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CONDO “TRUST” FUND?
By
Jan Bergemann
Published September 2, 2022
CONDO
TRUST FUND sounds great, but I think the trust in this fund is
long gone. Only a small part of the money collected in the fund
is actually used for the real purpose it was once intended:
Paying for a regulatory agency for Condominiums, Timeshares, and
Mobile Homes, making sure that the statutes and rules governing
these communities are upheld.
The idea
was good, the execution absolutely “sucks”!
Not only
does the Division of Florida Condominiums, Timeshares, and
Mobile Homes fail to do its job as required by law, a big part
of the money collected from the owners is plainly abused by the
legislature.
I don’t
think that the legislators creating this “CONDO TRUST FUND”
wanted this money – actually another form of tax – to pay for
“pork”. More than 50% of the money is going into the GENERAL TAX
Fund, where it disappears for everything but for the benefit of
the owners paying into this fund: $ 4 ANNUALLY!
But even
the funds used to pay for the Division of Florida Condominiums,
Timeshares, and Mobile Homes would be sufficient to create a
“useful” regulatory agency. But the absolutely dismal
performance of this Division has caused many owners to call for
the dissolution of this agency, because they feel that their
money could be used for a much more useful purpose anywhere
else.
Asking
this agency to enforce all the new rules and regulation created
by the Florida Legislature in the latest special session seems
to me more like a bad joke, considering the horrible performance
of the Division in the past.
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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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