June 2, 2010--Much Ado About Little

I used to work at a major university where the politics was so fierce because, as a wit said, so little was at stake.

That was before Rona and I bought a coop apartment in Manhattan and I got myself elected to the board. Then, about even less, I saw politics and its accompanying nastiness, as Tennyson wrote, red in tooth and claw.

For those not familiar with the vagaries of New York City real estate realities, coops are apartment houses where owners do not own their actual apartments. We own shares in the larger coop corporation which in turn grants us a proprietary lease that allows us to occupy the apartment for which we bought the shares. Some of this complexity makes credit-swap defaults sound like Finance 101.

This also means that the coop corporation is run by a board, members who are elected by shareholders. And these boards, though no one gets paid, have a lot of power, as such things go. They can authorize remodeling projects, contract for new elevators, determine when and if to repave sidewalks.

Real things to be sure, but one would think not hills to die on.

But dying on such hills is so characteristic of boards of these kind that occasionally the battles get so ugly that they wind up reported upon in the New York Times. The one linked below is just one pitiful example of how ugly things can get about matters such as flower plantings in the building's tree pits.

If this isn't depressing enough, take a look at some of the e-mails that have flying back and forth at 301 East 62nd Street, in a part of Manhattan that used to be called the Silk Stocking District:

“You needed to get booted out 20 years ago,” an e-mail message said. “Unfortunately,” it continued, “others let you sit on your little throne, while you FAILED in your fiduciary responsibilities for the building.”

GOOD BYE LITTLE NAPOLEAN!!!!! Go while you can and avoid the ridicule of next year’s meeting.” And then: “PS Don’t order anyone around anymore my LITTLE friend. You are ONE owner like everyone else. When I see you I will remind you of that personally.”

And note that board member Eliot Hess, who is being viciously attacked in a variety of ways as LITTLE is little, standing literally only 5 feet 4 inches tall.

I haven't been on our board for years now but during the past two weeks all sorts of nasty charges against the current board have been slipped under our door only to be responded to by others from current board members eager to be reelected. Much of it is about money. The current board is being excoriated for overspending. Not a good thing in the current economy. But all the numbers cited to back up this charge are false. Made up. Our board has indeed spent money on things such as the replacement of an ancient and fuel inefficient heating system that over just a few years will more than pay for itself and they have been so careful with the budget that in spite of expenditures of this kind they have pretty much rebuilt the building's reserve fund so that it is almost at the level it reached before they undertook this kind of too-long deferred maintenance.

The current insurgents dominated the board for more than a dozen years until the current board, as insurgents, tossed them out of office. During that original board's years in office they spent more time contemplating and arguing about the color and buttons for new doormen's uniforms than the ancient heating system and the leaky roof. I suppose they miss the power and thus are now playing the insurgent role. Back to the future they seem to be saying.

But look at me. I'm doing the very same thing I have been mocking--fighting heatedly about almost nothing! Certainly nothing of real importance. Not even the money issues since almost none of them are under any board's control.

Ninety percent of all NYC coop budgets are set by the inevitability of real estate taxes (up about 50 percent in just the past two to three years), skyrocketing post 9/11 insurance costs, staffing expenses (all determined by citywide union contracts), and risen fuel costs. About these all the board can do is just pay the bills.

Sounds to me very much like the U.S government. In our building we are a sad microcosm of that larger political/governmental reality.

I sure am glad that Rona and I are headed to Maine later today so we won't be tempted to attend tonight's annual shareholders meeting. I'd much rather be looking out at the moon over Johns Bay.