So last night we had a follow-up condo meeting to the failed vote on our assessment a month ago. We revoted on essentially the same package with some minor modifications (for example, it’s now conditional on 15-year funding being acquired for those that need it). It passed this time with 61% approval… not exactly a landslide, but I’m glad the board isn’t trying to proceed with just a marginal majority either.
The board has really screwed the pooch on the management of this, in my opinion, and they are lucky to have passed it on a second go-round. It’s not that the plan is a bad one – it’s solid enough, even if I think we could have gone with some less-expensive options to placate the people who are really going to be struggling with it – it’s just the public relations from the board and the management company to the homeowners have been absolutely abysmal, to the point where people before the meeting were practically brandishing their pitchforks in full lynch mode.
In the end, though, enough people saw that it was the right thing to do to vote it ahead… now all the board needs to do is find a bank willing to negotiate 15-year term loans for the people that need them and settle a few final terms of the contract (they’ve been given a 3% leeway for increases since the previous bid expired). Once that happens, I can officially be poor… as Roseanne said when they shut the power off to her house, “well, middle class was fun”.
Of course, the intent behind this is to protect our investments and recover the value of the assessment in renewed appreciation on our homes, but as I said before, it’s still a mighty bitter pill to have to swallow.
In other news, it seems I will be playing Bob Cratchit as well as any number of other auxillary characters for the entire run of Unexpected’s Improvised Christmas Carol, opening toward the end of this month and running through December. I’ve already contacted my dialect-coach friend and in exchange for a nice dinner she plans on helping me master a rudimentary (and most likely comically exagerrated) cockney. So I’ve got rehearsals for that, and I’m also going to Austin all next week with the improv entourage, so while things aren’t quite like they were during tech week for Rocky, they are busy as usual.
Dan.
Tags: christmas carol, condo, improv, money matters