Board must provide certain financial documents to owners
Q. I can’t get a single financial document from our association. Is the board of directors of a condominium association required to give financial statements to the unit owners?
A. The board does have an obligation to provide certain financial documents to owners — some only on request, some annually. The board of managers of every condominium association is required to keep and maintain certain records, or true and complete copies of these records, at the association's principal office for examination or copying by owners. These records include “the books and records for the association's current and 10 immediately preceding fiscal years, including, but not limited to, itemized and detailed records of all receipts, expenditures and accounts.” This is set out in Section 19(a)(9) of the Illinois Condominium Property Act.
Further, the board of managers must “annually supply to all unit owners an itemized accounting of the common expenses for the preceding year actually incurred or paid, together with an indication of which portions were for reserves, capital expenditures or repairs or payment of real estate taxes and with a tabulation of the amounts collected pursuant to the budget or assessment, and showing the net excess or deficit of income over expenditures plus reserves.” This is described in Section 18(a)(7) of the Illinois Condominium Property Act.
Q. I own a home in a single family detached homes homeowners’ association in the Chicago suburbs. I have a question regarding quorum and voting percent needed to hold an annual meeting to elect board members. The owners are being told that we need 50% of the owners to vote at the annual meeting in order to have a valid election. Otherwise, the existing board will remain intact for another year. Is that correct.
A. A quorum of the owners needs to be “present” at an annual meeting in order for the meeting to proceed. Once a quorum is established, the percentage of owners who actually vote is not really relevant. For example, let’s assume the quorum for an association is 20% of the owners, and exactly 20% of the owners are “present” at the annual meeting. If for whatever reason only 19% of those owners actually vote, it’s still a valid election.
It is possible that the quorum for your association is 50 percent. As long as 50% of the owners are “present” at the annual meeting, it should not matter what percentage of the owners actually vote.
If a quorum of owners is not “present” at the annual meeting, the current board members would continue to serve until their successors are duly elected.
Q. I am on the board of a very large common interest community association that is located in an unincorporated portion of a county. The association operates very much like a municipality. As a result, the board of directors is considering advantages of being our own municipality. What sort of owner vote would be required to get the ball rolling on this? Would we use our association attorney to assist with the process of incorporating as a municipality?
A. This issue is actually addressed in the Illinois Common Interest Community Association Act. Section 1-20(d) provides that (n)o action to incorporate a common interest community as a municipality shall commence until an instrument agreeing to incorporation has been signed by two-thirds of the members.”
Unless the association’s attorney has experience separate and apart from his association practice, an attorney concentrating on municipal law would be required here. However, there could absolutely be issues that would need to be addressed by the association’s regular counsel during this process.
• David M. Bendoff is an attorney with Kovitz Shifrin Nesbit in the Chicago suburbs. Send questions for the column to him at CondoTalk@ksnlaw.com. The firm provides legal service to condominium, townhouse, homeowner associations and housing cooperatives. This column is not a substitute for consultation with legal counsel.