Monday, February 11, 2002
Can you apply RICO laws to associations?
On the way back to the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere, Spring and I stop off at the local Wal★Mart Superstore to pick up a shower curtain for the master bath (the master bath in Condo Conner is a shower stall). We enter the store and run into Mark, Gerald and a couple Gerald knew.
Turns out Gerald's friend is moving out of her condo because of the association there and if anything, makes our condo association look like it has a laissez-faire attitude.
I think she lives in one of those high-rise condo buildings since otherwise some of this doesn't make sense (not that it makes sense to begin with). One of the rules: you can't bring anything into the building past 4:30 pm. Tools, groceries, anything you don't normally carry on you is verboten. She got into trouble trying to bring home a toolbox someone borrowed. It was past 4:30 (something like 4:35) and nope. Couldn't bring the toolbox inside the building. Leave it outside, in the car, whatever. It's not going in the building.
She took it in anyway and got fined $250.00 for the priviledge of keeping her toolbox. $150 fine for bringing in items past 4:30 pm. Another $100 for making a public spectacle.
She she's moving.
To move, she has to pay $250.00 plus $25/hour to move out. That's not the price of the movers; that's the price she has to pay to the association to move. You know, moving is so unsightly, what with all the furniture and boxes and stuff. But for her money, she gets someone to monitor the move and make sure nothing goes amiss (and believe me, if something does, I'm sure they'll bill her plenty for it).
To me, that sounds like racketeering and should be prosecuted under the RICO laws. But these type of things take money, and the association has more money than any one person under the association, since any costs will be past on to the association members. Sigh.
But I find it incredible that anyone would live under such idiocy. Paying money to move out? Oh, and it's the same cost to move in too (although when she moved in, it only cost $100.00 flat rate). Sad to say, but it is in her best interest not to mention that fee until after she sells the unit. I don't know of anyone that would voluntarily pay such a fee.
Extortion, I tell you! Extortion!
For the Nth time, THERE IS NO DOG!
I call the head Condo Commando about the non-existant dog that they think we have and like last time I called him, he again, was out of the office.
If I do get served, you can bet I'm going to raise holy Hell. This is harassement, pure and simple.
Themable websites
I found this to be quite cool—a website where you can select between themes. It's the same page being sent down, except the style sheets are different depending upon what you select. In theory, I can write my own style sheet for this site and have it displayed like I want it, but support would have to be in the browser to let the user override the stylesheets a site uses.
