Condo Media - August 2018 - 35

these differences can also clash. When
they do, "it is hard to play Solomon,"
Deborah Jones, CMCA, PCAM, senior
vice president at The Dartmouth
Group, AMO, AAMC, an Associa Company, says.
One board has found itself tied in
knots over holiday decorations-a
challenging issue at best, made all but
unmanageable by this community's
diverse population. The association's
rules required the board to approve
decorations, "but they had a whole new
set of unfamiliar holidays to consider,"
Jones explains. When she asked a resident from India to explain that country's
holidays, "She told me they vary from
village to village," Jones says, "and it
was impossible to determine which celebrations were cultural and which were
strongly religious."
Confronting the prospect of reviewing decorations unit by unit and holiday
by holiday in this 260-unit community,
the board decided the only reasonable
solution was to ban all decorations. But
that didn't work out very well. "There
was a huge backlash," Jones reports.
"This community can't get a quorum
to vote at the annual meeting, but 80
percent of the owners signed a petition
objecting to that decision."
So the board crafted a general rule
targeting the size and location of decorations and restricting features (such
as flashing lights) that would disturb
others. Instead of specifying install
and removal timeframes for specific
holidays, the rule says decorations are
allowed from October 1 until March 1.
It also limits the time for which a holiday decoration can be displayed, "but
there is really no way to monitor that,"
Jones acknowledges. "It became clear
that people were more concerned with
their own individual expressions than
with the aesthetics of the community,"
she adds. "So the board essentially had
to give up on this issue."

Jones had to grapple recently with a
complaint about the smell emanating
not from the food a neighbor was cooking, but from the neighbor himself.
The complaining neighbor insisted
that her neighbor "stank," and she
wasn't shy about expressing that view:
She posted nasty notes on his door,
visible to others, telling him that his
hygiene left much to be desired. She
wanted the board to order him to shower more frequently; the neighbor she
targeted wanted the board to cite her
for harassing him. The board suggested
that he file a police complaint, but
he thought the violation letter would
strengthen his case, Jones explains.

While the board found there was
some basis for the complaint about
the neighbor's odor, it concluded that
posting nasty notes on his door was
the more serious violation and cited the
complaining neighbor. "The violation
letter calmed things down," Jones
says. The dispute has been resolved
without any further action by the board,
because "fortunately," Jones says, the
complaining neighbor is moving away.
Many of the rules enforcement issues
boards face, like this one, have no easy
resolution-or no resolution the board
can implement easily. The best boards
can do in these cases, Jones says, may
be to "just pray they go away."

ODORS FROM HOME
The most common cultural clashes
involve complaints about odors. The
smell of curry or garlic, which can bring
tears to the eyes of residents homesick
for India or Italy, can make their neighbors cry, too-but for different reasons.
August 2018 CONDOMEDIA

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