When you were a child, you probably tuned into the PBS show Mister Rogers Neighborhood, where a homespun sweater-clad Fred Rogers often sang “Won’t you be my neighbor?” Mr. Rogers might be singing a different tune today if he wer…
After nearly twelve years in office Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is poised to leave office on December 31st of this year. One of his last acts as mayor of immediate and possible long-term impact is adoption of a final budget for the upco…
If you want to find out about the history of a town, region or country, head to a museum or look it up on the Internet. If you want to find out about your family’s history, look at your photo album, whether it’s in a book or online. And…
The foundation of any properly run condo association or co-op building rests on residents paying their monthly maintenance fees on time and in full, with no delays or delinquencies. However, in the wake of the recession, with many shar…
While the vast majority of one-time projects and long-term service contracts involving vendors and service providers and their co-op, condominium or HOA clients go smoothly and either conclude or continue without incident, a small perc…
While natural disasters have impacted the United States for countless decades—from The Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 to 2005’s Hurricane Katrina—these catastrophic events are seemingly occurring with a more severe frequency. For…
Not everybody on a co-op or condo's board is an accountant (or can even balance their own checkbook, for that matter.) No doubt, handling large amounts of money for an entire building is a huge responsibility. Residents, therefore, rely…
Every time someone enters or leaves a building, they travel through at least one of the common areas. Multiply that times the number of units in a building and you can get a rough idea of how much faster these areas may wear out than an…
It’s the same dilemma that single-family households across the U.S. are facing: What bills need to be paid immediately and what bills can wait? And should we stretch ourselves thin, taking more out of our bank accounts to pay for privat…
Unless you have a degree in accounting, your first board meeting could come as a bit of a shock. You probably knew board members oversee the finances of the corporation, but who knew there were so many records to produce and filing dea…