After several months of intensive work, the Ad-hoc Committee to Review the Rules and Regulations recommended changes to PTCA’s rules and regulations.  Following the required 30 day notice and a Special Meeting of Unit Owners, those recommendations were adopted by the Board of Directors at its meeting on January 26, 2015. I will review key changes below.

First, under the Association’s election rules, the Election Committee was eliminated and a secret balloting process established. These are pretty significant changes.

The Association’s auditing firm, hired to tabulate the results, will  issue and handle the ballots. Ballots themselves will no longer identify the owner names and unit number, and instead show only the percentage of ownership and the actual votes made. So any inspection of those ballots afterward will not show who voted for whom.

Unit owners in attendance at the Annual Meeting will register, receive  their corresponding ballots, and vote. Owners who wish to vote by proxy must have sent in ahead of time the completed proxy forms. These proxies will be exercised that evening by the auditing firm or by the designated owners or representatives, assuming those persons have themselves been duly registered and authorized.

There no longer being an Election Committee, the auditor will oversee ballot counting, handle irregularities, and certify the results. Any substantive irregularities will be brought to the attention of the Board.

The Board also approved a rules recommendation regarding electronic communications, facilitated by a recent change in Illinois law. Owners who agree in writing may now begin receiving some PTCA communications by email.

Included would be notifications of formal and informational meetings, as well as documents that support the business of the Association. More details and authorizing forms will be sent to owners and residents with our next request for contact information.

Another rule was amended to require the Association to pay for bed bug treatments – up to one per year per unit – under certain circumstances:

• The resident must have either proactively reported the condition or it must have been discovered during the regularly scheduled weekly bed bug inspections, so long as it is not determined to be a severe infestation by the Association’s pest control professionals.
• The resident must have participated in at least one of the prior year’s regular inspections and, in the case of someone who has just recently arrived, the move-in inspection shall have been completed with no alert.
• Management should have on record that all occupants attended a “new resident” meeting.
• Treatment will be by the Association’s pest control operator, during which time the resident needs to adequately prepare as prescribed by the treatment instructions. Mattress and box-spring encasements will need to be purchased.

Perhaps the most sweeping rules changes are those regarding unit remodeling. A new Construction and Remodeling Policies and Procedures packet was adopted. It divides unit construction into 3 primary categories: minor projects not requiring prior approval; more complex projects requiring approval; and projects which, because they combine units or involve the common areas or structural changes, may need the blessing of an architect.

Most general policies and procedures remain as they were, but  key changes include a deposit being required, a preconstruction meeting with the office, a 90 day limit on the duration of work after it’s approved, and a notice of construction to be signed by the owner and provided to the neighbors.

The packet was adopted in its whole as a part of the formal Rules and Regulations of Park Tower.

Anyone having questions about these or other changes to the rules is welcome to make an appointment with the office or send us an e-mail at parktowercondo@dkcondo.com. We are happy to do our best to explain a rule or policy, or even sit down and review them.

by Tim Patricio

Another significant rules change adopted at the January 26 meeting is explained elsewhere in this issue: Revised Rule on Rentals, written by Sheldon Atovsky