Problem President :(

The community on which my family lives is mainly Spanish.

Also I believe the pool and community garden to be for children as it's a very safe environment for them to be in. If we send them out of the urbanisation to play then you do run the risk of there being another Madeleine (that's almost forgotten now so maybe we should do a thread on that to remind everyone).

I have never seen anyone getting bladdered and I think that is probably a British thing. In fact I can't recall ever seeing anyone drinking alcohol around the pool or in the community gardens. (We'll not talk about the pipas!).

Any parent knows you can't be there 24/7 and it is also possible to keep an eye on them from a distance.

Back to subject.

Can anyone tell me if an elected President can ever be overuled on any of his actions if owners are not happy.

The community was set up within the Horizontal Community Law and prescribes for a President and 2 Vice Presidents to be elected at an AGM, no other committee or board members are covered though a paid administrator is employed as the community covers nearly 300 apartments.

As far as I can read the elected President wields absolute power unless challenged and outvoted at an EGM, but what if he potentially commits an illegal act whilst in office?

So you have a problema with the Presidente?

Get 25% and go for an EGM. Or you can challenge actions in court.....................or you could just go and ask the Presidente what the heck is going on!!

I am president of our community, if you have a problem don't do nothing but moan to others. Contact / speak to the president and ask whats going on.  Do others feel the same?  if so all of you ask questions,  he/shw was ellected and can soon be un-ellected.

Just to qualify you need 25% of the owners to sign a notice to force a EGM, but all those owners need to have their fees paid to date.

The president has absolute power, but all major decicions have to be passed at the AGM.  An Illegal act and actions are subject to the laws of Spain.

Good luck

Derek

derek55......................you are so right......almost ! !

An owner DOES NOT have to be up to date with thier fees to sign a petition for an EGM BUT they do need to be paid up to vote at an EGM or AGM.

"what if he potentially commits an illegal act whilst in office?" - I'm  not sure anything can be done while it's still "potentially". The moment he actually commits an illegal act, call the police!

Joking aside, it would be interesting to know specifically what "acts" he / she is "potentially" commiting? If it's to do with (mis)use of community funds, for example, there should be an approved budget, within the bounds of which he must operate. Care to elaborate?

Hi All

We notice that some of you are actually Presidents could you tell us please in general exactly what is the role of the President (his duties etc).  Does everything have to go through the President, does he have the final say on everything etc etc and where do the Administrators come into this.  On our complex it appears that the President and Administrators are the only people who talk not sure who is calling the shots mind because if we talk to the President he says 'thats as much as I can say at the moment' and the Administrators just do not respond to any questions.  The committee don't seem to know anything either.

Jojan

Happy to elaborate

Our Presidente is also a Vocale on the resort Entidad with which he is having great communication problems, not a good start.

Our community collected the due fees on behalf of the Entidad and to make a political point the Presidente decided not to agree to the transfer and called an EGM to explain his action to owners. This left the Entidad short of funds who took it upon themselves to write to all community owners via the administrator explaining their side but telling owners they would have to pay Entidad fees again direct to another account or be classed as debtors rather than discuss the situation with the Presidente who was eventually persuaded by owners and VPs to agree the transfer.

My point was, was there any stage that VPs or owners could have overruled the Presidente prior to an EGM?

"The president has absolute power, but all major decicions have to be passed at the AGM. "

This kind of ignorance is the problem with Communities in Spain. The President DOES NOT have absolute power.

Unfortunately, they just tend to act like they do.

The Owners are in charge. The owners make ALL decisions by majority rule.

The President has a voting power determined by his own quota......This could be less than 1% in a large Community.

The major point of electing a President is that they act as legal signatory for the Community.

I know it very often does not work at all like this, but that is just generally down to weak/ignorant/absent owners.

Very true Albodd.

Text of the Horizontal property Act, where you can see the legal role of the President here

We would be pleased to answer any questions on this.

Best regards,

Maria

I understand what both of you are saying in theory, but in practice once elected the Presidente is virtually able to do whatever he likes within the law, especially if the Administrator, and I m sure many do, acts as they are instructed rather than using some semblance of common sense. Only an AGM or EGM can set out an executive decision and then mainly from the President as most owners are not interested or able in challenging a status quo.

In essence unless an extremely good communication system, actually used by owners has been set up then many have no idea how things are being run and I accept many stick their heads in the sand and hope someone else will do the job.

One day something may actually stir owners into a response or action but mostly they are happy to leave it to someone else though they will comment that it shoild not be possible for an individual to make important decisions, they will offer very little as an alternative.

A major problem is that AGMs & EGMs are very poorly attended and the President also hold proxy votes.

If you really want to change something then you need to unite voters or get their proxy votes.

This is why on many communities it is very easy for these "franco" styled Presidents to take power and hold power and introduce new internal rules etc.

But on such communities people grumble or complain but rarely volunteer for the role themselves.

But you do have your vote (providing you are up to date with community fees)!

Hugh:

I fully agree with you. As in other many associations/communities participation need to be encouraged. Good communication systems are needed and I cannot think of anything different to online communication systems these days.  In my opinion, the Horizontal Property Act itself needs to be reviewed and ammended somehow regarding validity ways of communications.

It is very important to note here, two specific provisions of the Horizontal Property Act related to this particular point: room for individual owners.

Provision 16.1 :

 The meeting of the general assembly shall be held at least once a year to approve the budget and the accounts, and in any other time the president sees fit or upon request of 25 percent of the unit owners or a number representing, at least, 25 percent of the assessment quotas.

Provision 17.2 second paragraph: "Any unit owner may request the meeting to examine and resolve on any matter whatsoever concerning the community. For this purpose, a letter should be sent to the president setting out clearly the items requested to be dealt with. The president shall include them in the agenda of the following meeting to be held".  

I pretty much agree with these views, although referring to apparently power crazed presidents as "Franco" style may be a tad harsh (maybe not in some cases?); when you have owners regularly complaining and creating additional problems and workload for an unpaid, often unwilling president, it's easy to understand why they sometimes develop a bit of an attitude. As far as I'm concerned, if nobody else is willing to take any responsibility or even lend a hand in a practical way on occassion, then they pretty much forfeit their right to object to how things are done: "Only an AGM or EGM can set out an executive decision and then mainly from the President as most owners are not interested or able in challenging a status quo", and "A major problem is that AGMs & EGMs are very poorly attended and the President also hold proxy votes". Exactly.

"the Presidente is virtually able to do whatever he likes within the law, especially if the Administrator........acts as they are instructed rather than using some semblance of common sense".

In my experience (I am currently involved with two administrators on two separate communities) the main problem is that the administrators have NO common sense - if only they would do what they are told! The level of incompetence and general ignorance is astonishing. One of the two has consistently miscalculated the quotas claimed from owners, resulting in additional bank transfers one way or another, every time incurring bank charges for the community - even though it was the administrator's error. The other one quite simply can't do simple arithmetic. We have a community with a total assessment quota of 99.42%, even once this has been adjusted he cannot work out simple calculations, doesn't seem to understand that there being NO approved budget is actually contrary to the Horizontal Law and thinks it's OK to claim arbitrary amounts from owners. In effect, this community has NO president, since in the absense of volunteers one was picked out of the hat, one who bought the property as an investment, has it rented out and lives in another part of the country and basically is not interested. Sheer madness. At least when you have a power mad president, he does have a veted interest in the wellbeing of the community; when you leave everything in the hands of an incompetent (and possibly corrupt) administrator, you're really asking for trouble. 

Maria/Roberto

Can I then revert to my original question which was to ask if there was any way a President could be overuled in the short term rather than having to organise an EGM.

To explain, he chose to temporarily not give consent for the Administrator to transfer fees collected by the Administrator on behalf of the Entidad, this left the Entidad short of funds to meet their expenses.

His reasons will be explained at a forthcoming EGM but as far as I see, he had a major problem of communication with the President and members of the Entidad board and he tried to use this action as a bargaining tool.

The Entidad President contacted all owners through our administrator suggesting they would have to pay the fees again to a different account or else be branded as debtors, slighly worrying for some

He has now relented but I have been asked as a VP on a number of occassions if there was a process for overuling his powers.

many thanks for your input

PS I am not willing or able at this stage to challenge our Presidentes position and it would appear as discussed no one else will step forward.

Difficult to say really, Hugh, but on the face of it I would say that there's not much can be done without organising an EGM - for which you'd need to get 25% of the owners......which is probably impossible. At least his actions prompted a response from other owners to get involved.

I'm not saying he's right to take this stance, but to illustrate my point: our Dimwit Administrator has just overcharged (by way of direct bank debits) all the owners for this quarter, due, he says (it's such an old one) to a computer error - rule 12.3 of the Law of Abominable Administration. I have just had a meeting with the president (I am his vice this year - between us we have taken all the cr4p for the last 6 years minus one, during which the owner we forced to take the role f*cked up everything resulting in Dimwit Administrator proving that, given the opportunity, he's not so dimwitted that he can't help himself to substantial amounts of our community funds). After some initial hesitation (call it British sense of right and wrong if you like) I agreed with him that owners should be reimbursed by way of a cheque, available to collect from the administrator's office whenever they choose. Although the error was no fault of their's, this will of course be inconvenient for all the owners who are "conveniently" too busy / lazy / irresponsible / absent, to particiapte in any meaningful way or even bother attending annual meetings. And for that precise reason I agreed that it should be done this way. So the shirkers will be inconvenienced. I've been inconvenienced for the best part of six years, so ask me if I give a sh1t.

regards,

Roberto Franco.

Nice one Roberto, I agree it is a sense of injustice that drives some of us forward and you seem to have found a very convenient way to make the owners put themselves out a little.

Chapeau.

As a final point on my original query, the Administrator advised both VPs that we should give the President 5 days to change his stance then legally we could overule him.

An opinion given by her lawyer brother, needless to say I was neither impressed with the advice or followed it.  But I like to think our persuasion made him see sense eventually.

One  has to ask, why if this were true did the Entidad President go to the trouble of sending out letters to 200+ owners suggesting they would be regarded as Entidad debtors if a simpler solution could be found

Not good when there is a clash of personalities on an Entidad board elected to work on behalf of all owners

TV Systems.
As the president of our community I can sympathise with having to lay the law down occasionally. Just because a new owner appears on the scene doesn't mean they can do what they wish or start dictating what is or isn't going to happen. Speaking for our community, If we were to let people do what they wanted we would have satelite dishes appearing like some kind of giant fungus all over the building, horrendous double glazing of terraces and balconies and all manner of those other "DIY improvements" that have ruined the appearance of many a development on the Costas.

We have two TV systems, one for our Spanish owners and another for our northern european owners which we set up some years ago run from a corner of the development given over to this purpose and for the most part it works well. We also now have a communal internet system which as an IT professional I installed myself and now all of our owners has internet access for around €3 per month per apartment.

We made rules a long time ago that no changes of any description that changed the outward appearance of our building would be allowed without the unanimous agreement of all the owners. You even need permission to install an awning here. It has to be an approved type and colour. This has kept up the appearance and maintained standards on our development and protected our investment in the process. 
One thing worse than rampant over development is rampant unchecked installation of satelite dishes, glazing of terraces, different colour awnings etc which will soon ruin the appearance of your development and devalue the price of your property.

Swimming Pool.
In our nieghbourhood in the last 3 or 4 years a couple of children have drowned in local pools when not accompanied. For this reason we introduced a community rule that chidren under 12 years of age must be accompanied by an adult over the age of 18. If they can't comply with this our manager or I will ask them to leave the pool. Simple as that!

The problem here is that, should (God forbid) a child drown in our pool while unaccompanied, as the President it is me and not the parent who will be answering difficult questions at the Guardia Civil Offfice about why this was allowed to happen. I could also be charged for all manner of infractions of the law if they are allowed to be broken. I have no intention of finding myself in that situation and strictly enforce it. I would advise any President reading this to enforce similar rules. The problem is that irresponcible parents just won't listen and when they get into holiday mode, have a few beers all reasonable requests seem to go by the by. Yet, should an accident occur I bet they will always look for some one else to blame rather than themslves.

The responcibility of the President is fraught with danger I refer you to the Horizontal Property Law which for those of you who are not aware of it should read. It spells out the rules of the community and the power the President has in enforcing those rules if necessary and with majority backing of the community. The President is elected by the community to enforce and carry out the will of the community. You can see a draft of that document at our community web site at: www . alteanatura . net or go and ask your lawyer for a copy.

R.E.

Welcome to the forum, Robert; great post - too bad you weren't around earlier this summer when there was a ridiculous thread going on about swimming pool rules, on which a few delusional members were actually condoning dumping their unruly brats in the community pool so that they could kick back and let others look out for them / suffer them. No names, you know who you are

I am always advising people to acquaint themselves with the Horizontal Law in order to better understand how communities (are supposed to) function in Spain. There is a downloadable pdf translation available right here on EOS.

Presidential Responcibility.

The President has great powers but also great responcibilities. I note that many of you have trouble getting info from your President and Administrators.

Solution? Vote him off and replace the administrators or tell them to buck their ideas up or else.

It took some time to organize but now all our community owners have regular monthly news letters posted on our web site. The monthly accounts are posted on the web site about half way through the following month. Everyone knows what is being spent, what the community bank balance is, who has or hasn't paid their service charge etc. If you are an owner all the other owners contact details are available on the web site. We have no secrets, everyone has access to whatever info they want and it works very well.

After becoming President I found that for years we had been paying way over the odds for everything from pool repairs and garden maintenance etc etc. I now question everything and demand that I am informed about anything that is costing more than €50.00 and the result is that for the last 3 years our service charge has remained the same.

Question everything the administrators say and quotations that contractors give you. In Spain, when community work is involved contractors will often quote what they think they can get away with. 

Recent example. We have a large communal water meter on which the gauge had stopped working. We asked 2 local plumbers for quotes to repair, we were informed the meter was beyond repair ( which it wasn't ) and in turn received 2 quotes to replace for more that a thousand euros a piece. We decided to look at the meter ourselves. Took it out and found it to be full of rubble because the water company had dug up the pipe along the road some weeks earlier. We cleaned out the meter. Pressure washed it. Re-fitted it. Calibrated it ourselves. Cost? €0.00

R.E.