I’ve decided I want to record the fun I’ve had this evening for posterity, for whatever that’s worth, so it’s blog time again.

First, of course, I have to set up the scene.

Florida State Law requires that Condo Associations are required to notify all units owners, in writing, of both the time and place of [1] the Board of Directors meeting during which the budget for the coming fiscal year is going to be adopted, and [2] (twice) for the General Membership meeting during which that budget will be presented to the Membership for approval. These three notices are date specific regarding the time frames prior to those meetings during which these notices are going to be sent or delivered by hand. And the sending or delivery and respective dates sent have to be verified. This has been done through the Post Office for years. (I AM glad that the State doesn’t demand verification of RECEIPT of the messages, only of sending them. That would add even more postage expense and be a nightmare to maintain.)

A number of years ago, the law was amended to include that these notices could also be sent “electronically” – though sending them electronically still requires verification.

I realized about a year ago that maybe we could send these notices through the Ashley Court web site. The “eMail Bulletin” feature of the site always shows the Site Administrator (who else?) the message that has been sent and to which email addresses it was sent. I always copy these anyway into a Word file for my own records.

So the Board agreed to have the Corporate Attorney look into whether or not this would qualify as verifying delivery. His office advised, eventually, that it would. The only thing we had to do was to revise the Terms of Service on the site to state that recorded agreement to those terms and the provision of an email address by the owner gave us the right to send these types of notices via the site. Then we had the support office pop-wrap the terms to show up first when a user accessed the site, also blocking the site from those who would not agree to them. (We’d still have to deliver notices to owners who live on site and refused to agree or didn’t even have a computer, and mail the notices to off-site owners of the same ilk.)

That’s required a little extra administrative work from me, keeping those users who are on the general mailing list and have agreed to the terms and those who haven’t separate. For the overall money the Association will save not having to pay all that postage, it’s been worth it. I even got a few people to volunteer to deliver the notices on site for those who won’t/can’t receive them electronically.

I’m setting up “dummy” email addresses for the hold-outs/cants on Gmail so that the web site has email addresses for them and will record the transmission. Then I’ll go to Gmail to retrieve the transmission and forward each notice to the respective volunteer assigned to that person. The volunteer will receive the dated/owner designated email and attachments, print them and deliver those to the final recipient. Before this all starts, the volunteer and recipient will both sign an agreement that the “dummy” email address is to be used for no other purpose, etc.

When I announced via the web site (and by hand delivery and snail mail to those from whom we’ve never received an email address) that we’d been advised that we can send these notices this way and that doing so would save the Association money because we already pay a user fee (to the management company) for the tool to do it, all the “good guys and gals,” of course, immediately went to the web site and agreed to the terms and logged in. (What would Joyce Fast do with THAT sentence?) - All of the hand delivered and mailed announcements of this new process also requested that people who DO have computers/an email address/access to the Internet to please contact me for their User Name and Password and log into the site, and for all of those who do NOT have a computer, etc. to call me to let me know that.

It’s the log in record that I check every day to know who has agreed to the terms and who hasn’t. If they’ve logged in since the new process was installed on the site, they’ve agreed. Easy enough.

Stragglers who had already been part of the user files have been logging in now and then. In the interim, I’ve sent them personal emails asking them to do that. I’ve sent personal snail mail to the ones who live off site. That’s also brought a few more of them in. I’ve also hand-delivered additional notices to the owner here in the complex who have never provided an email address, trying to find out if they just don’t want to be part of the web site or if they don’t have computers. That’s been like pulling teeth.

The Board meeting during which we will adopt the budget for 2009 is scheduled for the 27th of October. So the notices of the meeting had to go out before next Monday. I wanted to get the logistics of getting these distributed early in the week, because Allen and I will be leaving here late Friday morning to catch the train to Savannah shortly after noon.

This afternoon, I delivered the notice and a copy of the budget to 25 people here in the complex. I have asked so many times for their cooperation, nicely, that I decided to include a rather snarky PERSONAL message, typed in that casual “Comic font,” saying “Look, we have your email address but you haven’t agreed to the terms of service on the web site” and “if you flat refuse to agree to the terms” or “O.K., you’ve never given us an email address” blah, blah, blah, “so, if you DON’T have a computer” “for heaven’s sake, email me/call me to tell me so. I really want to put this part of the business behind me.” I also sent the personal notices to the management office to include with the 15 that still have to be mailed. Fie on all of them.

Boy, have I had a fun evening! I’ve been given some new email addresses, received some requests for reminders of User Names and Passwords, and have actually received three phone calls confirming that people really do not have computers.

I sure got their attention. Which was, of course, the purpose of “that snotty letter” as one caller put it. She was the only one who was negative and hung up on me when I answered the phone. What a chicken. I tried to call her back, but the number listed in the phone book has been disconnected. She’s one of many who probably gave up a land line for her cell phone. NOW I’ll have to deliver another letter to get THAT phone number so the volunteer assigned to her can make arrangements to get together to sign the agreement. You can bet your buttons it won’t be me.

Actually, every one else I’ve talked to/received email from has been pretty cool about it. One of the young guys even said, “Well, you’ve sure asked us often enough.” Another one even apologized. Guilt can do a lot of things for some people. And I KNEW there were slackers out there, doggone it!

So I’m writing this for the blog so I can remind myself from time to time that it’s O.K. to take a chance now and then, especially when it involves just saying what I think has to be said to make something happen. I know that none of the people who might be insulted by my message are going to try to get me unseated from my office – they don’t want to have to work that hard for the complex. They’ll talk about me, but I’ve been talked about here before, and no one has ever started a movement to unseat me. Hell, nothing would ever happen here if they did – and they know it.

Besides, it just felt damn good to do what I did.