could crunch people (property manager likes to say that phrase, uses it regularly during meeting) so doors'll be replaced in a few years too
- big discussion on low-flow toilets. Mention of the fact that some LFT's suck, and have to be flushed twice for "big flushes." Or possibly "big jobs." I'm getting woozy by this point. Property Mgr mentions testing that has been done (sidenote: how does one test this sort of thing? Was Property Mgr involved?) and resulting view that the best one out there is the "Mansfield Double Flush." One condo owner yells, I swear to god, "best toilet I've ever used in my life."
- At this point I wrote in my notes (yes, it was so fun I kept notes): "Not quite as bad as Springfield Retirement Home."
- In the last year six units have been sold, and each new owner was introduced, and applauded. So all these cranky old people applauded us.
- There are actually both non-cranky old people (few), cranky young people (few), and non-cranky young people (few). The majority of the room was cranky and gettin' up there. That, or German and confused.
- Somebody put a steel bedframe down the garbage chute last year. Pictures were passed around to prove it. Message: "Please don't do that."
- Angry Man had a couple times by this point wanted to change a bylaw, or make a motion, and it was explained that all we can do is ask the board to do something or put it on the agenda for next time, since decisions can't be made on non-agenda items (since those new items wouldn't have been publicized). He's quite annoyed by this, and displays this by ignoring it for two hours, and continuing to demand decisions and such.
- Angry Man wants Board to fill vacancies instantly using appointees, whereas Board decided to wait until this meeting to elect new members.
- Board President explained why, Angry Man disagreed, BP mentioned Parliamentary Rulebook, AM quoted, I swear to god, the very book. BP quoted back. Much muttering ensued.
- It really felt like a Springfield Retirement Home argument by this point.
- Time for the election! Seven people up for three positions, including Angry Man.
- I got to be a scrutineer! Fun. I had originally planned to run for the board, until work had me out of town so much that I forgot.
- Angry Man got the 2nd-least amount of votes
- Time for new business. ANgry Man wants condo corp to pay to replace his garage door opener (he has one of the private garages, as opposed to the P1 level for all but 8 cars). He pays into the fund that replaces our opener, so he wants the fund to replace his opener too. Logical, everybody seemed to agree. BUT only the board can act on this, so we voted to say we want the board to change their mind on this issue. If they disagree, they have to bring it to a vote at the next meeting. But I think the board is sneaky: I think they worded the motion "responsible for breakage" instead of "replacement" to get out of having to do it. We'll have to see.
- I mostly think the board was pulling a fast one because the second time the secretary read the motion (AFTER the vote) she said "breakage" (you could hear the italics) and then kinda raised her eyebrows while looking at the board president. She'd totally get voted off the island, after Angry Man led a mutiny against the Board President.

But I made a friend. They have a new kitten, and I offered to catsit. I also told her about the one-pet rule, which she didn't know about. We shared a laugh on that one. Her husband is on the Board, but they're young and non-cranky. Small miracles.

So that was an adventure. I'm totally running next year, if only to be able to block some of these idiots from having control. Ahh, power. Yummy.