‘We get what we pay for’?

“From what I’ve observed, we get the bare minimum while we continue to pay more”!

Dear Owners,

This building, my home and greatest investment, is in critical need of CPR: Courtesy, Professionalism and Respect. Over the past two years, my reports to management of disrepair continue to either be addressed with long, undue delay or were ignored entirely. Among these reports include:

Insufficient lighting in the hallways for months on end because staff fail to change light bulbs and conduct regular walkthroughs (Exhibit B, below)
Construction trash being allowed to pile up in the hallways and not being removed properly to avoid damage to the walls and doors of other owners (Exhibit C, below)
Failure to enforce important move-in/move-out protocols to prevent damage to our hallways and further failure in making the required repairs to said damage (Exhibit D, Below)
I have observed mice and rats, both dead and alive, in our lobby and on our luggage carts. I am looking for those pictures and videos.

Please see the images on the next page, listed Exhibit A, below: management allowed a leak in our canopy to go unaddressed for months during the months of November 2023, December 2023, January 2024 and into February 2024. Throughout our holiday period, the busiest period of the year and when most residents invite their friends & family home to enjoy festivities with, guests were greeted with a drip bucket by the entrance, at times in the process of collecting water from rainfall from a few hours past or still-melting snow from days before. Above all else, the damage caused by that leak has still not been repaired; today is October 1st, 2024.

Most damaging is when this unprofessional attitude carries over into our capital projects. For those unaware, the building concluded a +$5 million facade repair project in 2021 and the board has been teasing another facade repair project coming in 2025, which will be much larger than it should be because of work that was missed in the previous facade repair project.

What they fail to remind owners is that this failure in oversight occurred because, instead of paying attention to our vendor’s work and holding them accountable, President Betty Chiao had placed the building in a compromising position with both Stone Engineering, then managing agent, Allied Partners, and contractor York Restorations while trying to hide an illegitimate payment authorization to the then treasurer, Jordan Eisenberg, for near $10,000 in damages to his floors.

While Ms. Chiao may try to argue otherwise, her abuse of authority in an attempt to keep her illegitimate approval hidden is incriminating in itself:

She instructed then Resident Manager, Tracey Collins, to make payments to Jordan Eisenberg in two installments under $5,000 since all expenditures above $5000 require board approval and would be questioned by building auditors.
She and other board members then, including incumbent Bonnie Gold, current board member Duscan Nogulovic, sponsor Yvonne Sun, and then board member Dianne DeSando attempted to force an email vote so that these board members could approve his floors from the shadows as board votes only record (by choice) names of dissenting or abstaining votes, not approving votes.
She THEN tried to force, in a secret meeting involving the building’s engineer’s, Stone Engineering, to reverse their original determination, away from Mr. Eisenberg’s gaskets, so that blame could be shifted onto the building and, thus, making her approval of his damages legitimate
She THEN instructed York Restorations to offer the building a $10,000 credit in an effort to give the appearance that the building didn’t have to pay for Mr. Eisenberg’s floors.
Finally, she instructed then managing agent, Allied Partners, to declare, in writing and against the building’s engineer’s report, that the damage was caused because “too much water was used for the test” in an effort to condone the payment made by the building to the then treasurer Mr. Eisenberg.

The entire fiasco took place over the span of 8 months! And we are now facing additional work that is expected to cost the building $2 million, again, because of work that should’ve been addressed in 2021/2022 before the building released any of these vendors. Despite being aware of all these facts, the current board majority decided to place Ms. Chiao back as board president in 2023. And now, as of September 2024, the building was recently named in a lawsuit, directly because of her alleged harassment of a health club receptionist.

Over the course of the next three weeks, I intend to share my concerns with owners regarding the windows, the current elevator project, and quality of life issues that has been sucking the soul from our building.

UPDATE: The financial report was released Monday Morning: on page 26, it mentions that we have to redo the facade project. The work is estimated to take 3 years and cost $3,500,000 to $4,000,000