We have been trying to be a paperless co-op for a number of years. Everything that is not required to be sent in paper format via USPS is sent electronically in PDF format. We have not had any complaints. You just have to make sure you keep your distribution list up-to-date.

My only thought is that something sensitive should be treated with special consideration, such as your financial report. Remember you can send out 100 copies via email in two seconds. Caution shareholders to be careful how they dispose of sensitve documents.

that you are in violation of your Prop Lease and probably additionally NY State Corporate law.
Raise your voice to move strongly to get your current managing agent out the door with no return. Get someone smarter and with more of a work ethic.

These are tough times for coop's with good management, you cannot afford this incompetence.

Thank you.

I also think that a management company should lead any communication to all the shareholders about the Annual meeting and not also a board member confusing things and chiming it besides the fact that if they’re running to me it’s inappropriate. Too many emails about the same thing. Also one of the board members communicated to all - to have a “legitimate” meeting etc.. I felt that was inappropriate and why put that out there.

Please advise

plain and simply; free money

Yes, it's completely standard to get a 15-16 page report prepared by the coop's accountants, with no backup material. The coop's managing agent, president, and treasurer are required to sign off on a representation letter affirming that all relevant material has been given to the accountants, and the accountants work from that information. An annual financial report typically contains summary numbers plus breakdowns by category, so you get fairly detailed info but not individual invoices and bank statements.

This is so wrong on many levels. Raw sewage leak is the responsibility of the building. This sounds like your apt. is contaminated.
Did you contact your insurance company and explain exactly what happened? They will help with giving you answers and also depending on your insurance carrier they will pay for a hotel while work is being done by the Co op. The cost of repairs and making your apt. livable is the Co ops responsibility.
Just keep in mind your insurance company will re coop all cost from your Co op. Paying $600 to get answers is crazy, it's cheaper to call your lawyer or 311.
Best of luck

you've made so many wrong moves before contacting us here! The facts are as close to your prop lease in terms of who is responsible, etc.
You should have documented every communication you had with management.

Read your prop lease or consult a lawyer and then return here if you need anything clarified.
Oh, and never yell at people when arguing. Never won a debate that way.

I've seen this issue go both ways for both skylights and windows. As they say, the devil is in the detail, and in most instances and standard Proprietary Leases, the wording about windows (and by extension, skylights), can hopefully be found in section #18. If you have a non-standard PL, it could be anywhere or not addressed.

Since you're looking at what could be a major building expense, you should consider having your co-op attorney or another attorney very familiar with co-op PL's and Bylaws parse your documents and provide you with a formal legal opinion. There will be fees, but I feel it is money well spent.

Good luck!

Thank you for the input

We'd like to know too. Is there any lawyer here to help us understand
Transparency vs Confidentiality

I asked our lawyer in front of the entire board at one of our meetings. The 1st amendment is alive and well, including being able to tell shareholders what is going on in their building. Naturally anything of a personal nature is excluded, such as quoting someone's income tax returns from a Board Package for a purchase.
Politics does dictate that you try hard to maintain good relations with the rest of the Board in order that you all do what is best for the building. Creating hard feelings is never advised, unless you have a very good reason. Judgement is the byword here!

I know a board member that was informed by the President of their board that because a shareholder was helping them on a small project (getting money back for the co-op from a vendor) that this board member should be removed from the Board for giving out information. The President of the Board actually contacted the co-op attorney and included him in the email. I also don't think the majority of the board members even wanted to do that. It didn't get that far but of course the Board member was upset. Also the President of the Board wasn't on top of getting the money and because of the shareholder they were able to get back over 50K. Also this information was also discussed to the shareholders at a group meeting in the building lobby but no one was on top of it so how confidential could that be?

Our coop's by-laws contain this section. I think this is pretty common:

Section 12. Confidentiality: Information disclosed to directors should be kept in confidence and not disclosed under any circumstance until a decision is made by the Board to make the information public. Once determined, decisions of the Board are to be presented in their final form, and any discussions leading up to such decisions are confidential. Board members shall never disclose how other Board members voted.

There's no bar to disclosing how *you* voted, though you should use common sense and good judgment in disclosing such information. Also, our board typically publicizes the rationale behind significant decisions, especially if they are likely to lead to questions: "Why did you raise maintenance?" or "Why is such-and-such prohibited?"

What's the point of having a treasurer that doesn't have access to financial records?

I think hiring a lawyer and making a big deal out of it is an excellent idea, but another option might be to discuss the matter with the co-op's accountant at the next annual meeting.

this pres is outrageous and worthy of your disrepect.
Agree with the advice to get a lawyer if talking with him doesn't loosen the finances for review.
I'd work on voting this guy out.

BYW, every shareholer should see the finances on a regular basis.
My first consideration is to think he is a crook.

I fully agree with PhilC and Grant. This has a very bad smell to it.

As suggested by PhilC, I think the first course of action would be to have the treasurer ask the co-op's accountant for copies of the last five years of audited financial reports and annual budget projections. How the accountant reacts to the request will tell you a lot about how you proceed.

Another approach would be to contact the Real Estate Finance Bureau. They are a division of the NYS A/G's office. Either they can help you directly or point you in the right direction. If there is anything illegal going on with your building's finances, the A/G's office is who you want involved.

Your final recourse will be to have a group of shareholders hire a private attorney familiar with co-op and condo law. It won't be cheap, but ask the attorney if you can recover any expenses from the co-op and under what circumstances.

Have you considered putting up a slate of candidates to run for the board at the next election meeting? If it's not that far in the future, this might be the least painful way to gain control over your finances.

Best of luck to you.

Why doesn't the entire board vote on this? The president doesn't have the power to unilaterally withhold documents from officers. If the full board votes to conceal past financial records from the treasurer, then I'd be worried for many reasons. The treasurer should have access to any financial records from the dawn of the coop onwards, in my view.

When you say co-op or condo... which is it?

For a co-op, maybe you should point them to this:

https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/RPT/467-A 6:

6. The commissioner of finance may impose, after notice and an opportunity to be heard, civil penalties on each member of a cooperative board of directors of no more than ten thousand dollars for the willful failure to credit fully any tax abatement granted pursuant to this section to eligible dwelling units.

Also, you might find it helpful to obtain the relevant renewal and change and tax benefit letters to see what is going on. You can do this with a FOIL request:

https://a860-openrecords.nyc.gov/

This is explicitly permitted/available under 467-A 8. Once you have the tax benefit letter, you can always just show up with it at the next annual meeting.

Hi Phil -

Thank you for posting this. When DM first mentioned a deadline I had never heard of any civil penalties enabled in the legislation. This clears it up nicely.

Unfortunately, this particular section of 467-A is silent on how long a period of time must transpire before non-action by the board is considered "willful failure to credit fully any tax abatement." You wouldn't happen to know if a time limit is called out anywhere in this or other legislation?

Thanks!
--- Steve

No coop or condo board has the legal authority to delay the credit of the abatement to eligible units past the required time.
It is bad enough that it has become routine to commonly assessed for the abatement as the idea was to equalized taxes for unit owners.

I believe if you take a second look at the simple math, the abatement does equalize taxes with single family homes compared to co-op's. The state giving money back to a building does defray the cost of projects compared to asking shareholders to dig into their pockets, which is what they would have to do if the abatement wasn't eventually directed at paying for building costs.

In most coops, you don't actually net any money from the abatement. It's typically flattened with an offsetting assessment in the same billing cycle. The abatement is "vapor money" that results in a reduced tax bill for the building, not actual cash that the coop is given to disburse.

That said, it is of course obligatory for coops to credit the abatement as a line item in your billing, even when it is immediately offset by a corresponding assessment. But it's not a hidden pot of gold that's being withheld; it's an accounting issue. It should definitely be credited/assessed within the fiscal year to ensure the accuracy of your annual financial report.

I'd like to add a brief coda to Carl's good response, and answer a question I am asked every year. Why are the abatement amounts and the assessment amounts not the same?

The answer is that each is calculated by entirely different sets of rules by entirely different organizations.

Each apartment abatement is determined by the Dept of Finance using complicated algorithms. Two seemingly identical apartments can be granted very different abatement amounts. The list from the DoF is sent to either the co-op or the managing agent.

Assessments on the other hand must treat each share equally, by law. What most buildings do is divide the total amount of the abatement by the total number of shares, and assess each unit by the number of shares it owns.

The two are *never* the same. Some shareholders gain and some lose. If your abatement and assessment are identical, your managing agent did something very wrong.

I hope this helps new board members and especially new treasurers deal with those shareholders who end up in the loss column.