While every condominium owner should attend the Annual General Meeting in addition to any interim meetings or so-called “Town-Hall” meetings, be aware that they might be a complete waste of time.

Curious to know in advance?  Ask yourselves: how many people with too much time on their hands live in the building?

I have said this before a million-and-one times: your house or condominium unit is your largest investment.  People should crave every possible piece of information about the value of their investment, the investment itself, or things that would affect it.

For these reasons and many others, every single condominium owner should attend the Annual General Meeting (AGM) at their respective condos once a year.

Once a year!  That’s it; only one night out of three-hundred-sixty-five!

But you know what?  Few people do.

Every condominium has a board of directors made up of condo-owners themselves, and these people don’t simply hold a meaningless title – they work around the clock to ensure the condominium functions as efficiently as possible as they discuss issues as large scale as the reserve fund and the budget, and as small scale as what to do about the sticky elevator-button on the 12th floor.

The budget is the largest issue at every AGM, but you’ll also learn about and discuss issues such as the leak in the roof, the increase in the price of natural gas, the new carpets being installed in all the corridors, new exercise equipment in the gym, etc.

Anything concerning your home is discussed at this meeting.

Shouldn’t you attend?

Last week, I attended the “Town Hall Meeting” which was basically an interim meeting since our AGM isn’t until February of next year.  There are 332 suites in my building, and thus I would assume at least 332+ owners and residents of the building.

At last week’s Town Hall Meeting, there were only 27 people in the room, not counting the board of directors.

I was absolutely astounded at the number of people who just didn’t care what was going on with their homes and their investments!  The meeting was at 7PM on a Thursday night so there was no reason, in my mind, for people to be “unavailable to attend.”

The Board of Directors had an agenda of issues they wanted to discuss:
-re-design of main floor lobby
-new security company providing concierge
-bicycle rack availability in the underground parking
-new key-FOBS for door & parking access

After informing us of the changes in the building that may or may not affect us, the Board of Directors opened up the floor to anybody that had a bone to pick.

And this is where it all goes downhill.

Now I rarely discriminate against anybody, for any reason…..but I found that the people in the room that wasted the most time were old people.  Clearly, these people had nothing to do with their days but find fault with the building and its owners, and clearly they had nothing to do between dinner at 4PM and bedtime at 8PM than go to the Town Hall Meeting and complain.

The first old man put up his hand, and said:
“I received a horrible, miserable notice in my mail the other day about a potentially catastrophic situation that will be a detriment to us all and put a damper on our lives as we know them.”

Ooooookaaaay.  So….what the heck?  What “catastrophic situation” is going to basically destroy our lives?  When is this a-bomb dropping on our building?

The look on the face of the Condo President was classic, as she waited with baited-breath to hear where this man’s story was going.

“Go on,” she bluntly said, as the rest of us waited on pins-and-needles to hear about this catastrophic situation.

“They’re building a condominium across the street!” the old man said.

Everybody in the room sighed, as we knew a pointless rant was about to begin.

“They can’t do that!  They can’t build a condo right in our view!  We’ll have nothing to look at but….but another building!  What about the sun, and the birds, and the nature!  This can’t happen, it can’t.  I won’t let it.”

He went on, aimlessly and without anything significant to say, until the Condo President cut him off and said, “Sir, this condo is going up, no matter what….”

She was about to continue but he cut her off and yelled back, “THEY CAN’T DO THIS!”

As the Condo President explained, this building is going up very soon, and nothing can stop it.  Condos go up all over the city, every day of the week, and while the height of the building and proximity to adjacent buildings or roads might be debated, to fight this would be a losing battle.

So we sat there, for another ten minutes, and listened to this old man drone on about something that nobody could do anything about.  And the Condo President let him have his say.

Everybody gets their say.

The next person to speak was yet another older gentleman, and he told a six-minute story about how he saw a man drive into the underground parking lot behind him, and how he chased this man up three flights of stairs to ensure that he was, in fact, a resident.

I only wish I had that kind of time on my hands…

But this older gentleman then suggested that we change the entrance to the underground parking lot to ensure only one car can get through at a time, and change the security protocol for visitors so that the concierge had to personally escort all visitors wishing to park in the visitor parking down through the underground entrance, and then walk them to the door of the person they were visiting.

This older gentleman informed us that he feared for his safety, since “obviously” there were huge breaches in the security at our building.

Once again, the Condo President let this man have his say.  He took up about ten minutes of our time with ridiculous suggestions (bordering on demands) about how to improve security.

We all have locks on our doors, individual security systems in our units, a security guard downstairs 24/7, locks on all the doors in the building, and elevators that require scan-cards to move.  And this man wants MORE security because he feels vulnerable.

This is unfortunately the kind of crap that gets discussed at these condo meetings, and we have no choice but to allow it to happen.

Everybody gets their say.

And in between hearing about issues that affect us such as the 2009 Budget or the changes in the building, we have to hear from people with far too much time on their hands who might also have a couple of screws loose.

But you know what?  I STILL think everybody should attend the meetings.

You might have to put up with a few boring stories and perhaps some of your time will be wasted, but isn’t that a sacrifice you have to make to get the most essential information about your largest investment?

Our AGM is scheduled for February 2009.  If less than 200 people show up to the meeting, I’ll be very disappointed…