My faith in humanity rests on tonight. No pressure, Mankind.

Tags

human stupidity, leaky condo, strata

Do you remember this exercise in mass stupidity?

Well, somehow, it’s happening all over again.

As a basic recap, my condo complex is in desperate need of repairs.  There are drainage problems, electrical problems, roofing problems, foundation problems, the windows and patio doors need to be replaced (mine are grayed from captured moisture and my patio door only opens half way), and some of the units are uninhabitable due to mold issues.

Oh, and the sauna has been broken for, like, seven years.

If these issues, totally over 6 million dollars in required repairs, are not addressed, then several things will happen:

a) housing values will continue to decline – already, townhouses in our complex are selling for $50-100,000 less than similar units in nearby complexes.

b) Some units will continue to be uninhabitable due to mould issues, while other units, like mine, will be left with foggy windows, broken patio doors, and rotten fencing (the wooden slats on my fence actually blow in the breeze, like a silent wind chime).

c) Someone will eventually lodge a formal complaint, in which case the government would intervene: we would be declared a “leaky condo”, and all owners would be order to pony up all of the dough immediately. Perfect Husband and I could not afford to do that. We would be forced to foreclose.

So instead, the strata council (owners like ourselves, who have taken over handling the finances, etc) decided last year to propose a levy to cover the most urgent repairs (about half of the total list of issues), in installments over 5 years. So each unit would pay $4,000 a year and the big issues would be resolved.

For some reason, the vote BARELY passed. Because people are morons. 

Still, it passed. We payed our money last October, and major repairs were begun immediately. Already most of the drainage issues have been solved and almost all of the roofs are redone.

Some owners foreclosed because they couldn’t find the 4 grand, other sold, and others just refused to pay.

Then one of the twits got a lawyer. They claimed that his ballot, an absentee ballot, wasn’t counted. They lodged a lawsuit against the strata council.

The strata lawyer replied that he had the sealed envelope of votes, which he had now opened and recounted, and the count came to the same number as before AND OH LOOK, HERE’S THE PLAINTIFF’S BALLOT.

The Plaintiff took it to court anyway.

HE WON.

Not because there was a miscount. No.

It just so happens that a recent court decision regaring union voting methods had just happened, which set a new precedent for voting lawsuits. The judge decided that our vote applied, and so we lost, because our vote wasn’t “secret” enough, because there was no ballot box.

So basically, we lost on a technicality and the plaintiff got REALLY lucky.

The upshot is that we have to do this vote all over again.

The twits (the ringleader of which is a woman with a face like a hatchet, who blew cigarette smoke in my face when I was pregnant after the last meeting, because I politely disagreed with her “let’s fix things with no money” stance) have been papering the neighbourhood with their little newsletters, which claim that the buildings are all totally fine and that the strata council are just fabricating all the issues to make us pay money for no reason.

Sure, that makes sense, considering that being owners as well, they have to pay too, and the money goes into a communal pot, so no individual actually profits off of this.

this is what our windows look like

And this fence looks fiiiiine, right?

Clearly the issues are totally fabricated, yeah.

Revote tonight – PH is over there. Wish us luck. 

Chapter One: One Busy Day

The following are excepts from the first chapter of my elementary school masterpiece, Follow the Animals Home. I am sure you will be overawed by my amazing writing ability. By which I mean, my ten year old self almost makes Stephenie Meyer look good.

I have transcribed it exactly as it was written, typos and all. I cannot recreate the MS Write dot matrix printer look of the font, though.

so here's a screen shot.

Valentine had a red fox named Rusty she had acquired on a trip to England one year, a brown and white guinea pig that you won’t hear enough of to get to know (but that is just as well, because all it did was shriek), a border collie named Zippy, her father owned a large black Newfoundland dog called Splash, two cats, a gray tabby and an orange tabby named Cloudy and Marmalade, five horses, a welsh pony and a shetland pony (actually, to be accurate, it was an old one of hers but her family was waiting for her baby brother Mathew to grow old enough to ride it), and her favourite, a young mare that was called Gray Ghost.

Gray Ghost’s mother was an Arab and her father a thoroughbred, who was expecting a happy event; nevertheless, because Valentine loved her, she decided to bring her.

How’s that for a Meyer-worthy run-on sentence? Not to mention a good comma splice. It goes on like that for a while. Then it says,

They had stopped for breakfast at a restaurant and then they got back into the car. Lizzy and Valentine chatted, talking about funny (or gross) experiences at other people’s houses, telling jokes and playing a car game called cattle and cemeteries: when they passed a herd of cattle, the person on that side counted quickly as they passed. The amount they counted was how many points they got (you needed to be honest to play- both Lizzy and Valentine were!) When they passed a cemetery, no matter what side it was on, the person who saw it first yelled “cemetery!” And that person won.

The chapter concludes with:

Although it was August, the nights were cold and the dew plentiful. Lizzy and Valentine sat down on the wet grass.

“What should we do?” asked Lizzy.

“Well we can’t just sit here on drenched grass like total jerks, that’s for sure,” affirmed Valentine.

“Why don’t we plan our day tomorrow?” suggested Lizzy.

“Yeah! Uh let’s see……. I know tomorrow the very first thing we’ll do is wake up!” Lizzy joked. They laughed.

“Yeah, then get dressed and have breakfast….”

“Feed the animals, brush the horses then…” Lizzy trailed off.

“I know!” exclaimed Valentine, “look for orphaned animals!”

“I was just thinking that!” said Lizzy.

“Yeah, right.”

Just then Lizzy came up with a brainwave. “Why don’t we go picking after? That was if we don’t find any animals the berries will soothe our feelings”

“Good idea.” Then they entered the tent and, despite the wet pyjamas, promptly fell asleep. It had been one busy day.

Move over, Ms. Meyer.