 Good afternoon and thank you for joining us for another episode of Kondo Insider. My name is Jane Sugimura and I'm your host today for this episode and we're going to be talking about Kondo documents and how you get them and what's the process and what are issues relating to getting the documents and I have with you as my guest today, Rellene Tenno, she's the treasurer of the White Council of Community Associations and their program director. Thank you for joining me Rellene. Well thank you for having me again here Jane. Yeah we're gonna have to make this a Rellene and Jane show. Okay let's talk about condominium documents. My favorite subject. Yeah I know that's why you're here. And you know so what is it with condo documents? I mean this just seems you know it seems like when I go to the legislature every year there's always a bill regarding condo documents and a few years ago Senator Ross Baker you know and she's the one who years all the condo she finally put together this statute and she put it and it's one it's 514b 154 and it talks about all of the documents throughout the chapter and so it's in one place. So if anybody wants to know what documents you you can get from your condominium and how you get them and what you have to do you go to 514b 154 and that's where she put them because she said she was really tired of having to deal with this in every year and there are different sections of the statute. Yeah all over the place and so now they are in all in one place. Yeah that's the only place you have you you have to go and you can tell you know it tells you about any document that you could possibly want. So I guess the issue is so what kind of documents can an owner get from the association? Almost essentially everything but there's some that take time to research and get so you're gonna have to pay the fees to for someone in the managing agent to get those fees and to get those documents for you or to look them up. So if you're an owner and you want a document who do you go to? Well first thing I would go to is to the RICO website and pull up the older affidavit in order to get the docs because you have to get it notarized saying that you're not gonna you know use it for erroneous purposes you're using it just for yourself and get it notarized and then there's another document that they have also on the site that has kind of a list of common documents that you can get or that's available or that's used by the managing agents. You mentioned RICO. What is RICO? Regulated Industries Complaints. Complaint Office. Yeah. Complaint Office. And this is part of the state of Hawaii. Part of DCCA. Right. And so if anybody wanted to go you can just Google RICO, R-I-C-O. Correct. And they would pop up. Right. And then just go to the real estate condominium section and there's a lot of tutorials that they have there for condos a lot. They even have a little pamphlet regarding condominium documents that should be read first before you take that that task on. Right. And I guess the reason why this is such a you know a reoccurring topic is that you know there are owners who always want information things like you know and you know I guess the reason it comes up is you know they think that the board is spending too much money or they're hiding something you know and I always tell people you need to at least go to the board meetings every once in a while not just once a year not just to the annual meeting I mean go like once a quarter or every other month you know I know it takes a it's like about an hour two hours out of a month right but they should make an attempt to really go to some of the board meetings so they know what's going on and the minutes if there's a general manager or resident manager hopefully they have a copy of the of the approved minutes that's available for distribution or to be read because right now and you know I think with the technology you have a lot of associations with websites right right and the websites typically have your governing documents that's got your declaration and all the amendments and the bylaws and all those amendments those are the best websites right and then they have the house rules and if you have a building committee then they may have the specs for the right if you want to put in you know remove the windows in your lanai or move your lanai out right or enclosure lanai or you want to put in wood floors you you need to know what specs and what what are the requirements so there might be a website that might be one of the items that are on your website so yeah I guess for the for you know for people who are listening you know you know you need to see if your association's got a website and and a lot of the management companies they give it for free right but you just need the association just needs to designate somebody in the building who's going to be like the webmaster webmaster download the document it's really easy to upload documents into a website right easy and so so that would be the first and that would probably be the easiest because then you can do things that your leisure you don't have to pay a fee to get copies because you can look at them on your computer or your device right and you know so that would be the the best thing so the first thing you do is to see if your your association has a website and go on there and look for the documents but assume okay let's say your association doesn't have a website then you might want to go to your resident manager because a resident manager has certain documents like your declaration and the bylaws and the house rules and certain policies and they even might have a book a binder with all the minutes in it correct right and and so you can look at it for free right right you just have to you know go down and and make you know make nice with the site manager or the staff and you know ask for ask for but let's say you don't have a website and you don't have a site manager with stuff in his office now where do you go now you have to go the managing agents yeah the property manager or managing agent to request the documents that you want but you should probably be pretty pretty precise as to like which minutes you want to look at because again I mean it's going to take them time to pull it up hopefully it's current ones not like ten years ago stuff and if you want to copy there it's there's a charge to get a copy set to you right and and so so you know and and under the statute it says that you know if you designate that you want it email or fax to you they can do that and that way you don't pay the copying charges right right you might have to pay an administrative fee for the you know for the to pay for the time for the person on the other side right who's actually looking for the document taking it out of wherever it's stored walking it over to the fax machine or the computer or the scanner so they can scan it uploaded and send it off to you right you pay you have and and under the statute they have to the association has to tell you before you they send you the documents that you need to pay and they have to give you an estimate right and in other words it cannot be a surprise if they can't send you the documents and say oh by the way here's this bill for a million dollars right you know they can't do that yeah and it's besides the administrative if they sent you a printed copy it's a dollar per page but don't forget front and back is two dollars right so it's not just one single piece of paper printing double-sided would be two dollars and you know so that means you can you know you can get minutes you can get financials you can get your the accounts receivables payables you can get a list of delinquencies that are over 90 days and you know and the reason why they make you sign the declaration or the affidavit it's for some documents the statute says you have to sign an affidavit saying that you're asking for the information in good faith and and and not for and for purposes of supporting the association or the members and not to harm anyone and I guess talking about the delinquency list right that you know that is a concern for some board members and you know and I guess for some unit owners from some members I mean if you're delinquent you you really don't want you know anybody giving your name out yeah you don't want it to be public knowledge public shaming you know and so you know so that's why you're you're required to file me sir do the affidavit because you're basically told you know this is private you know this is information and yes if you're an owner you want to know who's not paying their maintenance fees that's fine but it once you get that information it's not you know you should not be running out and posting it on the bulletin board telling your neighbors that or scanning it sending it to you know half the people and I mean that that's that's really terrible I mean yeah yeah if you're concerned about you know who's not paying their maintenance fees I mean and then you could go to the meeting and say tell and ask the board what steps are you taking to collect these you know because if they're not doing their job to collect the maintenance fees that means you the owner are going to get your your maintenance fees may go up next year right right right right so that's why there's a legitimate reason why people want to see a delinquents delinquent list but you know by the same token you don't want to give it to people who are going to use it to shame people and to put this information out I mean because that's not the purpose of giving out the information right and you don't want to approach that person that's delinquent and make it known that you know that they're delinquent I mean that's that's really so so hurtful yeah so malicious right and that's the concern with providing this information but under the statute any delinquency that's over 90 days that can be given to unit owners who sign that affidavit who say they're asking for the information good faith and they're not going to use it to harm the association or the members and that and and and so that that's one of the reasons why and you know I guess another reason is and you know and I've heard that these things happen like somebody wants the managing the managing agents contract and and in fact request is made to me you know as board president from our managing agent and I said sure but make sure you you you'd redact any privacy information because we you know any private phone numbers or a home address or a private email because we do not want these employees harassed employees and even owners right the the mailing list if it has their emails and phone numbers they haven't given given consent they have to give consent to have that shared and so that needs to stay off the distribution right list you know you're only entitled to their name and address that and unit number that's it right and you know so you know we have to be really careful about and that's the reason for the affidavit it's not because we're trying to make it harder to you know we just want to make sure that people when they come and ask for information and yeah maybe they're mad at the at the site manager or maybe at the guy who does the the landscaping and wants to see what he's getting paid and then they're going to go out and say oh you're getting paid too much that's not the hope that's not the reason why this information is disclosed and and so you know though the board you know it has to take steps to make sure that when they give out the information that it's not used improperly right I mean if you if you're an owner and you know because you're you're paying maintenance fees you're entitled to this information but you know we don't want to give it to you if you're going to use it to somehow beat up on these people right because you somehow don't like them or you don't like what how they're doing their jobs and there's a whole process for that you know if you if you're unhappy about somebody you know you have to make your frustration or your unhappiness known to the management right you don't do it to the employees you can do it to the managing agent if it's Hawaiian or associate or touch tone you know you find out who your property manager is and you tell them but you don't go and ask for information with the intent that you're going to make this person miserable right and sometimes when it comes to the employees wanting to know what they get paid or what you know sometimes the the homeowner they come home but they never see anybody around but it doesn't mean that they were working from nine to five when you were gone right you know they're doing a bunch of other stuff so just because when you come home you don't see them doesn't mean that they're sitting in their their unit all day in their air conditioning and not doing anything so some people have to really think hard before they start getting on that bandwagon that the guy's not doing his job you know okay well you know why don't we just take a break now and then we'll talk more about the process and and and what you can do if somehow you can't get the documents or if the association stonewalls and ignore your request uh and you know so we'll get back and talk about those issues after the break thanks to our think-tech underwriters and grand tours the atherton family foundation carol monlie and the friends of think-tech the center for microbial oceanography research and education collateral analytics the cook foundation dwayne chorizo the hawaii community foundation the hawaii council of associations of apartment owners hawaii energy the hawaii energy policy forum hawaii an electric company integrated security technologies galen ho of b a e systems kamehameha schools m w group the schilder family foundation the sydney stern memorial trust volo foundation yuriko j suki mura thanks so much to you all okay welcome back to another episode of condo insider and we're talking to really internal today and we're talking about association documents and how you can get them and or the information that's all of them and so we were talking you know basically about you know the the various kinds of documents that you could get and uh that includes financials and general lechers and insurance policies and contracts and delinquent delinquencies and you can also get the election stuff right the ballots and the proxies and so if you're unhappy after the election you can ask the association you you need to make your request so within 30 days right of the election right and and so um so that means that if you think some something some hanky panky went on or some shenanigans i mean you can get the ballots you can get the um all the tallies all the tally sheets right all the certified of the sign-in sheets right of the people who showed up and the actual proxies and the actual proxies and and now with this uh there was a new law last year that extended the time for the associations uh to uh dispose of all these election documents right used to be 30 days and and if somebody made a request then you had to hold them for 60 days but now with the new statute you got to hold them for 90 days so that means that you have 90 days after an election to actually challenge right and then you can you have to make a request to the managing agent and you you uh then you go down and you know you can take a look at all these documents and you can get copies and the same rules apply if you know you you have to pay reasonable amount for the copies that you're getting and you have to pay for administrative services if somebody has to be there to kind of assist in providing you with the documents right right so and you know so basically how long does the uh does the association have once a request is made to turn over the documents to you they have 30 days to respond okay and what happens if they don't what if nothing happens what what do you do okay so if they don't respond to you after 30 days then you do a follow-up request and you really have to be patient through this process because getting mad and you know is not going to help so you really have to be patient and diligent so um you do a second request and then if that doesn't get a response you do a third request and that you look at the bottom of the RICO complaint form it also explained that you have to explain to them what efforts you made to get it resolved so the more efforts you show to get it resolved that's more power in on in your hat versus the other people that have never even responded so also every managing agent has to have a real estate license so there's a broker in charge or and a principal broker so if even after the third response or even on a third response i you know you could send one to the managing agent that you did and then send another one to the broker in charge and hopefully that will get a response because when you make a RICO complaint it's against the person's real estate license so hopefully they'll be able to respond and get the ball rolling okay and then so so RICO is a state agency and so do they do this for free or do you have to pay them it's part of the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs so it's a it's kind of a free thing but you have to make you have to do a lot of work but RICO is kind of backlogged so so you have to really make use that time to make all these we create repeated requests you know if they don't comply within 30 days do another one or you know but you have to just keep your calendar mark your calendar with all the days okay and basically you're doing a paper trail right so that when you get to RICO you can show them that on this date I sent a letter and they never responded 30 days later here's my second letter and and then what does RICO do well then after you do the complaint then they will and you show the evidence and make sure you do that little green card the return receipt thing then they will start to do their investigation as to why it's never been responded to as per statute and so so does that usually end up with the association or the managing agent turning over the records hopefully so okay but let's say let's say in this scenario you've you know you've made three requests to the association and they've not responded you now make a RICO complaint and they asked for a response and then they don't respond what do you do you still don't have your records yeah what do you do now uh that's a good one I'm I really don't know I really don't know I mean what would you recommend right now I mean right now under the statute you can do mediation or yeah that's true yeah you can request for mediation so you would have to put the association on notice that you're going to request mediation and you want to do evative mediation okay because that's subsidized right yes the other one the facilitative mediation just tries to bring the two parties together right and but the evative mediation will actually give you a written opinion as to whether or not you're right or wrong it's is that binding it's it's not binding but if if you get a letter that says that the association is wrong then that would give you more support if you then because the final the final step is you'd have to follow a lawsuit right it becomes a civil suit right a lawsuit for failure to comply with the statute because that's what that's what you know it boils after this is part of the law the law says shall you will comply within 30 days and shall is that legal term yeah legal to yeah have to that you have to it's mandatory and and that means that you know after all the attempts that you and you made then uh and you know by the time you get to this the circuit court and you have this paper trail of all you went and made three requests to the association then you went and did the RICO complaint and then the RICO complaint was served on that and they still didn't comply and then you went and did evative mediation and you get an opinion that says uh the the the association is in violation of the statute so now you go to the court and say okay now I want an order I mean because I you know I I I've got this opinion and I you know the law says they have to do it and I want now on order and you know it's terrible that you would have to go all that to that to those lengths yeah and I hope you have good reserves to pay for attorney fees yeah because you know you're really you're really using money that you need to use for your repair and maintenance for attorney fees when it's not necessary right this is one of those times when you know you really shouldn't be spending legal fees to defend against claims of owners who want records but the statute where and they're very particular they're they're they're listed in 514 b154 they're listed they're listed in there it says minutes it says financial statements accounts payable accounts receivable contracts insurance policies delinquencies you know over 90 days ballots proxies a sign-in list I mean so we're talking about we're not talking about every yeah I mean all the documents associated with with a condo right you can get invoices right you know it's listed in the statute and that's why you know I think that's why the legislatures get very frustrated when people come and say we can't get documents from the association and answer is why not there's a statute that says you will turn over in 30 days and and and you know so that's why you know they kind of roll their eyes and and and they kind of yell at us I I I can recall Ros Baker yelling at us saying why why is this happening every year how come these I mean it's so easy to comply and we make a rule and it says shall and it says 30 days and it lists all the documents that have to be turned over and it says that you know the association can collect reasonable charges for copying and administrative existence we really make it so specific and it's like why isn't it happening you know it kind of after the board has to realize that it's an open forum I mean you're using everybody's money that goes into this pot and you're managing it so they're entitled to know you know just like husband and wife relationship and usually the sometimes the wife is the one paying all the bills if the husband asks a question I mean you know all she has to do is say hey it went for this this miss you know I mean in theory I would hope that she would say it's none of your business you know but you know everyone's entitled to see where their money is spent and I really think people need to really make sure that they keep their packet that they get at the end of every year that has all their coupons for the following year because that has your insurance it has your budget the reserves and all that kind of stuff so you need to keep that so you can look at it periodically not just throw it into a box or throw it into the file cabinet because that's your starting point of finding out certain things from there you can find out what the employees make you know how much money is sent for employees you know some people want to know how much they pay for the managing agent well it's on the financials you don't need to get a copy of the contract if you just want it for general purposes you know so you know look at your financials first before you start doing that kind of request sometimes it's easier to find it other means than having to go do that request you know and you know a lot of condominiums when they do their budgets I mean they have it open I mean the budget meetings are open for all owners right so anybody who's interested in the minutia that you know is discussed you know in these budget meetings you know is pretty much welcome to attend and you know so you know to me you know people you know who are concerned and they want transparency and they want to know where their money is going they should start going like you said they should start going to the board meetings and the budgets are usually starting in September September October and it should be definitely done by November so you know start going to those meetings if you're really concerned about where the money is going because that's where the planning starts right and and I know in in our condo when we have our budget meaning we have owners there and it's we basically have this big table and everybody's got chairs and so it's not like the board sits in one place and the owners sit and we're kind of like all together and everybody's chiming in but what about this what about that how do you calculate this and that and you know so this is good the the dialogue is good because a lot of times you know I mean I've been on the board for many many years and you know sometimes you just don't think of things right that that people will raise we're talking about the budget right and or they'll say well why don't we do it this way or and or how come you're spending this much money here what if we do it this and you know so it you know so for having owners participate in the budget meeting is very useful to the board because there's they can because they're I want to say they're kind of like the outside looking in so sometimes they can see what we don't see you know or what we missed and so it it becomes productive when they're included and they they're allowed to participate in those discussions and and another good thing too is yeah and another good thing is having and there is they basically listen to the dialogue and so that they don't come and they figure well geez how come you spent all that money on those repairs and you know but they weren't there when we were talking about why we had to do it and you know the the contractors that we interviewed and you know and so you know when you come to the budget meeting and you hear all the the discussion and we this last time we were talking about a reserve study half the people in the room didn't know what a reserve study was right so so they learned right and and they asked good questions when you know when we talked about what you know who you know who what goes into a reserve study and how does the board get involved and how does affect the owners and how does it determine you know what you collect you know from the owners and maintenance fees and what do you set aside for reserves and how do you do that and you know so they you know so I think they they really appreciated the fact that we went into that discussion because typically your condos are typically first-time homeowners you know so they don't know that budgeting I mean they're really still even learning that budgeting process because you know now that they have a mortgage they really have to watch their financials their own personal financials so you know we we run out of time and so yeah we were having so much fun so you know we're going to have to come back and and and we can continue this discussion but thank you all for joining us today talking about condo documents and how you get them and what you can do if you can't get them and please join us again next week for another episode of condo insider about condominium living and people who are affected by that thank you very much mahalo and goodbye thank you