FIRE SAFETY SYSTEM -- FAIR WARNING?
By
Jan Bergemann
Published April 29, 2022
A serious DEADLINE (January 1,
2024) is creating another serious expense for Condo owners
in the near future: FS 718.112 (l) --
Firesafety.—Any
high-rise association building must ensure compliance with the
Florida Fire Prevention Code. That means that these
buildings must retrofit either a fire sprinkler system or an
engineered life safety system as specified in the Florida Fire
Prevention Code.
But make no mistake: These buildings in question got ample
warning: Since 2014 bills are being discussed and enacted
creating this requirement. The deadline for the necessary
retrofitting changed a few times – some ill-advised board
members who didn’t care about the safety of their neighbors had
the law firm of Becker& Poliakoff (former Senator Ellyn
Bogdanoff, now an attorney with the Becker Law Firm) lobbying
against this requirement, trying to remove this requirement in
the statutes or minimum trying to postpone this deadline
“forever”.
In 2017 then Governor Rick Scott even vetoed a bill that would
have actually
allowed residents to vote to end sprinkler and other safety
requirements.
Let’s make no mistake: Safety requirements, especially in
high-rise buildings, are absolutely necessary – even if some
high cost is involved. We have seen in Surfside that neglecting
safety requirements – or even ignoring them – can have deadly
consequences.
Hopefully all these high-rise condominium buildings had board
members that took care of creating reserve funds for installing
the required Fire Safety System. They surely had long-time
warnings. We don’t want to see families losing their home
because they were unable to pay the special assessment because
the board members failed to collect the necessary funds over all
these years.
THERE SURE WAS AMPLE TIME!
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Jan Bergemann is president of Cyber Citizens For Justice,
Florida
's largest state-wide property owners' advocacy group.
CCFJ works on legislation to help owners living in
community
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associations. He moved to
Florida
in 1995 - hoping to retire. He moved into a HOA, where the
developer cheated the homeowners and used the association dues
for his own purposes. End of retirement!
CCFJ was born in the year 2000, when some owners met in
Tallahassee
- finding out that power is only in numbers. Bergemann was a
member of Governor Jeb Bush's HOA Task force in 2003/2004.
The organization has two websites to inform interested
Florida
homeowners and condo owners:
News Website: http://www.ccfj.net/.
Educational Website: http://www.ccfjfoundation.net/.
We think that only owners can really represent owners, since all
service providers surely have a different interest! We are
trying to create owner-friendly laws, but the best laws are
useless without enforcement. And enforcement is totally lacking
in
Florida
!
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