A few examples: 

1. It took me several emails to get the board to provide a simple courtesy response to confirm who the board participants were at a meeting another owner and I had with the board. I also asked the board to let me know the positions of each board member. They would not answer that question after those several emails. It was provided many months later.

2. The board has never responded to the multiple times I asked for an association audit and my pointing out they were years late in having required association audits performed, as required by the bylaws.

3. They board has never responded to very serious maintenance concerns that I believe put the Northface property at risk, including a very serious concern documented in a new update at www.northface.info - see Issue Number 6, 'Property Maintenance',  in this table .

4. The board has never responded to my pointing out they are Not following the bylaws and state law regarding proxy audits.

5. The Northface legal documents require and there is a New Hampshire law stating: "The board of directors shall make copies of the minutes of board meetings available to the unit owners within 60 days of the board meeting or 15 days of the date such minutes are approved by the board, whichever occurs first." I began requesting the Board Meeting Minutes in writing via a Certified Letter to the Board back in October, 2009 and had repeated the request many, many times. Not getting access, indeed not even getting any reply on this for a year, is simply inexcusable at best and criminal at worst. A copy of this certified letter is at the website.

Unfortunately, by all appearances, there are a number of instances where it seems the board has misrepresented the truth.  In fact it has been extremely hard to try to discover the truth or know when the board is telling the truth when so much misinformation has come out of this board on so many occasions. Let's start off with one clear untruth stated 3 separate times in emails by the board president, and a 4th time sent thru the property manager whose wording seemed to possibly indicate he was not confortable passing on what the board instructed him to say.

 Quotes from emails Sent to me by the Board President regarding what was decided on the windows issue at the 2009 annual owner's meeting:

1.) Quote from Board President in his email of 7/27/09:
"This was discussed and voted on at the last meeting with no descending votes. It was also decided that we would go forward from the meeting and not go back to widows replaced prior. So a cut off point."

 2.) Quotes from Board President in his email of 9/14/09:
"After the board reviewed the bylaws we agreed that the windows are the owner's expense. (You should have received the bylaws when you closed on your unit). At the last annual meeting we discussed with the owners andit was voted that future window replacements would be billed to the owners. " and in same email "This received unanimous approval."

 3) Quote from Board President in his email of 9/21/09:
"Rick, at the last annual meeting the board established that windows are the owner's responsibility. This is clearly documented in the bi-laws. A motion was voted on that ratified this with the membership and everyone agreed that we would move forward and not go back on the few windows that were replaced prior."

  4) The following shows that the board also told this same misinformation to the Property Manager. Here is the quote an from email I received from the property manager on 9/14/2009:
"The Board has informed us that the owners had voted on the window installation to be the expense going forward as an owners expense."

[ Note: The Board President saying (above and below) that I 'should have received the bylaws' and who is responsible for paying for the windows is 'clearly stated in the bylaws'. So there is no dispute, the legal documents are clear. Also, these clear legal documents serve as a legal contract between the association and each owner that the board is responsible to uphold. Furthermore, the board president has been on the board about 17 years and should have absolutely no excuse for having not followed them, in multiple ways, over many years, particularly those clauses that if are not followed result in large multi-thousand dollar financial owner inequities. Shows 17 Yr on Board ]

Click to hear 25 Second Excerpt from June Special Windows meeting showing above quoted Board President emails were admitted to be untrue statements - Board Member P Chamberlain Speaking

It needs to be clearly emphasized that the above board member, P. Chamberlain., said at the meeting, as the above audio clip shows, there was no motion and no vote. He stated that it was only a "consensus, no vote". While that does show the above emails were in fact Not true statements the board appears to further  misrepresent the truth to try to put their untruth in a better light then the facts depicts. If you look at meeting minutes of the 2009 meeting you see even using the word 'consensus' appears to be quite a stretch. An owner asked "if we will bill owners for windows that have already been replaced and paid for by the association." The owner was told "previous owner windows would not be back billed." So you can see there was no significant discussion that would have been needed to have a chance to determine if there was really a 'consensus'. Owners were simply told what the board was doing. Furthermore, most, if not all owners were not aware of it, largely because there was no motion or vote as originally claimed, but also no consensus since there was no significant discussion. You can see this with the questions asked at the special meeting in June of 2010. Quotes from that meeting will be put here later.

By all appearances, the Board President was misrepresenting the truth for the purpose of trying to make his position seem more reasonable to me and other owners and to make me go away from questioning the board. Furthermore, this is also the issue that I was trying to address at the 2010 annual owner's meeting - namely that there was Not any motion or vote at the 2009 annual owners meeting and the minutes needed to be clarified to show that. As stated in this issues table the property management company refused to answer that question. Why? Because the property manager by this time knew that there was no motion or vote as claimed by the board. It would have made the board look bad and would have brought the issue into the open. However, the board did not let any owners even speak the word 'window(s). Why? They appeared to want to have time to frame the issue with disinformation so they could easily get their way and sweep the whole windows inequity issue under the rug. Had they let this information out and allowed the windows issue to be discussed in an open and honest way owners would have had a chance to really know what was going on and the risk created by the board's pushing to formalize the mult-thousand dollar owner inequity created by not following the law and the association legal documents. For other examples, including the board's untruthfulness concerning my access to association records read the above issue 'Access to Association Records' documents and, 2). Untruthfulness about decisions and voting that took place at the 2009 owners meeting and my attempt to get that addressed and corrected at the at 2010 annual owners meeting.

Does the board know what they are doing. It seems clear that they probably do, as the Board President shows when he mocks in his 3/8/2010 email "I don't think he trusts us and this is hard understand.".

Am I the only owner who has been stonewalled? The answer is 'NO'. Here is a quote from a June 2010 email from a Northface Condo owner who owns a unit in the A/B building. That owner's email to me stated "...I was stonewalled when I asked why I had to pay when previous owners didn't ...".  

Another example of an untrue statement - When myself and another owner met with board in 2009 P. McCusker said he had gotten one window.  In fact he had gotten several thousand dollars worth of windows, several in one building, the D building, and several more windows plus a door in another unit, in the J building. The total with labor was about $7600 ($5146.95 for the cost of the windows and doors alone). In fact by my calculations this single board member received 33.79% of all association paid for windows the last two years association money was inappropriately paid for individual unit owner windows, contrary to what is  required by State of New Hampshire Law and the Northface  Association legal documents.

I believe all owners have the right to expect transparent association operations. That includes an open and an honest interaction of all parties. I am sorry to say, these expectations, indeed rights, have not been fulfilled. I do not find that to be acceptable.
 

"The truthfulness of an attorney's words forms the very bedrock of the judicial system, and confidence in that truthfulness must be justified...".

Again, the Northface owners have a right to expect more from any attorney that is hired, especially any attorney hired in the future. The board in not committing to hire any attorney with similar ethics complaint records appears to show they may feel differently.

The below paragraph, like much of the detail that has just been added to the website, was part of something I was preparing to privately discuss with the board but after their 6/16/11 letter it is clear they do not want to hear it and they would likely twist the truth for their own purposes:

The board's attorney knows how serious the sanction is, and how serious some other legal entities may consider it. Perhaps the board should take what their attorney has to say to heart, read it a few times, and learn from it. The board's attorney ethics complaint counsel, in fact, states in his 1/14/11 motion for reconsideration of the ethics committee findings that "Mr. [Name Redacted] is concerned that the severity of the sanction imposed and the language of the decision may well impair his ability to gain admission to the South Carolina bar". Yet, the board seems to think that, despite their attorney being concerned he may not be able to practice law in the whole state of South Carolina, the board feels they may very well decide he or other attorney's with similar ethical backgrounds (similar ethics sanction and warnings) is acceptable by the board to be the legal representative of the Northface Condo Association, even knowing that their attorney thinks the sanction is so fundamentally serious that the State of South Carolina may Not want to admit him to the bar in that state. Unfortunately, it is not surprising, but I had hoped the board would send a different message, one that at least on the surface, would show the importance of high ethical standards the board should aspire to, for the good of the association. It is unfortunate that the standards bar set by the board appears to be so low. I certainly hope a good number of owners will decide for themselves what they think, and hopefully from my perspective, expect a higher ethical standard then the board's apparent standards.   

You will find more detail, including the findings of the New Hampshire Supreme Court Attorney Discipline Office, on 3 of the 4 ethics complaints brought against the board hired attorney at this popup page.

Quotes Showing How I feel the Board Used Their Attorney to Unfairly Burden Me and Delay, Block, and Obstruct My Attempts to Access Information and Assocation Records and to Substantively Engage the Board to Attempt to Resolve Important Issues:

Board's Attorney's email to me on March 15, 2010, four days prior to the owner annual meeting:  "This office represents Northface Condos. Please direct your concerns and complaints to this office. We have been provided some materials from the Board and will respond to you. Thanks. Attorney ......."

Subsequent to the meeting the board's attorney refused to substantively respond after my going through his requested effort to put together some of my concerns.  Quote form an email on May 4, 2010: "I am hesitant to charge legal time responding to your letters. We have a duty to preserve funds.".   and in same email, "We seek to be cooperative, but to be frugal.".

My 5/19/10 e-mail to the Board's Attorney after he did not respond to my questions and issues after stating he would and me taking the time to compile the issues and send them to him:
"What is your purpose in saying you will meet 'if you want to discuss'?  Specifically what is it that you are purporting to be willing to discuss in a substantive way?"

 5/19/10 Board's Attorney sent me an email stating:
"...I will check with the board as to whether they want to pay for my time to respond."

 At this point it seemed even more then clear that the board was calling the shots and using their attorney as a block. What I stated was the truth, often backing it up with specific statutes or legal document clauses and, the board had no valid arguments or positions to contradict or argue the facts that I stated. So they felt they had to just avoid any real discussion at any cost. The fact that my rights were being trampled upon was of no concern to the board. Their main concern was to make permenate the inequity they created and keep the way they were operating as hidden away from the owners as much as possible.

 My brother and I did subsequently have a conference call with the board and their attorney but the board, instead of using it as a chance to substantively discuss the issues and maybe come to some understanding, used it as an opportunity to send out the special meeting packet and ballots just before this conference call proving once again they had no interest in any substantive discussion of the issues. In fact, if you read the packet and ballot they sent to owners it reads more like a chain letter saying something very bad would happen if owners voted for the only option that was sure to produce a good level of equity to owners. The board recommendation, unsurprisingly, the only option that guaranteed Not a single penny of equity would be restored to the owners who were at the short end of the mult-thousand dollar inequity disparity. Further proof the only option pushed by the board was sweeping the issue under the rug. And, true to what I have stated, the board's approach would end up costing owners more for windows replacements then the equitable solution I proposed. That additional dollar amount is already $9200 more then the cost of the windows as no legal fees needed to be spent. That $9200 figure may be just the tip of the legal cost ice berg as the legal fees are sure to skyrocket if this goes to the next steps. And, I think there is a significant chance that the association insurance may not pay the legal fees, as the Northface association, as is commonly the case, has a clause that may get them out of paying resulting in the association or perhaps the board paying these fees. You can see this at the bottom of this page. This is also discussed on page 2 of my June 4, 2010 letter shown at the bottom of this page. 

It seems obvious that the board did not want their attorney to respond and had only used him to delay and obstruct prior to the 2010 owner's meeting that the board blocked me from speaking at so information damaging to them would not be heard and they could poison the atmosphere about me with respect to the windows inequity issue without the owner's hearing anything I had to say on the issue. Look for future update about results of other ethics complaints filed against the board's attorney and the outcomes of those complaints.

I have asked the board to confirm that any subsequent attorney they employ will be one's that have demonstrated the highest level of ethics expected from his profession based on their Attorney Discipline Office Ethics complaint record. The board would not confirm that to me. I believe all owners have a right to expect what I was requesting. I also believe the board should jump at the chance to take that highly appropriate position. It should be noted that it is my understanding that the New Hampshire Supreme Court Discipline Office feels that using their office and website to look up an attorney's ethics complaint record when deciding who to hire as an attorney is a good use of their office's data.

Also, see  the board's attorney email to me dated 6/5/10 which can be seen under issue table item 'Access to Association Records'. This documents the board's, through their attorney, using double speak gibberish to try to fog up the issue of what association records I would be able to access. 

(Note: I tried to engage the board on this last fall when the work was being done. As has often been the case, they did not respond. In my discussions I believe property management knows what is proper maintenance. Therefore, I suspect these improper maintenance decisions may be being made by the board. Also, I have seen improvements in proper painting preporation, scraping away and repairing rot before painting/staining.)

Some Quick Keys to Proper Exterior Painting/Staining Maintenance
 (These Keys are for the Board and Owners who may not be aware of these things. I am pretty confident Property management is aware of all these. The potential problem is the board ultimately calls the shots.)

1. Follow the manufacturers instructions. ie. Read the paint can and follow it. Otherwise, you risk premature failure and voiding the manufacturer warrantee. And if you read the can many of the below things are mentioned.
2. Pay close attention to the current weather and forecast or risk premature failure of product and voiding warrrantee. Rain and cold temperatures are the main problem. If you paint when it too cold, that is a big  error - read the can. And paint can take up to 48 hours to properly and fully dry. So the forcast is not just the current temperature.
3. Remove all rot down to more solid wood. If you do not do this paint/stain will not properly adhere to what you are painting. If you don not you have a very high risk of prematurel failure.
4. Stop water penetration. This means fill all holes and calk all seams. If you do not water will penetrate and premature damage will occur. This is particularly important in climates like Waterville Valley.
5. Clean any surface that is dirty, dusty, oily. If you do not do this the paint/stain will not adhere propery and will prematurely fail.
6. Sand all glossy or semi gloss paint surfaces before applying a new coat of paint. If you do not paint will not adhere properly and will prematurely fail.
7. Make sure any molding or trim that is damaged,pulling away, or develops gaps where water can penetrate are taken care of quickly. Otherwise whatever it is protecting, whether it be a window or siding, etc. will prematurely rot and fail. There is an example of this my building, a common window where a large section, about 2 feet, piece of trim has been pulled away from the window and has been left like that for about a year. This is one reason why doing proper property maintenance inspections at least quarterly, as required by the Northface Bylaws, are so important and why I have strongly pushed the board to do proper property inspections and reports. In fact, I devoted a separate page on this at Northface Property Maintenance Inspections. It is up to the board that this be in the property management contract and done properly. It may cost a few dollars more but one should not be penny wise and pound foolish.

Northface Painting/Staining Too Late in the Season 

I was going to ask the board to commit to not to continue repeating the big mistake of painting too late in the season. However, after their 6/16/11 letter that request clearly would have not been well received. So, the owners need to be aware of this issue to decide for themselves.

This is the latest Property Maintenance fiasco which follows other noteworthy ones like painting over rot like was done on my windows and elsewhere. The board had unfortunately decided to do a risky painting/staining job by not following product manufacturer requirements since the work was done far too late in the year. Details and some of the proofs are outlined below, complete with images and links to actual forecasts that clearly appear to show that they are putting Northface property at risk. This type of decision appears to go a long way to explaining premature exterior property failure and is one of the things that dispel one of the myths propagated by the board, namely, most all problems in this area are because of the original construction of the buildings.
  

The above image is a small piece of the full size image and full product info which you can see by clicking here.  You can alternately see the the Northface job site photo of this same product by clicking here though the application requirements is harder to see in that one.
Also, click here, here, and here to see thatconditions were only suitable to apply the product, per the manufacturer directions, 1 out of the 13 consecutive days for which I checked the forcast. This is an unnecessary risk to the likelihood of the property having increased damages and costs.  I have worked for multiple professional painters and it is clearly poor practice to go against manufacturer requirements. This is very unprofessional. Furthermore, I believe it voids any manufacturer warranty. This is not an isolated occurrence. Painting has also been done late in the season multiple times. 

Unfortunately, this problem likely showed itself to, in fact be a problem, at the June 2010 special meeting. Some meeting quotes:
1.) Joseph J. asked if the F building was just painted because it was peeling.  The board president stated "it was painted three years ago."  and  
 2.) "One owner said when she looked at her windows the paint is peeling off ...is there paint she can get to just paint it herself"  The answer was "The paint can be picked up at ... Property Management". 

While I am glad, and it is a good thing, that that an owner can get paint/stain and take over some of the maintenance themselves, it is also critical the manufacturers requirements be followed to lesson the need for this. Clearly Northface has experienced evidence of premature failure with peeling after only a short time. In fact, the warranty for the above product is 8 years.

 Need more proof. Read the 2011 annual owners meeting minutes where owners expressed concern about windows rot and the it was stated (paraphrase here) that if the windows were so rotted that if they were in danger of falling out of the building, the problem would be addressed this year.

IMPORTANT NOTE:
By all appearances, the board has perpetuated the myth that virtually all of Northface property condition and rot problems are because of the way the building was originally constructed. They have made this statement repeatedly. That simply appears to be false. Just considering the above information, you can begin to see the large holes poked in this myth. Much more information on this will follow in the days to come.

Note: Also, keep in mind that the elevation at Northface is considerably higher then the main sections of town so the temperatures at Northface would likely be colder then the forecast.  There is a 3.57 Fahrenheit difference (lower) for each 1000 feet increase in elevation.  See data table detailing this here.  

I have stated to document other maintenance issues on this separate popup page.

By all appearances, the board has put out inaccurate and false meeting minutes in an attempt to put me in a bad light and try to cover up their inappropriate actions and behaviors. Some examples: 
a.) At the 2010 annual owners meeting minutes they stated that I had been asked if I would serve on the Northface board. They never asked me that question. Furthermore, that can be easily seen in two separate records of the meeting, hand written notes by property management and the board. More on this later.
b.) In those same meeting minutes it was left out that the board table refused to answer my question, the answer to which all three Property Manager attendees knew. They did not answer it because it would have shown the meeting minutes needed to be corrected and it would have shown that I was not being told the truth in 4 separate emails on this.
c.) In those same meeting minutes they placed a document in the meeting minutes that was not provided to them by me as if it was provided by me. I had given them signed documents to put in the minutes, this in addition to not being given to them was not signed and only a prior draft version of something I had prepared.
d.) The Special Windows Inequity meeting minutes, the Board President had agreed at the meeting that my question was not answered and the meeting minutes would reflect that. That truth morphed into an attack on me much later in the meeting. See the link to the recording on this under issues table item 'Owner Meetings'.
 e.) At the 2010 annual owner meeting, another owner that was blocked from speaking about the multi-thousand dollar owner inequity objected from being blocked from speaking. He asked that his objection be part of the meeting minutes. The official meeting minutes that the board distributed did not show that objection. Here is an image of the hand written minutes of the owner's request to have his objection recorded in the official minutes which again the board purposely left out to create their false version of reality (Notice the note taker placed an asterisk to be sure the objecting was not missed so it shows it was not missed, the board simply has their agenda and false reality to portray.):




 
It should be noted that the Property Manager's Northface Management Fee increased over 11% which clearly seems excessive at a time when inflation was almost non existent during the all-time worst non depression econmic slump the U.S. has ever experienced. Was this fee increase recommended by the board because the Property Manager agreed to not contradict the board when they misrepresent the minutes?

Bullying

The board by all appearances has been years too late in having independent audits contrary to association legal documents based on my viewing of association records. The board will not respond to my multiple requests to have independent audits done to comply with association legal document requirements. Did the board have something(s) to hide here. Hopefully, not, but if they did, those somethings may never be determined and corrected. Here is a summary from one of my attempts to review Audits that shows audits have not been done for 8 years while they are legally required at a minimum of every two years. Here is a quote from my e-mail to the board and property manager 5/19/2010 is but one example of my requests regarding association audits:

"However, the review shows the association legal documents are not being followed. The last 3 audit were in 2002, 2000, and 1996. The association legal documents as amended require at least a limited audit every two years so there as been 4 to 5 violations. They also require an audit when there is a reason for an audit. I have requested an audit with regards to the windows for which there is good reason. I have made multiple requests for audits without so much as the courtesy of a reply. Well, I have still never gotten a reply on the years late violation of association legal documents requiring audits.   

Here is the an image of the Northface Legal docs amendment that shows that audits are required at least every two years and when good cause arises. Why has the board has not followed this critical requirement? What have they got to hide? They also would not respond to my request of a good cause audit in regards to the multi-thousand dollar owner inequity the board created. Why, what do they have to hide? As you can see the current Northface Board President signed this Amendment in 1997, so it seems inconceivable he he is not following what is required unless he has some motive for not following his legal requirement.

Let's start with an analogy showing what, by all appearances, something very similar that the board did (keep in mind that what the board did is in some ways even worse then this analogy with all the mistatements of fact and manipulation, etc.):

Say a bank board made did something intentional or unintentional that violated a law and it led to some bank savings account depositors money being deposited into the other depositors accounts. Say 20 depositors benefited from other depositor's money being placed into their accounts and 34 were negatively impacted by their money going into other depositors' accounts. If the bank did that, which is violation of banking regulations and the law, they would not say it is in the best interests of all bank depositors to not correct the situation because the banks Information Technology division said it would cost money to create the program to correct the problem and that would mean we have to pay a little less interest on all savings accounts. So we have to let the 34 people who were hurt by this to accept it for the good of all bank depositors as a whole. Now what if one the injured depositors objected to the result and non solution way to sweep the whole matter under the rug. So the bank says Ok, we will take a vote. The resulting vote is 20 to 14 to support what the bank recommends, namely not to correct the inequity. That would be nonsense. The bank would correct the err or, certainly not vote on what was best for depositors' as a whole, some of which in this case gained from the error. If they were foolish enough not to correct the problem and achieve rightful equity to all savings account owners there would be criminal and civil legal actions against them and everyone, savings account holders and shareholders alike, would suffer a much bigger loss than correcting the problem as a result of criminal and civil actions against the bank. If you read the fiduciary page at www.wvnorthface.info for actual court cases and discussion from Real condominium law experts in regards to fiduciary responsibility of condominium boards you will see condo boards have strong fiduciary responsibility and severe consequences if they violate that responsibility.