LPH and Urbanisations

[sampedrena]

Both David and fljordan have been really helpful in answering past queries, and I would like to stretch their patience again to help get my head round this situation.

We have a large urbanisation with several edificios, each having their separate communities with their own Presidents and Administrators. We also have a "Master Community", with the general assembly composed of the Presidents of each individual community, responsible for the common areas around the urbanisation - gardens, pools, roads and paths, lighting, security etc etc. The Master Community has its Statutes and Internal Rules for the whole urbanisation, individual communities do not have their own.

There are several hundred apartments in the urbanisation, but the handful of Presidents forming the Master Community assembly act almost like a dictatorship, making decisions which affect every resident, according to their own personal wishes, with no reference back to their own community members. Most of the decisions they make which affect us fall within the need for a simple majority; we never know when a Master meeting is to take place so we never see an Agenda, we never see Minutes and are simply presented with a fait accompli. We don't see accounts, and with an
annual quota income from the individual communities of nearly 500,00 euros, we don't see 1 euro properly accounted for.

Changing all the Presidents is an obvious answer for improvement but not easy in practice. Trying to galvanise some coordinated response in such a large community, where so many owners are not always here, is proving almost impossible as we don't seem to have the weight of the law to give us any leverage. That and a form of apathy which has quite naturally set in over the years, is not causing much concern to the existing regime, which just ignores dissent.

Are we really stuck with this situation ? Hoping you might have some bright ideas !

Regards,
Sampedrena

[fljordan]

Why the president of your sub-community does not inform you about minutes, agendas, resolutions adopted, accounts etc of the master community?

As you probably know section 24 (3) (b) of the Act provides

The adoption of resolutions for which the law prescribes qualified majorities shall require, in turn, a prior appropriate majority at the Owners’ Committee of each one of the sub-communities belonging to the master community

Although these qualified majorities are only unanimity and 3/5, not those of simple majority that does not mean that a sub-community president is free to vote in the master community meetings, he should follow the instructions agreed at the sub-community meetings

[Paula]

Sampredena, you can go to your administrators and request to see the accounts at anytime, it is your right as an owner.
As far as the rest of it, if there are enough of you feeling the same way, then really you should be able to do something, either formally ask that the issues are put onto the AGM agenda or get enough people together to call an EGM.

[sampedrena]

Thanks fljordan for your reply.

Don't know why we are not informed by our own presidents. This situation seems to have evolved unchecked over some years into the monster it is now. We are told that Master Community meetings are matters just for the individual presidents who are our representatives, and they will tell us if they think there is anything we ought to know. But, they are not representing us -we never know when there are going to be Master Community meetings, so we don't know what will be discussed as we never see an agenda, so we cannot express our opinions to our own presidents, and we are not allowed access to the meetings. The individual presidents vote according to their own personal wishes. We have our own community meetings once or possibly twice a year when we are told some of the decisions that the Master Community have taken, otherwise we only find out by chance.

The Master Community set and alter internal rules, decide on matters which affect us all on a daily basis such as the gardens, pools, security etc etc, but individual apartment owners (over 700 in total) have absolutely no input, and it doesn't seem as if the law allows us any.

Thanks also Paula. There is no problem with our own individual communities - we have meeting notices and agendas, we attend and vote, receive minutes and accounts and we have access to our Administrator at all times. The problem is with the Master Community - we do not have access to their administrator, don't know when meetings take place or what is agreed, and only ever find out what decisions have been taken well after the event if at all. Our own community pays quotas to the Master in excess of 50,000 euros pa., part of their total income of nearly 500,000 euros pa., but we do not see this accounted for.

We have raised the matter endlessly at AGMs and EGMs, but are told this is how the system is, and the Master Community is operating correctly. It seems that Chapter III of the LPH which governs this type of situation does in fact support that view, and that is why we are having such a problem - we appear to have no legal clout whatsoever.