How can I get the community administrator to cooperate with me

Hello there.

I have informed my community committee and administrator that I am intending standing for election as community president at the next agm. I want to send circulars to all non resident homeowners explaining my intentions and aspirations for the benefit of the community.

I have asked the community administrator how much it would cost me (not the community) for him to print the envelopes and put the postage on them, for me to then insert my letter.  He is saying he can not help me with this and just refusing to co-operate.

What recourse do I have when he is being so unhelpful? I would assume data protection comes into him not being able to just give me the home addresses of non resident owners but in this case can I insist he gives me the information?

Any guidance, assistance and information greatly appreciated.

The duties of the administrator are covered in the Horizontals Law which apply be default.

http://www.eyeonspain.com/spain-magazine/horizontal-laws.pdf

Section 20 covers the administrator.

Maybe the president can help you?   Section 16 reads

"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."
 

Thanks for your reply.

I am standing in opposition to the current president and I know he will not give any assistance if I use the way he dealt with someone standing against him last year. The administrator refuses to reply in situations like this; he has been administrator without a review for over 15 years so he supports the current president.

I just need to find how I can give him no option other than to send out my circular to non resident owners (at my cost).  I want to include the non resident owners as the president and vice president hold enough voting rights (owned and proxy) to gain a majority on all votes taken.

Do you have a community forum? if you have you could get your message out that way. If not, start one!!

Are you standing against an English or Spanish President?

Depending on when the AGM is you might be able to do a direct mail shot to all houses as most people tend to visit during the Summer and then speak to as many people as you can over Summer etc

The trick is you need the proxy votes and previous minutes should give you some idea of how many you will need. My experince is AGMs are poorly attended.

Also if existing powers are against you you might need to make sure your proxy votes have been validly delivered otherwise they could deny them. I can't recall what the exact rule is but in most cases it's not an issue.

 Hi,

I advise you to look up the address of the governing body for Administrators and report the Administrator 

This is quite wrong as Administrators can be voted out. Do you have the address of your administrators office, The Minutes should be posted on his website and should also be approved by those who are at any community meeting. You should have information on all dates so that you an attend any meeting. My advice to you is make sure you go to the Community meeting.

Try to get a copy of the Spanish Horizontal Law, this is a good guide on how the community should be run.

GOOD LUCK

"Try to get a copy of the Spanish Horizontal Law, this is a good guide on how the community should be run".

Good advice, and it's available on this site here, in English.

However, how a community should be run, and how it does run, are rarely the same thing, and as for reporting the administrator, I wouldn't waste your time, in my experience the standard of professionalism and competence is so pitifully low that I doubt if the governing body would be at all surprised, let alone interested, in your problems. Our administrator can't even do simple arithmetic - and he has a full compliment of 10 fingers!

The only simple way I can is by leaving letters in the mail boxes. Both President and Administrators has data protection obligations, as the standing for President can be done in annual general meetings or extraordinary meetings if legally convoked, I can see a legal opposition by Administrator/ President to provide contact data to owners.

Anyhow, you can find out easily about each owner´s name and address by checking mailboxes for instance. This way you have full righst to sent to your neighbours whatever you consider appropriate.

I don't think he was asking the President or Administrator to release names & addresses to him but just to send a circilar on his behalf putting forward his ideas and himself for election.

This would be a typical way for a UK type club or society to communicate with its members prior to a meeting taking place particularly if AGMs are poorly attended but it's not going to happen in Spain whatever the law says etc.

Considering how poorly attended AGMs are it's a pity more use is not made of post/email with detail discussions circulated prior to meetings and even vote forms on key issues etc.

The proxy system is a bit of a joke and it's not a difficult task to work out from previous meetings how many proxy forms you would need to hold. Very hard to organise a coup because most don't bother attending or doing anything with their proxy forms etc

The problem arises due to Franco styled administratrors and presidents and then everyone after a year or two just gives up and just lets them get on with it. We have the same president for 3 years running. He managed to get himslef re-elected this year by calling the meeting with minimum days notice during the main holiday week of August when almost everyone was away - so only 5 attended the meeting and that's how they engage people. He claims he had to remain in office as there was no one else standing. Both President and Administrtaor refuse to facilitate any English on the basis of cost so I said no problem I will provide for free at all meetings and translate all notices and minutes. What do they do arrange the meeting when I am away which means no English people can attend.

To be honest the less people attending the AGM the better otheriwse they go on forever and there is no real order to the meeting and multi conversations take place all at once and half times you don't realise the vote has taken place becuase you were in deep discussion with somebody else on the previous agenda items!

Personally I would never want to be President.

 Hi,  If you open up a Blogsite in the name of your complex, you could contact all you neighbours,  that are interested in a change of Administrator or President. It could take time to get through to all your neighbours but worth a try.

My complex has a wonderful blogsite devised by one of our bright neighbours and it works, all those who want to keep up to date do use the Blogsite.   Good Luck

Absolutely spot on Faro.

The only point I question is your last sentence; the very problem is that usually nobody wants to be president, and if everybody takes the same stance, then nothing will ever change. It is my firm belief that every owner has an equal responsibility, and as such no reason (excuse) is good enough to avoid taking your turn as president. And if everybody was forced to take their turn, they may then begin to appreciate and better understand how a community functions (or not). Of course, the flip side is, if you appoint an unwilling and / or incompetent president, it can be more damaging than helpful.

No win situation I guess.

Good idea Doedoe - very easy to set up and use.

If it's online community management you need then here is the solution and I believe it's quite a good product.

http://www.ocm2.net/

I believe it was developed by Ali Parandeh who has a business in Fuengirola known as the PC-Doctor.

Hi Roberto

We had that set-up before whereby the President was elected by putting all names in a hat and picking one out - fortunately I escaped election!

but it did result in some Presidents taking on the role and doing absolutely nothing.

We have now have a system of self election - ie you elect yourself if you want the job! - and it does mean you only get one or two people but in fairness they do seem to be interested even if some have little private agendas. But as anyone knows who has had the job it's a time wasting thankless job no one says thanks and only complain about everything. I heard of people go knocking on  presidents door after midnight complaining of car parking or dogs barking and says "what are you going to do about it?!"

What I have noticed causes some communities problems is the confusion over the role of President and Administrator in terms of who should be doing what etc

In terms of who is responsible for what, president or admin, yes, you are 100% right. I maintain the president should basically be simply the first port of call for genuine community issues, and the messenger who passes the issue on to the paid professional ( ha!) administrator, who should DEAL WITH IT! In reality, the president invariably spends about 25/7 chasing the admin to see what's being done about various outstanding issues. In my case, I certainly spend more time on community biz than our administrator, yet get paid nothing. And I'm not even the president any more - at least not officially (again, reality is somewhat different).

What I am not and never have been / will be, is the community plod; when a neighbour comes to you to complain about the smell of Chinese cooking coming from the apartment below them, it's hard not to resort to physical violence!

OCM looks good - I can't work out if there is a fee for using it or not; if not, I presume they make their money from sponsors and hosting?

We can't get the community administrators, the president or even the 5 committee members to communicate with us at the moment and our communication is a serious health and safety issue so we have decided to quote the Horizontal Property Law and let's see if that works.

We did get it off Eye on Spain and it makes excellent reading so for those of you who have not got a copy - get one.

Jojan

 HI Roberto,

Please would you explain what  OMC is, In my ignorance I have no Idea what this is.

No idea what OMC is either (Oh My Cod?), but if you scroll back two posts before my previous, you'll find a link to OCM that Faro kindly posted. Just click on it and all will be revealed!

Hi Roberto,

It seems that OMC is an online community forum, (omc-online.com) for anyone that would like to start a new blogspot. a good idea for keeping in contact  with your neighbours in a community. 

Doedoe, you are starting to confuse me; I can find no such website omc-online.com. Where on earth did you get that from? I can't even find anything close using Google.

The link Faro posted is this one: http://www.ocm2.net/ It's not a blogspot. If that's what you want I suggest you try blogspot.com !

 Hi Roberto,

Just keeping you on your toes, You are quite right, I am sorry to confuse you. (Blogspot.com) my mistake.

Regards,  Doedoe

This message was last edited by doedoe on 25/09/2010.