The Greenbelt City Council meets with the Board of Directors of Greenbelt Homes, Inc. (GHI) every year to share information on topics of mutual interest, update one another on projects and plans and, occasionally, to resolve differences. The 2016 meeting, which included a bit of all of those components, was hosted by the city at the Municipal Building on June 13. The first part of the meeting covered GHI concerns about recently adopted county legislation (CB-49-2015, CB-50-2015 and CB-58-2015) that will impact the cooperative and other “common ownership communities” in the county. County Councilmember Todd Turner was present for the discussion. This article covers only the discussion on these bills. Other issues covered at the meeting will be reported separately. Although it was GHI that raised a hue and cry about the common ownership legislation, the new laws will apply to condominiums and homeowner associations (HOAs), as well as to cooperatives. The GHI Board is primarily concerned with the requirements and implementation of the newly adopted laws regarding complaint and dispute resolution processes, but it has also taken exception to the fact that neither the city nor the county government provided advance notice of these actions or sought input from GHI on the potential impacts of the legislation despite its longstanding experience in this area. Turner said that last year, when the three bills related to common ownership communities were being considered by the county council and went up for public hearing, GHI conveyed its concerns, and GHI General Manager Eldon Ralph went to Upper Marlboro to the public hearing prior to the adoption of the bills. Turner gave an overview of the events leading up to the enactment of the bills, which had their origin in a work group started in 2013 as a result of discussions that took place with the county council’s Transportation, Housing and the Environment (THE) Committee, which Turner now chairs, regarding resident complaints about the practices of their HOAs, condominiums or cooperatives. An earlier 2006 common ownership task force had also made recommendations. In 2012 the council adopted legislation creating a Common Ownership Communities Program within the Office of Community Relations to collect data and provide training and education in common ownership communities. At the time, there was disagreement on whether a dispute resolution process should be provided. Eventually a 22-person task force was set up under the Committee. Ingrid Turner, who was the county councilmember for District 4 at the time, appointed now-Mayor Emmett Jordan to the task force, with Jordan then recommending that Derek Thompson of Windsor Green take his place. The task force reviewed and evaluated the recommendations of the 2006 group, bringing forward those to strengthen the community ownership program, enable the regulation of property management companies and institute a dispute resolution program, for which they received authorization to charge a fee. Draft legislation accompanied the recommendations of the task force, and by late 2014 the county council was ready to move forward. Read More
