The "meeting"

Before the Condo Association meeting could be called to order, it had erupted into useless chaos.

The owner who isn't an owner came to the meeting, like I thought she might, and she brought a power of attorney with her. I'll admit it was a good move that I hadn't expected. While I didn't see the paper myself, it was evidently not notarized.

The pointless arguing continued for a few minutes, but I can only tolerate so much of that sort of thing. I wound up interrupting to call for a motion of postponement. Our "Acting President" is hopeless at parliamentary procedure, and was ready to end the meeting based on the motion. I called for the second. We then had the vote, and the motion passed.

The whole thing has not been handled well by any of the interested parties:

Assuming that the power of attorney is legitimate, it still makes disrupts the "100% owner occupied" nature of our complex. We have rules that state exceptions must be authorized by the board, and can last no longer than six months. These rules are in clear violation by two of the owners. A valid power of attorney would give those individuals voting rights (technically by proxy) at the association. I have to double check the letter of our rules, but there are provisions for votes by proxy.

We really could have had the meeting, talked about the issues, looked at last year's finances and come up with a plan for moving forward. We should have had a discussion about whether to permit the two 'non-owners,' we should have voted, we should have continued with the meeting. Instead, we really had a worse case scenario. The fighting took over the meeting and absolutely nothing was accomplished.

I want to be the next president, only because I may be the only one with the knowledge and the ego to run a meeting with these people. The funny thing was, when I stuck my nose in and guided us into some procedure, the others followed right along. That gives me hope that it can be done. I don't care what we accomplish, I just want it to be done in an organized, democratic way.