Boards And Necessary Repairs

What happened in Surfside is a tragedy.  No question. What was the cause?  Just about everyone is pointing fingers and it may be that we will never know for certain -- it is likely the result of a series of failures by various individuals, agencies and laws.    Included among the possible causes in press reports are failures of governance – both that the Board waited too long to make the needed repairs and that the unit owners opposed the assessment the Board sought to impose.  Indeed, according to these reports, a petition challenging the assessment was pending at the time of the collapse.

These governance issues are not unique to what happened in Florida.  These are issues faced by many condominium boards (and some cooperative boards) in New York and elsewhere around the country.  If an appropriate professional tells a board that there are dangerous conditions, or repairs that must be made for the safety of the residents, can the board cause the repairs to be