We do sign a contract when we move in. I have it in a drawer where I put it when I moved in and it has not moved from there since. I went to the very first board meeting after I moved in intending to be a good citizen and help steer the ship of the condo across rough waters. I was never so bored in my life.
Well the affairs of a condo are boring, mostly moving money around. There is all kinds of shit, repairs, (remember those tv shows where they showed what would happen to the earth if man should disappear? One of my favorite parts was about the cities, Those grand concrete towers look like they would last forever, but without people tending to them regularly they would soon collapse into the ground), salaries, investments, debts. I guess the way I figured it was that this is a very boring thing, and these people who run it, they live here, many own other units, it is to their own advantage to keep things going, if they take a little something for their efforts, well maybe it is not that bad.
There was a bit of a kerfuffle maybe five years ago when some unit owner was discovered to have like 37 cats, with the resultant odor problems. They were able to kick her out on general grounds, but then they went forth to issue a cat decree declaring that studio apartments were allowed only one cat, one bedrooms, two cats, and two bedrooms three, furthermore you had to sign up into a cat database, submit a photo of your cat, and pay five bucks per cat a year to cover the cost of maintaining the cat database.
Draconian? I thought so. I appeared at my first board meeting since I had moved in. The way the board meetings are run is that the board conducts its business which consists of some discussion and some votes. Beagles is correct in that a lot of this has been decided forehand. I suspect it is not so much secret deals as conversations between people who all know each other. The unit owners in attendance remain mute all this time, and it is only after the meeting proper is done that they are allowed to voice their concerns.
It is a daunting task because there is one of you and like ten of them, and you really don't know who might be on your side and who not, who is open to your plea, and whose mind is slammed shut, But as I pressed my arguments I began to become aware that they never really intended to enforce any of this. They just wanted to have the rules so that if somebody in the future had 37 cats they could just cite her for violating that rule and boot her out without having to make a case for causing a disturbance or whatever they called it.
The way this works, and I think it is a pretty good system, is that no rules are enforced unless somebody complains. For instance dogs are not allowed. One day I was having a conversation with some neighbors and a small dog suddenly ran out their door and into the hallway. They asked me to please not rat on them and I told them my lips were sealed. The problem with dogs is the barking and I had never heard this dog bark, so I didn't have any problem with him. They got to keep their dog and I didn't have any unpleasantness with my neighbors. I think this is a sound system.
There is a longstanding disagreement with me and Beagles where he tends to think rules are written and then they are the order of the day, whereas I think they are enforced by people and it's people who are the order of the day. More or less, I simplify. But I don't want to get into that this morning,and in fact it looks like the Dawgs can expect a whole history of Ken and the Kondo, I will continue on Monday's post.
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