Are Deficit Budgets Legal?

 No.

They violate the state law and our by-laws. 

Here is an email that notifies Mikhail Kleyman and Linda Leest of that when preparing the 2022 budget. They never went to the state to approve their plan, and did not get an attorney's opinion until the following year for the 2023 budget. My legally compliant deficit reduction plan of waiving reserves for the year as our primary way of balancing the Condo 1 operating fund is mentioned.

Linda Leest did get our accountant to say in 2021 that it was okay to have the deficit reduction plan she wanted despite the obvious violation of state law and the by-laws. An attachment from the email is here.

Here is the email where I bring up my concerns about the accountant approving deficit budgets. It also includes the email that approval was attached to as well as notification of the issue to our current treasurer.

This email from the accounting firm contains the letter firmly stating that the previous advice about deficits was completely wrong.

Linda Leest then went to our lawyer to get an okay to run deficit budgets. Here is the lawyer's opinion which you can see only addresses the sole issue of violating the by-laws. None of the other issues raised by the accounting firm are addressed. The lawyer basically says the board can use its business discretion to violate the by-laws. I always thought the by-laws were in place to limit the business discretion of the board. I thought the Board is supposed to be forced to follow the by-laws. Obviously, only a "non-professional" person would hold foolish views like that!

Shockingly enough, some other people agreed to follow the by-laws. Apparently, that only applied if they felt like it. You can also find that on Front Steps - the Association's web site - if you are set up to use it.

You can decide for yourself whether I was wrong about questioning the judgement of our "professionals" when there were obvious violations. Make up your own mind about whether this was a "rampage."

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