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HB 293 – DUBBED THE “GENERATOR BILL”!
By
Jan Bergemann
Published March 15, 2024
We live
in Florida, meaning we know that we get hit by a hurricane, we
just don’t know when! That tells us that we have to be prepared
to the best of our abilities.
Finally, the Florida
Legislature passed a bill with a provision that starts as
follows:
HB 293 -- FS 720.3035 Architectural control
covenants; parcel owner improvements; rights and privileges.—
(6)(a) To protect the health, safety, and welfare of the people
of the state and to ensure uniformity and consistency in the
hurricane protection installed by parcel owners, this subsection
applies to all homeowners' associations in the state, regardless
of when the community was created.
Such a bill was long overdue, stopping overeager association
boards from preventing homeowners to get prepared for the next
hurricane disaster.
Our THANKS go to Representative Tyler Sirios (R-Brevard) and
Senator
Blaise Ingoglia (R-Spring Hill) who sponsored this important
bill. We were able to add two important items to the list of
items in the bill: Exterior fixed generators and fuel storage
tanks!
With our pretty vulnerable electricity supply, it’s very
important, especially for our many elderly folks here in
Florida, to have a back-up if the electricity supply fails.
Don’t forget: Hurricanes show up with hot temperatures, making
it even more important to have functioning air-condition in the
home, not even talking about electricity necessary for many
medical reasons.
Talking electricity: Did somebody ever figured out what folks
with electrical cars do if there is no electricity? Remember,
most of the regular exterior fixed generators don’t create
enough electricity to load the car battery?
Anyway, the Florida Legislature was really owner-friendly this
session – and we will have to discuss a lot more great bills
enacted by the Legislature in the next few weeks!
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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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