The very successful and well attended 2nd Annual Dowd, Whitaker & Associates Community  Festival was held in Venice earlier this week.   I was pleased to be one of the presenters at the Festival and had the opportunity to speak to an impressive number of members and managers of resident owned cooperatives throughout southwest Florida.

I

Since we’ve just recently observed Labor Day and President Obama’s "Jobs Plan" continues to make headlines, I thought I’d discuss three situations involving ROC employees that are all too common and can create some major problems for resident owned communities:

  • Quite often,one or more of the association’s employees is performing work "on the side" for

My most recent entry summarized the some of the changes made by House Bill 1195 (which became effective on July 1 of this year) to several provisions of the laws governing cooperative associations in Florida.

House Bill 1195 created three new subsections to Florida Statute Section 719.303 that have the effect of extending to cooperative

On June 21, Florida’s Governor approved House Bill 1195.  The provisions contained in this legislation became effective on July 1, 2011.

HB 1195 was considered by many to be a "glitch bill" aimed a correcting oversights in laws passed in recent sessions of Florida’s legislature.  However, HB 1195 does not expand the

I was contacted earlier today by a manager whose association had installed a "wifi" system in the community’s clubhouse that would allow residents and their guests to bring their laptops and other mobile devices into the clubhouse and connect to the internet.   A password would be needed to use the wifi system but this

I’m posting the links to three recent articles for my blog readers:

  • The first story involves the efforts of a condominium association in Jupiter, Florida to use a dog’s individual DNA to help identify canine offenders (and their owners) of the community’s "pooper scooper" rules.
  •  The aggressive approach taken by a  homeowners’ association in

Those of you that have attended our seminars for resident owned communities know that I stress the importance of all board meetings being properly noticed and open to all association members.

I’m asked at least several times every year whether a ROC board can meet in "emergency" session and thus dispense with the requirements to

Last week I posted an entry about attempts by some members of Florida’s legislature to eliminate the  regulation of Community Association Managers as well as the Division of Florida Condominiums, Timeshares and Mobile Homes and (for good measure) end mandatory non-binding arbitration for certain disputes between owners and the associations governing their communities.

Proposed Committee