New Carrollton condominium board under fire by residents

Community fed up with quality of services

Four candidates — Yetanda Canton, Tom Carrington, Heather Harding and Lesley Stewart — are running for positions held by Gbenoba, Tara Gilead, Lord Moses and Rotimi Oyekanmi, and each gave their own speeches about why they were suited to become board members.

Harding said it all comes down to whether the board can manage the residents’ money.

‘‘We have archaic bylaws where residents’ voices can’t be heard,” Harding said. ‘‘The bylaws need to be changed. I don’t want to come to a meeting where I’m told, ‘You don’t have a vote. You might as well sit down.’ That is unacceptable.”

‘‘There’s a different way to do things and it’s full disclosure,” Stewart said. ‘‘We are a community here. In community [there] is unity, not separation.”

Gbenoba said he ran for a board member position in 2005 because he thought the condominium’s infrastructure was crumbling. Gbenoba said there is a 40 percent condominium fee delinquency rate in Frenchman’s Creek and while some individual residents have as much as $8,000 in delinquent fees outstanding, he sees $40,000 sport utility vehicles in people’s parking spots. He touted a previous regulation that introduced permit parking for only those who were up to date on their condominium fees. Residents without permits were towed.

‘‘In 45 days we collected at least $90,000,” Gbenoba said.

Frenchman’s Creek’s attorney Gregory Alexandrides said it is important to address fee delinquency evenly across the board no matter how small the fees are.

‘‘It’s financially debilitating to an association when there’s such a high delinquency,” Alexandrides said.

The meeting was scheduled as an election for a new board of directors but Gbenoba adjourned one hour into the meeting because there was no quorum. Residents challenged this decision, chanting, ‘‘We want to vote,” which prompted two New Carrollton police officers to separate angered residents who had cornered Gbenoba.

Prior to the meeting, a list outside the meeting room had the names of more than 70 residents who were not permitted to vote because they had liens on their account for overdue condominium fees.

Independent auditor Harold Mohn said the bylaws state 25 percent, or 152 units from the total of 608 units from Frenchman’s Creek, must be present or represented by proxy. Proxy representation means a homeowner can fill out a form to submit a vote if he or she will not be present for the election.

‘‘They only had 112 and they needed 152,” Mohn said.

Unit owners have 60 days from April 11 to come up with a quorum and schedule a second meeting, but Friday’s gathering was only a peek into a list of problems residents have with their living arrangements.

Residents such as Joanne Jackson said the board went against the Maryland Condominium Act when it did not provide residents with an open meeting to discuss a 15 percent condominium fee increase in 2006 and approved the budget in a closed session. A visit to Jackson’s washroom shows storage units surrounded by chicken wire supported with wooden beams, exposed telephone wires, walls rusted over from prior water leaks, and a broken faucet on a laundry room wash tub.

Jackson, a 14-year resident, said she contacted the Consumer Protection Division of the state’s Office of the Attorney General about the board’s practices. The division’s chief, Steven A. Silverman, said he sent a letter to Gbenoba on Feb. 8 requesting he give his office a copy of all bylaws, meeting notices, meeting minutes and budget committee meeting minutes since January 2006 through 2008 by Feb. 25. Silverman also requested details of why the permit parking was implemented.

‘‘I asked the state’s attorney to use this complex as a test case because everything that could possibly go wrong has gone wrong here,” Jackson said.

Silverman said his office received all the documentation in a timely manner and declined to comment on the documents because the case was still under investigation. The letter stated the office would have subpoenaed Gbenoba’s records if he had failed to give Silverman the documents in time.

Silverman said his office receives about 150 to 200 complaints a year about condominium association practices concerning closed meetings and elections. Silverman said he could not comment on what penalties Gbenoba could face if anything improper were found in the records.

‘‘We would expect probably to be wrapped up by the end of the month,” Silverman said.

Repeated attempts to reach Gbenoba through phone calls and a visit to his residence were unsuccessful.

Section 11-109.2 of the Maryland Condominium Act titled ‘‘Annual proposed budget,” states: ‘‘The council of unit owners shall cause to be prepared and submitted to the unit owners an annual proposed budget at least 30 days before its adoption.”

It adds: ‘‘The budget shall be adopted at an open meeting of the council of unit owners.” Section 11-109 defines a council of unit owners as all unit owners.

Fredia Tatum, a homeowner since 2004, said she and homeowners neither received a copy of the proposed budget in 2006 before they were given a 15 percent increase nor met to discuss the budget before it was approved.

E-mail Natalie McGill at nmcgill@gazette.net.