Liberty and the Light Bill : Condo Wars: Anything but Retiring

Where the hell are the bills and receipts? Where, where? They keep making special assessments--$5 here and $10 there. It adds up, don’t let anybody kid you. And they never let you see the books. What--you’re supposed to trust them? They sneak around like ants at a picnic.

My wife keeps saying, relax, you came here to retire and all you do is go to meetings. But who can help it? Is it so crazy to want to know where the money goes? Somebody has to stand up to these people. Liars! Smoothies! Can I say it? Finaglers!

Jack Newman is talking. Or it could be Arthur Zank. Or Sol Shaffer. Any one of the dissidents. Yes, there are dissidents. This is a condominium: Century Village in Pembroke Pines. The brochure says it is a place “where living has no limits.” Of course there are dissidents.

Condo Politics

Forget Democrats and Republicans. The most ferocious politics in America go on between the unit owners of condominiums. How could it be different? In a condo, you own the apartment, but the rest is held “in common,” from the chlorine in the pool to the weeds under the shrubs.

How can a man’s home be his castle when he shares the moat and drawbridge with partners? The common good is not every man’s ideal, after all. You should see some people. They open their front doors and fan in the air conditioning from the hallways. Stealing the cool!

Of course, it would be wrong to knock it altogether. Some 16 million Americans live in condos, and many think it is wonderful. Let them come to South Florida. What goes on!

Wild Board Meetings

Board meetings get so wild, people have dropped dead. And the elections. They fight for proxies like piranhas. Experts blame retirees for this tumult--no matter where they’re from or what they once did.

“Some of them sit around and read the Condo Act all day,” says Alex Knight, chief of the state’s Bureau of Condominiums. “They have time to fight. Condo politics is like a hobby.”

But what the hell do bureaucrats know? Hobby? This is a hobby? This is not mountains from molehills. A condo association’s management budget can involve hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Down here, many of the condo developments are like small cities. There are 8,000 people in 75 buildings at Century Village in Pembroke Pines, west of Ft. Lauderdale.

They have their own lake and 18-hole golf course and billiard room with 25 tables. And dances and live entertainment and mah-jongg club.

And two political factions that get along like the Monitor and the Merrimac. Welcome to the aggravation.

Dissident Owners

“Where the hell are the bills and receipts?” Jack Newman, 70, wants to know. It is a rhetorical question. The paper work of the recreation building might as well be sacred papyrus from the Fertile Crescent, so well is it hidden from inspection.

Newman is sitting among the dissidents in Arthur Zank’s condo. Arthur, 61, the unofficial leader, rises to secure more potato chips. He says, “99% of the people don’t care about any of this, but we care.”

Sol Shaffer, 63, at Arthur’s side, gives the overview. “Worst deal in the history of Florida,” he says. He is not sure that is dramatic enough: “This may sound like bull, but we believe in freedom and justice for everyone.”

This is why the dissidents call their newspaper the We the People News. It comes out once a month, and you can find people reading it in the clubhouse--retirement living’s very own notes from the underground.

Editorials are so venomous they ought to print antidotes beside them instead of the usual recipes for stuffed cabbage and ads for podiatrists.

“Forty years ago we fought a war to make sure this type of thing could not happen . . . “ reads one of them as it picks up steam. “Now is the time to stand up and be counted among the Good Guys.”

Seek New Management

So what do the We the People people want? For one thing, they want to bring in a new management company instead of the one that was left behind by the developer. Management? You call this management?

“We know for a fact the lawns are supposed to be mowed 31 times, and we know for a fact they only mowed them 24 times,” says Sol Shaffer, retired from his greeting card and jewelry businesses.

“They tell us sometimes it rained--we couldn’t mow--and that’s an act of God. So why are we paying for acts of God?”

And they want their own auditors to review the books of the recreation building.

Conniving Management?

Most of all, they want to end the connivance between young Steve Kittredge, the developer’s project director, and Kitty Thibault, president of mighty COOPPA, the Condominium Owners of Pembroke Pines Assn.

One hand washes the other, and that’s a dirty business, complains Arthur Zank: “If your window gets broken by a golf ball, try getting it fixed unless you’re a friend of COOPPA’s. Lots of luck to you without help from Kitty.”

Oh, is this a Kitty! Kitty Thibault, a.k.a. Goldilocks, is a fraction of a generation younger than most here. The dissidents describe her as having the demeanor of a cheerleader and the instincts of a ward healer.

“Wait till you meet her,” says Sol Shaffer. “Slick, like you wouldn’t believe. She flutters her eyes at you, you’ll think so, too.”

“A blond bombshell,” says Sol’s wife, Marlene.

“She has more energy than any two or three people.”

“A blond bombshell.”

“Nasty, oh boy.”

“A blond bombshell.”

‘Same Things, Over and Over’

But first Steve Kittredge.

The project director covers his face with his hand and then peeks out through fingers. “I cannot begin to tell you what it is like to manage one of these places,” he says earnestly. “Same things, over and over and over.”

History repeats on him like a bad meal. Kittredge has worked at older Century Villages in other cities nearby and watched the politics take shape, predictable as an allergy attack, pesky as a canker sore.

The trouble is, most people have had no experience with condo living. They don’t realize that eventually developers move on and unit owners must govern themselves.

By law, the residents devise their own rules. They elect officers who then have to worry about the roofs and the catwalks, the water and the sewers.

Of course, most retirees want to be retired from such things. Who needs it? People treat you like a handyman. They call at 4 a.m. to demand you hear the drumbeat of their dripping faucet.

Jump Into Action

But for some, the call to condo service is rousing as an anthem. They crave the action. What, are you going to spend all day at poolside, simmering in your own juices like a brisket of beef?

True, condos are a complicated business. You’re dealing with maintenance for the roads and buildings and such. That’s why in 1985, the various Century Village associations combined their know-how under an umbrella group, COOPPA.

In the glory days, COOPPA was combative as guerrillas in the hills. People were being overcharged by the developer for use of the clubhouse. COOPPA did its homework and nailed down the facts as airtight as canned goods.

But no sooner had Steve Kittredge made peace with the rebels than a rival group sprang up, the We the People people. They have wrested away the support of at least four of the 16 governing condo associations.

Please go get Kittredge some aspirin. “The yelling and the threatening,” he says. “And this guy, Jack Newman, he never comes in to talk. First thing, he files lawsuits. He is, what do you call it, a litigious person.”

Fact is, Jack Newman is a retired clerk of the New York Supreme Court. But Kittredge does not know this. What he knows is: “The dissidents don’t care about issues, really, just power. Some of them want to be as big as Kitty Thibault. Have you met Kitty?”

Not yet, but it’s hard not to sense her presence. Most of the dissidents were once Kitty’s allies in COOPPA until, for one reason or another, they had fallings out, each a story elaborate as the plot of a coup.

Dissidents Join Forces

Then one day late last year, Arthur Zank and Sol Shaffer, never bedfellows before, met beside the pool and decided to rally the Outs against the Ins.

“We had 12 or 15 people over for bagels and lox at my apartment,” recalls Zank, retired from the shirt manufacturing business in New York. “Beautiful bagels and lox, really good nova, delicious.”

From that savory beginning came We the People, and, ever since, Century Village has been in a rift wide as the 7-10 split.

Association Fights Back

COOPPA has its own newspaper for fighting back, four times the size of We the People. In the May issue, readers found a letter to the editor from Harriet Linar, who lives in Arthur Zank’s building. She alleged:

“I caught Arthur Zank on Feb. 14th at 7:30 p.m. shutting the light in the laundry room. He also lifted the cover of the washing machine while my laundry was in it, which, of course, stopped the machine from operating any further.

“I asked him ‘Why?’ He said, shaking his fingers in my face--’It costs money to keep the light on.’ ”

Can such a thing be true? As it turns out, yes. Arthur himself remembers: “She asked me, ‘How much can it cost?’ I said, ‘It’s not a matter of how much. It’s that you’re spending other people’s money!’ ”

OK, right is right. But that’s not the point. The revealing thing about the incident is that it happened two years ago, and the COOPPA News has reprinted the letter, by Harriet Linar’s count, three times. Stop printing it! she pleads with them. Arthur and I get along fine now.

Zank concurs. “This is typical of Kitty Thibault’s tricks,” he says. “Wait till you meet her. She talks down to you like a school teacher.”

‘Evil, Sneaky’ Person

But it’s much more than the speechifying, he says: “Over the years, she has become evil, sneaky, slimy, a person of half-truths and half lies,” to say nothing of the fact that she has sued him for slander.

So finally, as promised, here comes retired businesswoman Kitty Thibault, emerging from Steve Kittredge’s office. She is a small, radiant woman, lovely in a summer dress. “Sour grapes and jealousy started all the trouble,” she says sadly.

There is the music of civic-mindedness in her voice. “In any political system, there is dissension, people nipping at your heels. But if you continue to help your fellow man, you’ll always have more victories than defeats.”

This is just the oil, of course. Soon the conversation gets down to particulars, and Kitty serves up the vinegar as well. “There are people around here who’ve never accomplished anything in life and this is their last guttural gasp to make something of themselves,” she says.

“Well, they’re not going to take over COOPPA. My shoes are big, and it’ll take bigger feet than they’ve got to fill them. And I don’t mind saying so!”

She singles out Arthur Zank for special criticism, reciting his name as she might a serial killer’s: “A spiteful man.” Then, unburdened, she settles back into her best cheerleader’s smile.

Is Rancor Worth It?

Ooh, my. This is some rhubarb. But is it really worth it? Is anything worth this rancor? And maybe the answer to that belongs to Sol Shaffer, who has a secret to share about condo politics.

C’mere. “There is something an outsider doesn’t really understand,” he says, leaning close. “This is all fun. If it wasn’t, it would drive you meshugge and you’d talk yourself into a heart attack.”

A few days later, it must be reported, Sol had a heart attack. “It was the stress,” says his wife, Marlene. “If it wasn’t one thing, it was another. Who needs this? I’m sorry we came here. It’s a mess.”

Fortunately, Sol will be home in a few days. Thank you, yes, he is doing fine. And soon, Marlene says, he will get back into the rough-and-tumble of Century Village politics. She says, “We’ll get them, if it’s the last thing we do.”