Action Property Mismanagement

My first encounter with this (alleged) management company was soon after i moved into the building and visited our trash room on a Monday morning. I found large amount of residential garbage that had over-flowed from the 3 cubic yard dumpster under the building’s trash chute and was now spread all over the floor. This was clearly going to be a magnet for rats and roaches. When I inquired about this situation with the building’s janitor, he told me that this was often the situation on Monday mornings and had always been this way during his employment with the building.

I reported this situation to Action and our property manager at the time - Kevin Rousso - and was told it would be looked into. After months of pressing Rousso for a solution I was informed that an additional pickup on Saturday had been added to our regular Monday/Wednesday/Friday pickup schedule.

After observing the situation for the following month, it was apparent that the Action Property Management solution had not put a dent in the problem. When I reported this to Action I was told by Kevin Rousso there was nothing else they could do about it.

So, as a resident, I called our trash company to research the issue. I was informed that our Mon/Wed/Fri trash pickups were at 6 p.m., and our new Saturday pickup was at 6 a.m., which meant that we were now paying to have our dumpsters emptied on Sat morning when there was virtually nothing in them. The trash company told me that pickup times could not be change and there was no Sunday service available.

The Action Property management solution had no effect on the problem other than to increase our trash hauling cost. I suggested to Action we get a larger dumpster under the trash chute, get a third dumpster to handle the trash that was being dropped off by hand, and cancel the Sat pickup. This solution solved the problem and (I was told by an HOA board member) at a lower cost than the totally ineffective solution that Action came up with.

My next contact with Action was when I noticed that the lock on one of our security doors for entering the lower parking garage was not working when you swiped your access card. After 4 months of reporting this issue there was still no. repair

Subject: Center Street Lofts - Re: WO 91909
Date: Thu, 02 Apr 2015 02:00:09 -0700
To: Kevin Rousso

The lock set that I reported as malfunctioning on through the VIVO portal on both  12/12/14 and 03/09/15 has still not been dealt with....

After calling two vendors that could not deal with the issue, Action called the security company that was our regular contractor for this portion of our security system. I was informed that someone would be out in the next 6 weeks. I insisted that the vendor contact me when on site so I could get a straight answer about the issue.

When I met with the vendor, he told me the lock set needed to be replaced, but also, that he had already been out to our building to diagnose this issue on the same lock 12 months earlier, and had put this information in his report to Action.

He also told me that the manufacturer of our security system had discontinued all replacement parts for the system (meaning circuit boards and controllers), that his company was getting out of the business of repairing these systems, and that he knew of no other companies that could work on this system.

I kept bringing this information to the attention of Action and our never ending rotation of building managers (6 in the two years I was on the board) and yet when our security system failed 5 years later, an upgrade had yet to be installed and the building residents were unable to open any of the doors in one of our stairways from the stairway side. This situation persisted for over 4 months till a new system could be installed. If there had been a fire in the lower portion of this stairway while the card access system was off-line, anyone following the fire exit signs from the upper floors to this stairway would have been trapped with no way to get out.

One day when in our lower garage area, I noticed water flowing out of the boiler room during boiler maintenance work. The workmen on site told me that pumps in the boiler room sump were not working, and when they had to drain the hot water tank the room filled up with water. I asked the guys doing the work to mention this issue in the maintenance report and they said they would.

When I followed up on this issue with Action, our manager, Kevin Rousso told me that the inoperative sump pumps were not mentioned by the boiler repair company and that this was not the type of issue that a resident should be involved in. Several years later, when I was elected to the board and gained access to our boiler room, I found that neither of the two sump pumps were operational (the outer casing on one had split into two pieces), and that the power cords for both pumps had burned through their insulation. Based on the condition of the pumps when I found them, I can only speculate on how long this condition had existed prior to reporting it to (and having it ignored by) Action, and how long it would have persisted if it wasn't for a board member pressuring them to get it fixed.

When Kitt Boodsayaskul became our building manager, his contact information was posted in the locked HOA bulletin board in our lobby. Curiously, the contact information that was posted was for a building that Boodsayaskul managed, just not our building. This contact information was on display for several months before it was noticed and removed.

On Jan 16, 2018, Michelle Anderson and Dean Driscoll are told by a board member that there will be no planned interruptions to water or electrical service without prior notice to residents.

On July 23, 2018, Michell Anderson schedules a vendor to rebuild a back-flow preventer in the boiler room, a maintenance issue that requires a water shutdown to the building, but she does not provide any prior notice to residents.

When confronted with this oversight on a phone call, Anderson claimed the vendor didn't mention the required shutdown to her. Emails obtained from the vendor show that she was told that that the process would require a shutdown.

Michelle Anderson claimed she had 18 year of management experience before she came to our building, yet she didn't know that rebuilding a back-flow preventer required shutting off the water. This is the type of ignorance that Action passes off as "building management".

On Jan 16, 2018, at 8:53 AM, Bruce Ecker wrote:

Dean/Michelle

...there will be no planed electrical shutdowns without prior notification to the residents,

...This policy will also need to be applied to fire testing, parking lot cleaning, and getting the leaking back flow preventer on the commercial water supply line fixed...

Subject: Fwd: Fw: Q18-0386 Action Prop Centre St Lofts Repair Quote
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2018 09:59:00 -0700
From: Bruce Ecker
To: Dean Driscoll <...@actionlife.com>, George Skrbin <...@actionlife.com>

Dean/George,

i found a guy in the building today that was about to shut off the water for 2-3 hours to repair the main back-flow valve

1. there was no prior notice to the residents that there would be a water shutoff today

2. when i spoke to Michelle this morning, she told me that AAA Back-flow did not notify her that there would be a water shutoff when they scheduled the repair... as you can see from the emails below between AAA and Michelle, she was notified.

3. in her communication with AAA this morning she characterized the problem as a "miscommunication"

i pulled the plug on the repair for today since it would have meant a full water shutdown for the building without any prior notice.

Since Action was aware of this repair and the need for a water shutoff last week, I am expecting that Action Property Management will be picking up the bill for today's service call.

Bruce Ecker

From: AAA Backflow
Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2018 1:10 PM
To: Michelle Anderson
Subject: Re: Q18-0386 Action Prop Centre St Lofts Repair Quote

Hello,

I am just waiting on the material to come in. Should get it Thursday Afternoon/Friday morning.
We can set this up now for Monday the 23rd. But we will need to shut off the water for approximately 2-3 hours. Let me know if this will work.

AAA Backflow Device Testing

Subject: RE: Q18-0386 Action Prop Centre St Lofts Repair Quote
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2018 15:58:44 +0000
From: Michelle Anderson <...@actionlife.com>
To: AAA Backflow

Sean,

My apologies for the miscommunication here. We need to reschedule todays repair so that I can notify the residents of the water shut down. Can you please tell me what you have available this week? I need to give at least a 48 hour notice. Thank you .

Michelle Anderson | Community Manager

Dean Driscoll agreed that Action would be responsible for the cost of the aborted service call from the vendor.

On 7/23/18 10:03 AM, Dean Driscoll wrote:

Bruce, of course this requires advanced communication as to shutdown. 
I’ll get to the bottom of this and yes—we will handle that bill if we failed to provide notice.

Dean

When I checked up on this promise, the building had been billed for the call, and Action had not reimbursed the HOA. Action never provided me with documentation that this refund was delivered to the HOA.

That a building manager has to be told that there will be no planned power or water shutdowns without notifying the residents is an indication of how little that manager knows about their job.

Michelle Anderson was claiming 18 years of experience when she came to this building, and yet she didn't know that rebuilding a back-flow preventer required a water shutdown.

Action contracted with Roto-Rooter to repair/replace several sections and soldered joints in the 4 and 5 inch water pipes in, and just outside our boiler room. The new, $9,300 leaked the day of the repair, and eventually had to be completely redone at the building's expense.

Of the three plumbers that showed up to the repair job, I was told that two had no experience with 5 in pipe. They had not brought a ladder tall enough to safely work on the overhead pipe, nor did they have the tools to properly cut out the old sections (watching them beat on a partially cut pipe with a mallet to finish the cut was quite telling). To add to this, they were unprepared to completely drain all the up-stream water in the system, and ended up trying to solder several joints with water in the pipe.

Roto-Rooter's repairs leaked as soon as the water was turned on. They were back the next day to patch up the work well enough to keep it from leaking when they left. They had to be called back once to reinstall the pipe hangers they removed during the repair, and a second time to replace the pipe insulation they had removed (both times it was a resident that had to bring this to the attention of Action.)

When I brought up this level of incompetence to Kevin Rousso, I was told that Roto-Rooter was a “trusted vendor” and had worked in the building since it was built. I found that Rousso was always more inclined to defend bad work by a vendor than holding that vendor accountable, or find a new one (due to his own bad work, Rousso was eventually fired from his position as our building manager).

Despite this being a problematic job from the start, Action didn't bother to investigate the repairs until after the 1 year warranty ran out on the work. The most ironic thing about this job was that when I was talking to the plumbers that did the original, faulty work, they told me the correct way to make the repair would be to install mechanical couplings rather than soldered joints, but they weren’t doing it that way because they didn’t have the parts or tools.

After being elected to the board I was supervising the second repair of these pipes, and met with a plumber to get the job quoted correctly, using mechanical joints. I supervised this quote because our manager at the time (Michelle Anderson) proved herself completely incapable of communicating instructions to a vendor.

I sent the quote to Anderson with instructions to get two competitive bids to the same specifications. She then sent the quote provided to her - complete with the pricing - out for additional bids. This is the type of idiocy and incompetence this building had to deal with on a regular basis from Action Property Management.

The blower fans that are part of the carbon monoxide ventilation system in our parking garage started acting erratically; alarms sounding, blowers coming on for no apparent reason, and running for extended periods of time. Bringing this directly to Action and our maintenance company aroused no interest on their part to deal with the issue. Eventually part of the system started running 24 hours a day and had to be shut down.

Finally our maintenance company was scheduled to test the system and determine the cause of the problem. What they found was that the carbon monoxide detectors on the system were failing, and they were 3 years past their mandatory replacement date.

At the next board meeting Action presented us with a single proposal for replacing the entire system for a cost of more than $55,000. The explanation given for this price was that the detectors in our system were no longer available and that the entire system - including all the wiring and control boards would need to be updated.

Subject: CO system
Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2018
From: Bruce Ecker
To: Karen Wilkinson-Jurisic
CC: Cathy Bagliazo

the CO system continues to degrade. there is a flashing alarm that does not trigger any of the fans, and i found a couple of the CO sensors buzzing and flashing red this morning.

one of the fans is attempting to run continuously, and the startup relay is cycling on and off every few seconds...

someone needs to sit on Action to make sure they are getting a second bid and this upgrade gets rolling ASAP. i don't want to wait 6 months like we have done with the window issue to get a vendor out to deal with this.

I called the company that installed the original system (the phone number was conspicuously posted on the control box in the blower rooms), and was informed that though the detector modules we currently had were not available, there were updated versions that would work with our current system, and the job could be done for around $18,755.

I was also informed that the carbon monoxide detectors in the system needed to be inspected and re-calibrated every year. Action was unaware of the need for such maintenance so it had never been done in prior years.

In a recent conversation with the company that we hire to do this work, I was informed that this maintenance was not performed last year.

An e-mail arrived from our building manager - Michelle Anderson - informing the board that the DWP had sent us a bill for $68,000 for a meter they recently “discovered” in our power vault that they had been neglecting to bill us for since 2006. The “good news” Anderson informed us was that the DWP was only going to bill us for four months of prior use, and that she had set up a payment plan to cover this bill (without even consulting the board). The bad news was that we were looking at an additional $10,000 to $12,000 per month on top of our regular bill (which normally runs about $4,000 per month).

From: Michelle Anderson <...@actionlife.com>
Sent: Thu, Aug 9, 2018 10:06 am
Subject: Centre Street Lofts invoice

Good morning, I was approving invoices this morning and stumbled upon a $68 thousand dollar invoice for electricity. I called LADWP to investigate and they said the building has not been charged on this account since the beginning of the year.

In looking at the other two accounts for electric billing, the average is around $750 for one and $1200 for the other. However this account is an average of $12K and $10k monthly. Ms. Hightower has assisted me with a payment plan and advised the new bill comes in at $90,812.00. A pay plan payment is Due prior to August 27th I have broken it down and spread it into to 12 months for payments at $7568.00 on top of the regular billing.

I informed Anderson that there needed to be an investigation in to this charge. So Anderson called the accounting department of the DWP, they 'investigated', and deemed it valid.

Subject: RE: Centre Street Lofts invoice
Date: Fri, 7 Sept 2018 22:39:52 +0000
From: Luis De Vega <...@actionlife.com>
To: Kitt Boodsayaskul <...@actionlife.com>, Michelle Anderson <...@actionlife.com>, Bruce Ecker, Dean Driscoll <...@actionlife.com>

Please see attached, if this bill isn't paid by Sept. 14 it’s possible service may be interrupted.

Luis De Vega | Manager Assistant Action Property Management

Since this was all Action was willing to do on this issue, I called the DWP and requested a field investigation, and then called the DWP accounting department and had our bill for the mystery meter deferred till the field investigation was complete. Eventually the DWP dropped the claim for additional billing… but no thanks to Action.

If this issue had been left where our building manager had dropped the ball, we would have had to have an assessment for the initial misbilling, and would have had our HOA fees raised to cover the continued misbilling, in perpetuity.

One of the first things I brought to Action's attention as a new board member was our $11,000 per year phone bill. Requests to our building manager at the time - Dean Driscoll - as to why this bill was so high never received a reply.

One day Dean called me and told me that out of the blue, ATT had called him and offered to lower our bill (you know you are paying too much if the phone company calls and offers to lower your bill). Seemed like good news till I started looking into the issue myself. First thing I found was that of the eight lines we were paying for, one wasn't connected to anything in the telecom room, a second wasn't even connected to the building, and there was an Internet connection that we were paying for wasn’t connected to anything either (probably all hold-overs from when the builder had a sales office in the building in 2006).

Also discovered that we were still paying a prehistoric $1 per minute for long distance charges (rather than the modern rate of $6 per month) for our call box at the front of the building. Also found that after our building manager negotiated lower fees for our services, he also signed us up for a data protection plan for $200 per month to backup the data on all the computers attached to our building phone lines (number of computers attached to those phone lines? Zero). A rough estimate of how much money this building probably hemorrhaged paying for phone and Internet services it wasn’t receiving for the previous 10 years is around $60,000.

At the March 10, 2021 board meeting I requested a current phone bill from our building manager - Kitt Boodsayaskul. I received push-back on this request by the HOA board president, and was only able to get her to agree to the request when I pointed out that under the Davis Stirling act that governs HOAs, the law states that residents must be provided with lawfully requested building documents within 10 days.

Eight days later I received a 5 month old phone bill with a promise of a current version soon. 24 days later I received an envelope in the mail from Action, but what they sent was an electric bill, not the requested phone bill. 60 days after my initial request I brought up the issue at the next board meeting and Kitt claimed he had given the bill to our legal council to pass on to me and would check up on it (why do we need to be wasting money on having our lawyer involved with document requests is still an open question). As of June 1, 2021, the current phone bill had still not been produced.

But one thing I notice on the 5 month old bill that I did receive was that in June of last year, someone had added a $300 per month on-line fax plan to our AT&T account so that we had the capacity to send up to 10,000 faxes a month. Neither the building manager nor the board had any idea about who authorized these charges. Needless to say, the three phone lines we have that serve our 3 elevators, the two phone lines that serve our fire alarm system, nor the phone line to our call box are not in a position to send a single fax. Nobody at action noticed that our phone bill almost doubled in June of last year, so another $2,400 has been pissed away on services we don't need, and can't even use.

Sometime in early 2016, one of the large, metal panels on the south side of the building fell from the third floor to the sidewalk. Apparently (based on the lack of a work-order being opened for this issue) neither the board nor Action made any effort to deal with this issue in any way; meaning not initiating a repair, and not initiating an investigation into the cause of the failure. Not even the damaged waterproofing on the side of the building was dealt with.

My first walk-through of the building with Jennifer Brunston, the new manager sent to us after the board fired Kevin Rousso, I told her that repairing this portion of the building and determining the cause of the failure were priority issues.

This repair ended up being fraught with problems. First, the new panel didn't match the color of the old one, so the vendor hired to deal with this issue, - instead of providing the insurance necessary to use the scaffold erected by another vendor - showed up on a Saturday to do the paint work when nobody was around to stop him. Instead of painting the new panel to match the existing panels, the vendor painted the adjacent exiting panel to match the new one. Not much of an issue since the new paint didn't stick and was soon peeling off.

The next issue that came up was that even after instructing Action to open a work order for an inspection to determine the cause of the panel becoming detached from the building, and to determine if any other panels might be in danger of falling, but the work order system showed that the inspection never took place. The vendor that was assigned the work order claimed they never received it, and since Action never heard back from the vendor, the work order was closed (per Action's internal process for closing work orders).

Action's response to this issue not only put people on the ground at risk, but also the entire building at risk of a very problematic lawsuit if the next panel that fell off were to cause injury or death.... since the issue was a known defect, and no due diligence was done to investigate the cause, and prevent a recurrence.

Requests that Action recover the expenditure for this defective workmanship lead to nothing. The vendor that did the work claimed they should have had first shot at repairing their own repair, and Action didn't press the issue.

On 05/17/18, one of the windows on the third floor suffered a structural failure and fell to the sidewalk in front the the Subway sandwich shop on our ground floor.

In December of 2018, Action finally got around to having a vendor inspect the windows. Of the 116 residential units, only 30 were inspected. Since no one was made available to explain the nature of the problem in any detail, his report did not mention one the main causes of the window failure (improperly tensioned limiters). Another $5000 (mostly) pissed away for us by our management company.

The building CC&Rs state the building windows are the property and the responsibility of the HOA, and the building has the right to enter (with prior notice) any unit to inspect and repair HOA property... a responsibility that has been neglected and avoided to date.

I have found reports from our old maintenance company as far back as 2015 referencing defective window limiter hardware that state, "Possible danger to street below".

To date, neither Action nor the HOA board have bothered to implement a full inspection of the building or an annual inspection.

Repeated requests for a record of the window inspections completed have been ignored. In some instances, residents are being ask to take responsibility for HOA property and assume liability for any future failures of the buildings windows.

As of June, 2021, I can look out the window of my unit and see two windows that have never been inspected and are in need of repair.

As of June, 2021, the windows in my unit have never been inspected by the Action or the HOA, and there has been no request from Action to inspect them.

When I asked our building lawyer what the potential consequences could be if we were involved in a lawsuit without being able to show due diligence in dealing with this problem, his response was, "that's why you have insurance".

Subject: Fwd: CENTRE STREET LOFTS COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION: WINDOWS
Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2019
To: Karen Wilkinson-Jurisic
CC: Kitt Boodsayaskul <...@actionlife.com>, Dean Driscoll <....com>,

Karen

if you and action property management, took these issues seriously they would have been dealt with over a year ago when they were first reported to you and our management company.

you have had my list of window issues since june of 2018, you have the vendors list of window issues since dec of 2018... and still nothing has repaired.

the windows in this building are the responsibility of the HOA. you can not rely on residents that have no mechanical aptitude to be aware of mechanical issues, much less report them.

these email blasts are not going absolve the community of liability if we have another window failure that injures or kills someone.

your instructions to our building engineer to keep an eye out for windows that need repair from the exterior of the building and from ground level is dysfunctional and completely inadequate.

since you are the primary decision maker for the building and the board, your intransigence and willful negligence in regards to this matter puts the building at risk and in my opinion make you a menace to this to this community.

Bruce Ecker

After 6 months of bringing it to the attention of our building manager at the time - Adrian Rivas- that there was a broken fuel gauge on the generator fuel tank, the building failed part of the annual Reg 4 fire inspection because of... a broken fuel gauge on said fuel tank.

When I was told the repair was finished. I inspected this job and found the fuel gauge to still be broken.

After the next repair, an error light appeared on our fire panel. Another vendor was sent out suggested it was an issue with the 12 volt wiring for the alarm system being encased in the same conduit as some 120 volt wiring (even though for ten years this had never been a problem). The fix we were told was to separate the wire sets by running them in separate conduit lines and junction boxes.

Michelle Anderson (our newest new building manager) contracted with an electrical vendor to do the work:

Per the vendor's email to Anderson: " an electrician will be required to rework the conduit and the junction boxes in the generator room to separate the low voltage fire alarm wires from the high voltage generator wires per electrical code".

When I inspected the repair, I found that only half the wire run had been separated. When I met with the vendor he told me that Anderson instructed the estimator she met with to only separate the wires in the conduit but not the junction boxes. When I examined the estimate sent to Action the language of the estimate matched the work done... just not the work that needed to be done.

The issue continued to persist, and we got a new diagnosis; that the fire alarm sensor near the fuel tank had gone bad. When a vendor was sent out to replace the alarm sensor he discovered that the alarm sensor was not bad, but had been disconnected.

If Anderson had bothered to read the original email she was sent from the original inspector, she would know to have someone reconnect the alarm sensor.

Per the vendor: "I also discovered that when this module is tied into the FACP SLC data loop, multiple different devices on the loop will go into trouble indicating that this module is bad and requires replacement. I left the data wires disconnected from this device to keep the FACP stable."

I found that many issues with Action (and almost every one overseen by Michelle Anderson) blossomed into a cluster-fuck, took longer than necessary, took more money than necessary, and usually required a final inspection that Action didn't bother to do.

February 3, 2020: One of the emergency exit signs in the second floor courtyard started falling off the wall. It hung that way for several months, and then one day it was gone. As of May 27, 2021, it has not been replaced. We have an on-site engineer we pay Action $70,000 per year to take care of our building, and this is an example of the care we receive for our money.

May, 2020: A Fire Alarm System Trouble light showed up on the fire panel in the lobby of our building, and it remained on for over six months. When I brought this to the attention of our building manager - Kitt Boodsayaskul - neither he nor our full time, on-site building engineer had noticed it yet.

March, 2021: The call light in elevator #1 was on for over 2 months. When this light is continuously illuminated it means the phone line is busy and an out-going call can not be placed in case of an emergency or entrapment. When I brought this to the attention of our building manager - Kitt Boodsayaskul - neither he nor our full time, on-site building engineer had noticed it yet.

The emergency Firefighter's Operation instructions posted in elevators No. 1 and No. 2 had become illegible (most likely due to being continuously wiped down by the janitorial staff because of covid). This is the condition this emergency signage languished in for 6 months. When I brought this to the attention of our building manager - Kitt Boodsayaskul - neither he nor our on-site building engineer had noticed it yet.

At the very first HOA meeting I attended in 2014, a resident came to complain about the lack of hot water in her unit. She was told by both a board member and Action that the problem was probably caused by a defective valve in her bathtub/shower.

Several years later, after being elected to the board, I gained access to the work order system and discovered that lack of hot water was an issue for a number of tenants. After some investigation of the plumbing plans and the the temperature of the hot water supply lines, and hot water recirculation lines, I was able to determine that the units at the end of the hot water supply were also at the very beginning of the return lines. Hot water supply temperatures for these units were in the 95 degree range before entering each unit. Temperatures in the return lines for these same units were in the 80 degree range... indicating that the return lines were not functioning properly.

For years Action failed to respond in any meaningful way to reports of not hot water. Residents in some of these units reported having to run their shower up to 45 minutes at certain times of the day to receive hot water. Besides failing to deal with a basic building infrastructure problem, this issue also pushed up the water bill for the building.

Regulation 4 is a standardized testing of a building’s fire safety systems, created by the Los Angeles Fire Department. The testing involves systems such as elevators fire alarms, smoke detectors, emergency lighting, sprinkler systems, and more. The goal of LAFD reg 4 fire testing is to save lives by ensuring all fire protection systems are in working order, free of defects.

In 2016 (as a resident) I happened upon several substantial irregularities in the Reg 4 inspection. Besides the vendor not securing the elevators prior to shutting off power to them (trapping a resident in an elevator and forcing them to wait for extraction by Otis Elevator), the vendor was unable to properly shut down power to the building for the emergency lighting test - which meant this test was invalid. When this issue was pointed out to the vendor during the test, they shrugged it off and passed us anyway.

Also, for the alarm horn testing, they would test only two units in the building at a time, so the testing stretched out for almost 8 hour, requiring residents to sit in their units, enduring noise at a decibel level that can cause or lead to hearing loss.

The image below shows that one of our Smoke Guard smoke screens on our elevators that were not functioning on the day of the test. That an issue this obvious was not listed on the defect report calls into question the veracity of the entire inspection.

After notifying Action that we had several defects in the Smoke Guard system, I spoke to the vendor that repairs these devices and was informed that they should be inspected on an annual basis. In July, 2016I had the vendor submit a quote to our building manager - Adrian Rivas.

Rivas never put the proposal on the board agenda for consideration, and numerous emails to him regarding the status of the proposal went unanswered.

It wasn't till June, 2018 that Action finally started paying attention to this issue.

That is falls to a resident of the building to report, and attempt to get one of our safety systems repaired does not speak well to the management abilities of Action. That it take them 2 years to deal with a safety issue to me suggests intentional negligence.

Subject:     Center Street Lofts - Smoke Guard Service Proposal
Date:     Fri, 29 Jul 2016 18:06:29 +0000
From:     Chris DeLange

Hey Bruce,

Per our conversation today I have attached the service proposal I sent to Adrian regarding the 4 Smoke Guard model 400 units the Center Street Lofts.  He said he would present it to the board at the July meeting and I am following up on the outcome.  I have not been able to get a hold of Adrian so I really appreciate the help.

Chris DeLange / Service Account Manager
Smoke Guard California, Inc.

Subject:     Fwd: Center Street Lofts - Smoke Guard Service Proposal
Date:     Thu, 4 Aug 2016 10:40:48 -0700
From:     Bruce Ecker >
To:     Adrian Rivas <arivas@actionlife.com>
CC: George Skrbin <...@actionlife.com>, Karen Wilkinson-Jurisic>

Adrian,

The smoke guard rep recently contacted me regarding a proposal that was sent to you that he has not heard back on.

Could you please acknowledge receipt of this document with Chris and get with the board to review the proposal. Please keep me in the CC chain on this issue.

Subject: Re: Center Street - smoke guard
Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2017 14:34:37 -0800
To: Adrian Rivas <...@actionlife.com>
CC: Karen Wilkinson-Jurisic , George Skrbin <...n@actionlife.com>

Adrian
What is the status of the maintenance quote for the Smoke Guard
curtains on the elevators?

Subject: Fwd: Center Street Lofts - Smoke Guard Service Proposal
Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2018 12:39:53 -0700
From: Bruce Ecker
To: Dean Driscoll <...@actionlife.com>
CC: Michelle Anderson <...@actionlife.com>

Dean, here is an issue that is years in the making. we have 4 of these units in the building and at least 2 of them are not functioning. i don't know why this is not showing up on our reg 4 testing... but it is still a problem. [Smoke Guard has] probably called me 6 times to let me know he couldn't get a response from Adrien.

Once on the board, one of the issues I had become aware of was that Action would book a vendor for the Reg 4 inspection, and that was the extent of their involvement with the process. This often meant that a new vendor would show up for the inspection without any prior knowledge of the building and limited time frame to complete their work.

This year I insisted that our building manager at the time - Michelle Anderson, the vendor, and myself all meet prior to the testing, walk through the building, and find out what the vendor would need prior to testing, and on the day of the test to make it as efficient as possible. One thing they pointed out that would make the work go faster would be for a set of building keys for each member of the inspection team.

On the day of the test, Michelle Anderson was not on site for the inspection. I went down to check in with the inspection crew when they arrived. I found them standing around with only one set of keys (they needed 4 sets), and unable to reach our building manager by phone. Anderson also waited till the test was underway to notify residents of shutdowns to building power, and the elevators:

2017 was not a good year for Reg 4 testing, the list of defects found took over 8 months to correct (the city normally gives you 30 days to make all corrections). One of the issues we were faced with repairing was a fire door in the trash room that had been reported as non-operational to our previous building manager; his response when informed of this issue was, "lets just wait on that".

As the building was struggling to come into compliance, a criminal complaint was filed against the building, and Matthew Holbrook (the owner of Action Property Management) for violation of L.A.M.C. Section 57.107.7.3 - maintaining items in deficient condition or in a state of disrepair. This charge was brought in regards to uncorrected defect from the two prior years.

One lawyer ended up representing both the building and Action at the hearing. He pleaded no contest to the charges for the HOA, and managed to get Action dismissed from the case. The building received 3 years probation, plus $4,500 in fines, penalties and fees.

The up side of the 2017 testing was the implementation of new alarm horn testing procedure that only required the residents to be available in their units for less than an hour. This system worked so well that even Action was impressed. Unfortunately, this plan was never been implemented in any of the subsequent years of testing. Live and not learn... a perfect tagline for Action Property Management.

Prior to our Reg 4 inspection, Kitt Boodsayaskul was informed that the Reg 4 inspection team would not be able or willing to shut off the power to the building for the emergency generator/lighting test. The reasons for this were explains to him in great detail during a walk-through of our power room. He was told that the only way to shut down the building power in a way that the emergency lighting could be properly tested was to hire an electrician to pull the fuse blocks for the community meters from the power board, and that the Reg 4 inspectors would not perform this procedure. I personally provided him with the Reg 4 procedures (developed by Action) from the previous year.

Despite all this, and a testing procedure document that clearly states, "Electrician will need to be contacted during testing to pull fuses", Mr Boodsayaskul decided to ignore this information, and did not hire an electrician for the power shutdown. On the day of the test the Reg 4 inspectors reported to the current building engineer that they were unable to test the emergency lighting system because they were unable to shut down the building power.

The building engineer (Dennis Alvarez) called his direct supervisor to report this problem with the testing procedure, and was told that they didn't want to have to go through a retest and that he would have to pull the fuses. So without any training, without any background information on how to pull two100,000 amp fuse blocs, and without the required safety equipment (rubber gloves, rubber soled shoes, eye protection, face shield, arc-protection, backup personnel with a fiberglass pole to pull him off the power board if necessary), he was sent into the power room, unassisted, to pull the fuse blocks. This was a very serious OSHA violation and put this individual at risk of great bodily harm or death. Demands to Action and Dean Driscoll for an investigation into this issue were never responded to, but the building engineer (Dennis Alvarez) was quietly disappeared several months later.

Additional issues with the 2019 inspection:

Nobody informed any of the residents, (or even the building engineer) that this was a 5 year test, and this required that the test team enter every unit and inspect every sprinkler head cover in every room, every bathroom, every closet. That didn't turn out to be that big of a problem since in a number of cases I witnessed or documented, the inspection team would walk into the main room, look around, and claim they made a complete inspection for that unit. In one case I documented, they didn't even enter the unit.

The south fire damper on the fourth floor did not close during testing. An extremely serious malfunction that could cause a fire to spread in this portion of the building. The testing team did not notice this problem. This was not listed as a defect on the report.

One fire door didn't close when released by the alarm system, other fire doors didn't close completely. None of these issues were listed as defects on the report.

• A substantial number of missing recessed sprinkler heads in the building their covers did not end up on the defect report. (Action had been informed of the location of two of these covers prior to the inspection, still they were missed. It took Action 18 month to install the missing cover in one of our stairways; is a job that is equivalent to screwing in a light-bulb).
• Trash chutes that had broken latches and missing smoke seals did not end up on the defect report. (an issue that bit us in the ass when there was a fire in the trash room and the smoke filled the hallways on two floors).
• The mini-horn testing was not performed as required by the L.A.F. D.

When I mentioned - on the day of our test - to our building engineer (Dennis Alvarez) that there were portions of the in-unit inspections that were not being done per the reg 4 requirements, and other mechanical issues that were missed by the inspection team, issues that potentially could cause physical harm or loss of life to residents in the case of a fire,  he didn't even ask what the problems were, he just stated, "if they [the reg 4 inspection team] signed off on it, they are liable".

When you have a management company that is made aware of potentially life threating issues being over looked in a defective and fraudulent safety inspection, you might expect that they might pay a little attention to this. Instead Action, and our HOA board dragged their feet correcting these issues, some for up to 8 months.

Action claimed there was nothing they could do about the inspection. But behind the scenes they hired a lawyer to get an opinion that the HOA board could not be held responsible for death or injury of residents if a defect was signed off on by the Reg 4 inspectors (an opinion they claim they did not get in writing). I also received a letter from the building lawyer telling me to keep my nose out of building business or I could face legal action.

After 9 months of inaction by management and our HOA board, a single phone call to the the inspection company - by a resident - was all that was necessary to to trigger a followup inspection. That inspection documented a number of defects that were missed during the first inspection.

In October of 2018, it was pointed out to the building manager - Michelle Anderson - that the fire extinguishers in the building were going to need to need their annual inspection by the first week in November so that we were not in violation of state safety regulations. Since the building was already on probation with the city this was not an inspection we wanted to miss. Action didn't make the call to the vendor to do the inspection till December 21, 2018. After the inspection was complete, Action emailed the building residents:

The state also requires a monthly visual inspection of each extinguisher in the building to ensure that the fire extinguishers are free of dents, signs of damage, and leaks and that they can be operated correctly. Currently there are no records that this inspection has ever been done. If this inspection was being done then Action and our building engineer would be aware that 14 of the 36 fire extinguisher cabinets in the residential hallways have had their breakable glass access panels replaced with shatter-proof plastic... making them inaccessible in case of an emergency.

Side note: in 2018 when plastic panels were first discovered in the extinguisher cases, the were removed by our maintenance company. Sometime in the last 18 months Action had them all replaced, with plastic again, which means that under Action's management, this building has paid for the same mistake twice and made a substantial number of our fire extinguishers inaccessible.

One of the requirements of passing the annual LAFD Reg 4 safety inspection of the building is having a copy of a specific portion of the building electrical plans (the Single Line Diagram) posted in the electrical room. I became aware that this document was missing from our electrical room in 2018 after the first Reg 4 inspection after being elected to the HOA board. The only version that I could find in the building was part of a set of very illegible master plans. Since it was the closest thing we had at the moment that would bring us into compliance, the document was passed to our substitute building manager at the time with instructions to make copies so we could return the original to the master plans and get a copy into the electrical room.

Eventually I received an envelop from Action, but the contents were not the electrical plan that were promised, but a check for $29,164 made out to another one of Action's clients.

At this point Kitt Boodsayaskul (the new assistant to our most recent new building manager who was currently out on maternity leave) was instructed to deliver a copy of the electrical plans. The original, barley legible document measured 24" x 36.; the version that Mr. Boodsayaskul brought to the building was printed on an 8-1/2" x 11" piece of paper.

Regarding the check, I kept asking Dean Driscoll how this could have happened. The only answer he would provide was, "there are procedures in place to keep this kind of thing from happening". I eventually realized that this kind of evasion is what I now call "manager talk"... ignore the question being asked, answer a different question, lather, rinse, repeat until people give up on getting a straight answer. Every full-time manager we have had in this building was a master of this practice.

Kitt Boodsayaskul, the building manager, hires a team of electricians to pull the fuse blocks from the power board for our emergency lighting test. It was apparent that they were unprepared for the job since none of them had the proper safety gear to do the job. None the less, they pulled the fuses, and we passed the test on the first attempt.

Kitt Boodsayaskul, the building manager, decides to ignore the written instruction on how to shut down power for the emergency lighting test, ignores the procedure that worked the previous year, and decides not hire an electrician to pull the fuse blocks from the power panel. The building fails the test.

When queried as to why he did not, his response was, "the inspectors told me they would shut down the power". When it was pointed out to him that they told him the same thing in 2018, and were not able to shut down the power, and I asked why he decided to attempt a power shutdown in a manner that he already knew would fail; his response was, "same answer".

Now the building is facing the cost of a retest of the system. This waste of building funds would be easily preventable if Action would take the time to learn from past mistakes, or at least follow the written guidelines they developed and have on file. These people do not learn, our the current board does not hold them responsible for their incompetent, and the building residents bear the cost in higher HOA fees for having this company manage the building.

A bathtub on the fourth floor was filling up with all the dish water from a fifth floor kitchen sink. Action called their vendor of choice, and that vendor was unable to clear the line with a snake. I spoke to one of the competent plumbers that works in our building, explained the issue in some detail, and was told that a snake wouldn't work in this situation, and that it would require hydro-jetting.

I explained this to our current building manager – Michelle Anderson – but since it was the day before Thanksgiving, and none of the plumbers of choice could get out till after the holiday, she asked if I would be willing to allow Roto-Rooter back in the building (I had banned their use after the 5” pipe fiasco). I consented to this, but later found out that Roto-Rooter sent out a crew without any hydro-jetting equipment and they spent a day and a half trying – and failing - to snake the line through a vent on the roof. This cost the building almost $2000.

The next day a plumber with hydro-jetting equipment showed up, and cleared the clog in 30 minutes for $425. Action Property Management is a company that can’t get a job done right even when you tell them the right way to do it.

One of the large ventilation fans that is part of our garage ventilation system started making an enormous amount of noise when it was running… loud enough that a resident on an upper floor could hear it in their unit. I reported this to Action numerous times for almost a year, yet it continued unabated. Action claimed they were sending work orders to our maintenance company about the issue, but when I spoke directly to the maintenance person, he said that the orders had never been passed on to him. I obtained one of the emails Action sent to our maintenance company about the issue, and discovered that the address they were using was not valid. Apparently multiple work orders for the same issue and no response from the vendor didn't create any interest on Action’s part, and it took a resident to track down the problem and solve it for them.

By the time Action got around to dealing with the issue, both main bearings needed to be replaced and a new fan shaft had to be fabricated and installed.

Feb 25, 2020: Informed our building manager - Kitt Boodsayaskul - that the boiler room permits we had posted had expired in June of 2019... he said he would look into it. Brought it up a second time at a HOA meeting, and also with our building engineer. At some point, someone made the effort to remove the expired permits, but as of May 2, 2021, current permits had not been posted.

It was a very hot summer and the plants in our courtyard were withering away. One reason was that they were only getting watered once a week, and the other reason was that the gardeners that were watering them once a week didn't always show up. I brought this up with Michelle Anderson and she actually laughed, and said, "it's hot, that's happening everywhere", and that was the extent of her interest, and her help with this issue.

As a board member I simply had our janitorial staff start watering twice a week, (or three times if the gardeners didn't show up) while the heat lasted. Within a few months most of the plants had made full recovery.

For some reason this solution was beyond beyond the capacity of Action. If it had been left up to the efforts that our property manager was willing (or unwilling) to make, we would have been faced with the cost of new plants by the end of the drought.

June, 2018: The floor mat in our lobby went missing. Janitorial was forced to put down cardboard boxes to keep the lobby floor from becoming an all day mess and a slip hazard during rain storms. In spite of regular reminders that this was an issue, Action didn't get a proposal in front of the board for new floor mats till Jan, 2019.

A resident contacted our building manager - Michelle Anderson - for a copy of one of the building's insurance certificates (needed to renew his homeowners policy). The resident told me that Anderson stated that she had no idea what he was asking for. When this was brought to my attention, I put the resident in touch with Anderson's assistant, who knew exactly what he was asking for.

I had noticed when examining the log book for the emergency generator that it had been more than a year since its last service. When I called our building manager - Michelle Anderson - to inquire about the date of last service she hadn't a clue.

So I called the vendor that services our generator about the issue. They said they had been out recently, had serviced the generator, but they were no longer leaving service invoice in the log book (so I had them send me a copy of the invoice as proof of the service call).

The way Michelle Anderson dealt with this issue was to schedule a service call to see if the generator had been serviced (service calls from this vendor run over $400 per visit). Another preventable and unnecessary waste of building finances courtesy of Action Property Management.

When Anderson was told we need to have the emergency generator run manually (rather than on a timer), instead of assigning the task to our regular maintenance company (that would do the 15 minute test as part of their regular visit), she call the generator vendor to come out and do work... another $400 pissed away for us by our management company. This was after she was told told to have our maintenance company do the monthly test. Even when you tell Action how to do a job, they still can't get it right the first time.

The residential parking garage needed some lines painted over in two of the parking spaces but not the lines in the pedestrian walkways between the spaces. Very clear instructions were sent to our building manager - Kitt Boodsayaskul – but he was not able to clearly convey this info to our maintenance staff and when I checked up on the work prior to painting found that a substantial amount of the walkway lines were marked to be painted.

Even with constant prodding, this small job took 13 months from start to finish, and it was almost done wrong.

For months an alarm light had been going off on the control panel of building sump pumps. One day I found an electrician wandering around the garage looking for the alarm box. He said Action had sent him out for a look, but didn’t give him any idea of where to look. When I showed him the system he informed me that sump pumps would be best looked at by a vendor that actually worked on these systems, and that he couldn’t do anything. Next Action sent Roto-Rooter out for a look, but when they were on site they informed me they don’t work on sump pumps (even though at other times they have given us estimates for working on sump pumps). So a third vendor had to be called, but when they arrived they found the alarm box locked and Action had no record of the combination (another issue that had to be solved by a board member).

Even after a HOA board approves a quote.... good luck getting Action to send it to the vendor....

Subject: centre street - hydro jetting
Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2019 14:14:27 -0800
To: Kitt Boodsayaskul <....@actionlife.com>

Kitt
the proposal to hydro-jet the horizontal drain lines in the building that was approved by the board in Oct of last year has not been sent to the vendor yet. this works is supposed to be completed prior to thanksgiving each year. you need to follow up on this, and i want to be CCed on the confirmation.

Subject: centre street -
Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2018 12:38:49 -0800
To: Dean Driscoll <....@actionlife.com>

Dean,
regarding the last job that Lawrence doors did at the building. it took over 6 weeks from the time the board voted to approve the cost to the time the work order was sent to the vendor (that was 6 weeks where the front door was not consistently locking when closed).

i want to know the reason for this delay. before i left the board i made several requests for this information and it was never provided.

Subject: Re: Centre Street
Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2018 12:54:44 -0700
To: Michelle Anderson <...@actionlife.com>

Michelle,
The recent bid from Stanley Lewis on the anode for the main water tank was a resend of needed work that was suggested sept of last year. i approved this work last year on 10/5/17. I spoke to Stanley Lewis yesterday and they said they never received a response from you regarding this issue.

Subject: Re: Centre St Lofts/ Boiler Tank
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2017 13:58:20 -0700
To: Dean Driscoll <...l@actionlife.com>, Michelle Anderson <...@actionlife.com>

Just spoke to Stanly Louis for clarification... this is just to replace the anode and flush the tank. sounds like we are over due on this maintenance so i am going to advise we move forward with this

Our smoke detectors started triggering false alarms. Since Action never made an attempt to track down the problem, I got the fire alarm company to provide me with the ID numbers of the smoke detectors that were causing the problem.

Turned out not to be faulty equipment, just neglect; the alarms were so dirty they would trigger themselves. A simple cleaning by our alarm vendor solved the problem.

Action Property Management was specifically instructed not to hire window washers that would need to rappel from the roof. This is what we got:

We also got more damage to the parapet on the roof, as well as a vendor that was relying on safety cables on our roof that did not have a current certification.

Subject: Fwd: Window Washing
Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2016
From: [Former Board Member]

I tell Action every time we have the windows cleaned that the vendor is NOT to do any type of repelling from the roof... ...Besides the roof, this also damages the railing and stucco.

Even when Action discovered in 2019 that our 10 year load test on the safety cable on the roof was 3 years past due, the load test was not done and they did not bothered to tag it out so it would not be used by any other vendor.

The billing payment stubs Action sends to residents don't fit properly in the envelopes provided. This turned out to be a problem that Action could not fix.

Subject: centre street - billing stubs
Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2019 09:26:55 -0700
To: Kitt Boodsayaskul <...actionlife.com>, Dean Driscoll <d...actionlife.com>

Kitt,

Every year for the five years i have lived here, i have let Action Property Management know that our HOA billing stubs do not fit the envelops that we pay you to provide us with.

I have sent this complaint to Kevin Russo (fired by Karen), Adrien Rives (fired by action), Michelle Anderson , Dean Driscoll... and now you. This relatively simple problem still has not been solved.

Any chance of getting this dealt with this year?

From: Kitt Boodsayaskul <...@actionlife.com>

Hi Bruce,
My production team just got back to me. The coupon book is outsourced. We can't make changes, but the issue has been sent to them. Our mail sorter machine is designed to shake/drop mail, so the inside contents align at the bottom of the envelope making it readable for our machine scanner.

This typical Action explanation overlooks the fact that there is organization called the USPS between the residents and Action's mail sorter. I personally have had 3 payments lost in the mail, and several times they were returned address unknown. The issue still persists in 2021

One day Michelle Anderson - our building manager - showed up and introduced me to Kitt Boodsayaskul, who she told me was going to be our new building manager. I had not heard anything about this change so I called her boss, Dean Driscoll, who told me he hadn't heard anything about it either.

Subject: centre street
Date: Wed, 8 Jan 2020 23:31:54 -0800
To: Kitt Boodsayaskul <...@actionlife.com>

Kitt,
now that i am on the board, i am requesting every piece of documentation from legal regarding the reg 4 debacle from this year.

i am still waiting for the legal billing information i requested in October [2019]. let me know when this will be provided

- Bruce Ecker

(July, 2021 - information still not provided)

Subject: centre street lofts - weekly neglect report
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2019
From: Bruce Ecker
To: Kitt Boodsayaskul <...@actionlife.com>
CC: Karen Wilkinson-Jurisic, Dean Driscoll ...@actionlife.com>

Kitt

i would like to know what is being done in regards to the fire alarm that went off last night and who is investigating it.

since it appeared that no one looked into the the previous fire alarm that went off last month till it went off a second time, i would like you to keep me in the loop on this.

every time an alarm goes off here we need to find the cause. when i was on the board, nobody was doing this... not action, not the other board members, not our maintenance companies... so i started tracking down the causes of these incidents, forcing action and the board into doing repairs and maintenance that otherwise wouldn't have gotten done. it doesn't appear we have anyone doing this now.

it took over 3 weeks to replace a single smoke sensor in this last repair.  since we have experienced similar wait times for other alarm system parts in the past, i have asked action to look into the supple chain for parts for our current fire alarm system. if our system is extinct or headed in that direction, and parts are going to become unavailable at some point we need to proactively deal with this issue. of our alarm system goes down we will be with out a critical safety system in the building and (according to LAFD regulations) will need to hire people to stand a fire watch, 24 hours a day, on every residential floor in the building. what research have you done on this issue to date?

our current alarm control box has at several substantial design defect (functionality, not safety defects) that i am aware of and these need to be addressed in our next system.

also, there was damage done (by the LAFD) to the lock on the lock on the annunciator panel in the lobby  from the previous alarm that has not been repaired. this needs to be fixed and we need to get a key to this lock... (none exists to my knowledge). it has been three weeks since this occurred and there has been no repair and not sign of a work order being opened for this issue.

also, the previous time the alarm went off the LAFD broke into the DWP key box on the FACP room. This has not been dealt with and doesn't seem to be on anyone's radar. This issue means that the after hours DWP workers don't have access to our FACP room and if they need to get in there they will force the door and the building will have to pay for the repair. it has been three weeks since this occurred and there has been no repair and not sign of a work order being opened for this issue. you need to get a new master key to the DWP, let them know they need to replace their lock box, and we need to get signage next to this lock box stating it is DWP property so the LAFD doesn't break it open again.

i also told you several months ago (and 7 months from my first report of this issue to action) that the LAFD stand pipe placard on the front of the building has the wrong address on it and needs to be replaced.... no sign of this being dealt with yet.

what is the status of getting a gate opener into the LAFD lock box? and in case the board and management can't figure this out... let me point out that the flexible, adhesive backed RIFD tags that the resident's in this building are stuck with are not going to be an adequate solution to this issue. and we also need a second elevator room key in the fire departments lock box (one has gone missing) and i was told by the LAFD that they would like the key sets in the box to be better labeled and that the labels be waterproof.

i told you a while back that the the large number of dead keys, dead fob cards, and all the other crap in this box needed to be cleared out... i found out during our previous fire alarm that this task had not been dealt with either. i also found business cards for our prior management company in the box so apparently action has done no maintain on the contents of this box  since it took over the building. (the fire department dumped all the unlabeled key, outdated fobs and other detritus out of the box last month... i have them in my possession if someone at action would like to make themselves a charm bracket).

the LAFD requested (in person - to me) that we get signage on the lobby annunciator panel showing the location of the FACP room (they pried this panel open because they didn't know where our main alarm box was). this is a very small task, needs to be done immediately, and since action is our management company, i am assuming it won't take more than a year or two (assuming it happens at all). LAFD would also like instructions in the box explaining what the keys and fobs in the box will open.

regarding the investigation into my clams that we revived a a deficient reg 4 test this year: you claimed at the last HOA meeting that you had not been able to get in touch with the reg 4 fire inspector in the last two months (even though i provided you with the name of the person to contact and their phone number), and you stated that you weren't even sure if he still was responsible for reg 4 testing in this area. if you actually called the number i gave you, you would reach him, the message on his phone box would explain that he is the reg 4 inspector, and if you left a request for a call back he would return your call. i know this because he always returns my calls, and when i talked to him this week he said he had no record of you or anyone from action requesting a call back. how do you explain this?

regarding the (single) quote for the window repairs presented at the last meeting: i asked if you had gotten a second quote from Sonora Glass and you said they had not responded to your calls. I spoke with the president of the company (Bill Dunn) today and he said he has no record or recall of being contacted by your or action in the last 12 months regarding this issue. he also mentioned that the fix to the windows that is currently being proposed was rejected by the manufacturer of the windows when he presented it to them a year ago. [our resident architect] told me last year that there is minimum requirement as to how much windows need to open so as to meet the air exchange requirements for residential apartments. are these issue being addressed in the current bid? i have also heard (second hand) that the Department of Building And Safety will not allow modifications to existing windows without bringing them up to current code. if this is true and not addressed prior to the proposed repairs, you could be putting this building in a position of having to replace every modified window in the building at a cost of $12k - $14K per window. there is not going to be any acceptable excuse for making these mistakes now that you have been warned.

regarding the roof mounted safety system that is years out of inspection compliance: last year the window washing company was using this safety system... if there had been an accident and a failure of this system we would have a hell of a law suit on our hands. would action take responsibility for paying such a judgment against the building since you never bothered to have it inspected?

the expired elevator permits that i mentioned last week have not been addressed yet. the re-key to the fire door in the trash room has not been addressed yet. these are extremely simple tasks... both in terms of time and cost.... what is going on with them?

you did not address my question when i asked if we recovered any money from our security patrol vendor after we documented that their employee was forging the patrol reports.

Bruce Ecker

• Fire Department Keys
• Contractor Keys
• Elevator Security Cameras
• Elevator Buttons
• Main Garage Gate
• Hydro-Jetting
• Garage Cleaning
• Roof Repairs
• New Carpet
• Unpaid Bills
• OSHA Violations
• How Work Orders Get Closed
• Security Patrols
• Missing Construction Material