A member of our board is not a team player – to say the least. He regularly bad mouths decisions with which he disagrees, encourages owners to complain about the decisions and even to remove the trustees who supported them. One board member thinks we should vote to remove him. Is that an option?

“This is a disgusting mess?” How many parents have said that about a teenager’s room? The number who have not said it would no doubt be considerably smaller – probably close to zero. But in this case, the comment was coming from a condominium manager, who was describing the living room of an owner she thought was a “hoarder.” A parent can tell a teen, “Clean your room or else.” Dealing with an owner (“my home, my castle”) is obviously more complicated; dealing with a hoarder is several orders of magnitude more complicated still.

Our condo board does not always meet the quorum required to make decisions at board meetings.

Looking ahead to opening our pool for the summer -- and hoping to avoid the perennial complaints about children who misbehave (and often pee) in it -- our board is considering rules that would establish adult-only swim times, create a ‘lap’ lane’ open only to adults  and bar children who are not yet potty-trained.  Will these rules accomplish our goal?

Say what? That is how many condominium trustees and owners have reacted to the notice informing them of their obligation as building owners to report the energy usage in their buildings by June 30. For many recipients, there were two surprises in this notice: That this reporting requirement exists and that trustees or apparently random condominium owners are considered to be “owners” of their buildings. We will explain both.

First, the reporting requirement stems from a state law (“An Act Driving Clean Energy and Offshore Wind, Large Building Energy Reporting”) enacted in 2022, requiring all buildings larger than 20,000 sq ft. to report their consumption of energy of all kinds. That law takes effect this year.

The Department of Energy Resources (DOER) has issued regulations clarifying the reporting requirements. Those regulations define building owners as “the person, persons, entity, or entities listed in the Covered Buildings List” that DOER has compiled from public records. For condominiums, the department has often identified trustees or individual unit owners as the “owners” who are responsible for ensuring that the required information is reported and subject to penalties if it is not. Don’t panic. DOER has established procedures for correcting its list.

When Boston and Cambridge enacted “right-to-charge” ordinances in 2019 and 2022, respectively, codifying the rights of electric vehicle owners to install charging stations in multi-family buildings, industry executives predicted that Massachusetts lawmakers would eventually follow suit. They were right.

In our overly litigious society, it is said that anyone can sue anyone for anything. The volunteers serving on condominium association boards sometimes feel as if they can be sued by almost everyone for almost everything – an overstatement, perhaps, but an understandable one. It is certainly true that condo owners are not always happy with the decisions boards make and it is also true that some owners express their dissatisfaction with board members by suing them.

A tenant renting a unit in our community plays loud music late at night, about which neighbors complain constantly. We’ve informed the tenant that he is creating a nuisance, to no avail. The unit’s owner says he will deal with the issue but hasn’t done so and is no longer responding to our e-mails and calls. What can be done?

The United States Treasury Department announced Sunday that new rules will be issued shortly that will require only foreign companies to file under the CTA. Further, no enforcement action and/or fines will be taken against any U.S. Citizen or any domestic reporting companies. New rules will be announced in the coming days or weeks.

FinCEN announced tonight that it will not issue any fines, penalties or take any other enforcement actions against any entity for not completing a CTA filing by March 21, 2025. FinCEN will issue new filing rules and will announce a new filing deadline further extending the current deadline beyond March 21, 2025, in the coming days or weeks.